All Forum Posts by: James Christian

Yeah Jaysen, I only heard about it 7 days from COE.  I heard about it that morning, and then that afternoon the buyers backed out due financal reasons.  I am looking at getting my GC license, but its going to take a little while.  It is taking a test or two (these are easy to knock out), but you also need to have three years experience under a licensed guy.

Our family just finished working on our first flip.  We came in on budget, did much of the work ourselves, had the property under contract to sell with a $60K profit, and the buyers backed out at the last minute.  While we were in escrow, we learned about a law in Arizona that states that if you complete more than $1,000 of repairs in labor/materials outside of work done by a licensed contractor, you have to wait a full year before you can sell or rent it.  Now that the buyer backed out, we are planning on moving into the flip in order to be compliant with the state law.  This devastated our plans and we are nervous that either A) we won't be able to make any profit because of expensive GC's having to do all the work, or B) we won't be able to accelerate our growth because we will have to wait a full year before selling each property.

How are the rest of you dealing with these types of laws?  I know each state is different, but from what we've looked up, there are many states with similar handyman laws.  We are freaking out about this information, we feel like this law is ruining all of our plans.  Please respond!

Chris,

We also just finished up our first flip in AZ. Unfortunately, we found out about an obscure rule that says if you complete more than $1000 of repairs in labor/materials outside of work done by a licensed contractor, you have to wait a full year before you can sell or rent it. It was not fun to learn that and completely ruined our plans. We're not sure how we're going to make a profit flipping in AZ if we have to use expensive GC's. The law is called the Handyman Law. As a flipper, have you come across this at all? Or could you explain this further to us?  We're not trying to get you in trouble here, we just got really upset learning about this ourselves recently.

Max,

We also just finished up our first flip in AZ.  Unfortunately, we found out about an obscure rule that says if you complete more than $1000 of repairs in labor/materials outside of work done by a licensed contractor, you have to wait a full year before you can sell or rent it.  It was not fun to learn that and completely ruined our plans.  We're not sure how we're going to make a profit flipping in AZ if we have to use expensive GC's.  The law is called the Handyman Law.  As a flipper and a Realtor, have you come across this at all?  Or could you explain this further to us?

My wife and I are looking for a good real estate lawyer in Arizona who is knowledgeable with owner financing and setting up contracts.

What neighborhood in Milwaukee did you do your BRRR in, if you don't mind me asking? It is so encouraging to hear about your success and how you did it!

Thanks Ray,  we are about to close on a house hack here as well, but we had to do it in Bisbee.  Not a bad thing, the numbers look good, but we just couldn't make anything work in SV.  How were you able to find a multi family in SV that wasn't overpriced?

Derek, that would be amazing.  The house in Omaha is still up in the air right now, but as soon as that gets more solidified, I'll definitely hit you up.

Thanks brother.

Hi guys.  My name is James Christian and I am writing this intro for both my wife, Karen, and myself.  We hail from the small town of Sierra Vista, AZ.  I am very excited to have found this forum.  My wife and I have just started our journey into real estate investment at the beginning of this year and we have vowed to have made actionable steps by the end of the year.  I work for the fed. gov. and Karen is a stay at home mother/full time looking for investments.

Our end of the year goals are the following: 1) finding a house hack in Sierra Vista (which has proved difficult with sellers in the area wanting waaayyyy to much for their properties and not budging an inch), 2) doing a BRRRR on Karen's grandma's 3:1 property in Omaha, NE (very excited about this since its a fixer upper in a neighborhood with similar rentals going for around 1.2K, and finally 3) buying an additional property, single or multi, in an area that is not Sierra Vista, so a long distance buy. We don't want to, and think that it is the wrong move, to push most of our liquid assets into this town.

Looking forward to getting to know you guys on here, and this will certainly help to keep us accountable.

Cheers!

Thanks Ingrid and Lynn.