All Forum Posts by: James Davis

 LOL! I can see the resemblance. Have you done any flips yet or made any offers?

It was only for a one time thing while they were on vacation. They live in the house so they may only do it again when they go out of town. It could be a hidden gem though because there is absolutely nobody doing it in that area and they rented it out to a businessman who was doing business in the area. With Six Flags in the area you may attract people who want to spend the night in a nice house instead of a hotel room.

As soon as I started getting interested in real estate investing I started going on Zillow almost everyday looking at houses that were in default in the neighborhood and I was surprised to find so many people in default. While driving home 2 weeks ago I saw a garage sale sign and I recognized the address. I looked on Zillow and saw that it was foreclosed on.  When I get propertyradar I may be able to understand what is going on better but in my farm area which is a more established area there are very few foreclosures listed in zillow. Actually only 2. But in the newer neighborhood (where I live) with houses only being 10-15 years old there were significantly more foreclosures (17 lol!). Maybe someone can explain this difference. And maybe there is not really a difference...it just looks like one to me. However, I'm actually only interested in pre-foreclosures.

Probate will definitely take some leg work. I'm only doing this part-time right now so I don't mind doing a little leg work to get me rolling, but I probably won't want to put in that much work if I decide to do this full-time.

Message me the hard money lenders that you know. I'm building my own little "database" of lenders in the area.

You're right I probably already have enough money. I looked back at one of the hard lender requirements and they did say 20-30% down of the PURCHASE price. So I'm sure I do have enough money...if my line of credit gets approved. It still has a conditional status! They only formula they recommend is basically just subtracting all of your cost from your ARV of the house in order to determine your purchase price.

I look forward to meeting Sean O'Toole. Hopefully I will run into him at one of the REI club meetings.

Thanks for your valuable feedback!!

@Sandy Salazar Yeah I'll definitely have to watch out for those pesky HOAs. I've seen a few listings for condos near the beach for sale in San Diego that listed that the HOA was ok with short term rentals. But it is definitely something to look at before purchasing property. I haven't heard of those other websites so I'll have to check those out. Thanks for all the advice!

@Mark Nolan Thanks for the welcome! Yeah when you think about it why pay thousands of dollars a to pay to talk to 1 guru when you have a whole website full of them! I will definitely use the messaging system. 

@Dmitriy Fomichenko Thanks for the welcome!

@Romel Aquino I was listening to a podcast while driving the other day. Great utilization of time. I was disappointed when I made it to my destination and had to end the podcast!

@Ben Andrews It's definitely good to see a fellow soCal'er. If you can you should come to the meetup I'm going to tomorrow. Use the meetup app and search for SDIC FIBI. They meet in Del Mar and it starts at 6pm. They have a really good speaker coming.

@Sandy Salazar

 I've been thinking about buying and holding but only so I could try out airbnb. In that case I would try and buy and hold a property near the beach which should bring in some great income for short term rentals. How does $200 -300 a day sound? That's just for a small condo. Have you gave any thought to airbnb? Haven't had a chance to search the forums on the subject.

I haven't looked at the prices for a regular rental but I currently rent a 2 bed 2.5 bath townhomes for $1650. A house i think would rent about $2000-2500 a month.

Very good tip on putting my deal in the forum for analysis. I'll definitely do that! Thanks for all the great tips and information.

Welcome to BP! I'm also a newbie! I refinanced my home while I was renting it out and now I'm selling it. Didn't want to deal with renting it out anymore and wanted the cash to start flipping houses. I was lucky to have my mom live next door to my rental so she served as my property manager. We were both really picky on who we put in the house. She screened them in person and I did the background checks. Rented for two years with no problems.

Since you are renting your house out have you looked into airbnb. You can download it as an app on your phone. It basically allows you to do short-term rentals on your property such as days at a time. I haven't tried it myself but I have a friend who lives in Santa Clarita and they rented their townhome out for a week for $800 while they were on vacation.

@Nicholas Steinkraus  thanks for the welcome! It almost feels overwhelming with all the information available here on the forums and podcasts. I'll do some keyword searches and look for answers to skill my questions. I already found that investors in California suggest propertyradar.com to find foreclosures. Most likely that's what I'm going to use to find pre-foreclosures. What part of California are you from?

@Marco Santarelli thanks for the tips. I'll definitely check out the guide and link you provided.

@Jack Butala thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into that. I've always been interested in purchasing land. I'll take a look at the website. I see you're in AZ so are you talking about the land off the 10 freeway on the way to AZ?

Hello BP!

I'm James Davis from San Diego, California. Actually I live in Chula Vista, CA which is a neighboring city of San Diego.  I have no experience in real estate except owning my own house which I rented out for 2 years when I relocated to San Diego from Victorville, CA. I am now selling that house so that I could have about $20k cash to start flipping houses with. It should close escrow in a week. 

Facing my fear of failure I now want to jump both feet into real estate investing. However, I'm overcoming this fear with lots and lots of knowledge. I've read two books on buying and flipping houses (Buy it, Fix It, Sell It Profit by Kevin C. Myers & The Pre-Foreclosure Property Investor's Kit by Thomas J Lucier) and the 3rd book I'm currently reading is The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott (I'm on chapter 11). That is how I found BP! I'm starting to network with local REI clubs to get some connections. Gratefully, they have some networking before their meeting because I usually have to run out immediately after the meeting because it ends at 9pm and I work at 4am the following day. I'll be spending a lot of time on BP and various podcasts because they meet only once per month. To make sure I jump in and don't just research forever, I've given myself a deadline of mid-September to start by sending out letters to my farm area. I'm interested in flipping pre-foreclosures and, due to a recent podcast I watched on another website, houses in probate.

So my plan is to first try and get financing. San Diego is expensive with the average sold price for houses around $400k and from looking at some hard money lender websites  some of them have mentioned that they want to see that I have "skin-in-the-game" and have a down payment requirement. So I'm going to have about $20k from selling my house. I've applied for a line of credit at my bank for $40k yesterday and I've been conditionally approved with 9% interest rate. I have great credit and "good" income at my current job which is a huge plus! So that brings it to $60k cash that I will have access to...hopefully. I'll still be short of my goal of having $80k which is 20% of $400k so I may try and apply for lines of credit at other banks to get the rest or try to use my 401k account which I think I can take out up to $15k within 2 week period. Afterwards, I will start getting pre-approved with the hard money lenders so when I get a deal I'll have the money to do it. With all that said I'm going to favor other types of deals such as seller financing, and subject to (assume the loan) deals. Even when a mortgage has a due on sale clause I've heard that very few lenders have actually used it, I hope this is true. One thing that I'm having problems finding are the portfolio/investor loans mentioned in the BP book. Anybody know of any in my area? 

Next I plan on putting all the business details together like getting the business incorporated, liability insurance, finding contractor/builder's insurance providers, finding a real estate attorney, probate attorney, contractors, real estate agents (buyers and sellers), sample letters to send out to my farm area, sample purchase contract, etc. Even though one my first deal I will be a noob, I don't want to come off as one. So any advice and suggestions on starting off I really appreciate.