All Forum Posts by: Jarrod English

I've heard the name before actually from a friend that does live in Vancouver.  He's supposed to be young but quite knowledgeable I believe.  Probably you would be in good hands with him as he knows a lot about the investing side of real estate as well I think.

I saw your other post about selling your house and picking up two houses with basement suites.  I started out myself with a basement suite but as of late I think it's harder to rent these types of units.  They need to look good and be on the cheap side.  As long as your mortgage payments are cheap you won't have an issue keeping your rent on the lower side and finding good tenants.

Anyways I hope things work out for you!

Hey, I am from Edmonton but not very active on here or in real estate haha.  Just me being lazy.  But I have spent some time investigating infill myself and my goal is to locate properties and make a wholesale deal happen for townhouses/condos or whatever works.  I've spoken with various people on the matter and the price can range anywhere from $125 - $215 per square foot which means complete with demolishing to finished product.  So it really depends on the type of labour/material you use.  I've just sent a message to a friend of mine.  She works for a builder doing cost estimates so this is right up her alley.

Your cost is going to come down to what you can manage in terms of paying your contractors.  If you've been in the business all your life, I assume you should know a lot of people that will work for a decent price.  A lot of people say that with the economy we have now, labour should be cheap!

Hope this information helps and I look forward to hearing about your project.  If you sort this all out, maybe I'll find you more places to build this year haha.

Me again... I've been thinking about this more and currently I'd like to hammer out the approach I am going to take to try and buy adjacent properties.  I've put out some e-mails to local builders to figure out the costs and gauge interest so that part will come.

For now though I'm thinking should I go with the standard letter approach to start, or begin knocking on doors?  If I knock on doors, do you think I should flat out ask "can I buy your house?" or should I make up a story (lie) saying that I'm looking to live in this area because it's central and I grew up here, etc etc.  Sort of leaving the impression that I'm wealthy enough to buy their house and pay top dollar (if needed) to acquire it.  If my estimated numbers are accurate, I could pay above market value in order to motivate them to sell to me and still turn a profit when assigning to a builder.

I was also thinking that maybe asking a simple few questions, like a survey would be a good approach.  Ask to speak to the home owner, then say:
"Have you ever been approached by someone to sell your house to them?"
"What did you say and how did you feel about it?"
"How do you feel about infills?"

And maybe at the end say, would you consider selling me the house.  I am just not sure what is the kindest and best way to approach people and I'm sure you experts out there may have some tips.  If I flat out told someone I was going to buy their house and their neighbours and tear them down, the old people that are sentimental will slam the door haha.

Any help is appreciated!

Hello, I have recently been motivated to look into flipping a house with a contractor partner I've met.  The problem is we don't really have wholesalers where I live so I was thinking it was something I need to take up myself in order to find a deal.  

With that in mind, I was thinking that the more central and older neighbourhoods in my city would be an excellent spot to find adjacent properties and see if an apartment/condo could be built.  There's a lot of infilling going on in these areas and builders are making duplexes on a single lot and selling those for an okay profit, but you don't see a lot of apartments going up (possibly nobody is out there trying to make this happen I think).  If I'm going the wholesaler route, I thought if I could just secure a set of adjacent houses under contract and sell to someone to develop a 4 storey building, there could be a lot more profit for the builder and myself.  Has anyone done this sort of thing before?  I need to brush up on wholesaling tactics but think it would be extra difficult as you'd need to secure 2 adjacent houses to make it work haha.

A house in the area I'm talking about might go for $350,000 normally.  I need to figure out the building costs of an apartment still but figured my best strategy would be to pay above market value on the 2 houses.  This way the owners are happy, yet still keeping the total number below what a builder would need to turn a good profit.  For example, I offer $375,000 for the houses (which aren't for sale).  Total cost being $750,000, sell to the builder for $800,000.  In the end maybe they make a couple hundred thousand profit and I pocket a cool $50,000.  It's a really high number for wholesaling, but it's just an idea that I'm floating around and would love some feedback.

Here's an image of 2 houses next to an older apartment building.  These are actually nice looking houses but trust me there are some really old and small looking houses in the area that would be more ideal.  The apartment isn't what I had in mind though as it's obviously older.  There's a really cool 4 storey one down the street which is a great example of what could be built.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.514254,-113.508416,3a,75y,349.73h,86.02t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sQTG0jEl2wzbc8VrSCsbJew!2e0!6m1!1e1

Thanks!

@Bojan Kovacevic Much appreciated on that.  I didn't encounter having to list that it was a former grow op but I'll dig more for that information.

@Matt M. I don't have any flipping experience, but I'm not foolish enough to just go in blind and say "give me money and we'll make a profit" haha.  I've been around here long enough to know that I should put together an accurate cost assessment.  I'd sit down and put out a timeline and best guess estimate as I do have the criteria for what needs to be done, but I can't be 100% perfect without access to the property.  Best I can do is get bids from contractors (thanks for that idea).  I would have a real estate agent (not the contractor) representing me as their is a real estate agent representing the sale for the bank. 

I am unsure of the days on market for this one, but it's been deemed uninhabitable for 15 months so I'm hoping that works in my favour.

Nice joke haha!

Well there were quite a few pictures and you can get a sense for what the property needs.  The contractor in particular is older and has done a lot of renovation/flips in his day.  He's also seen a lot more of these types of distressed properties where he is from (British Columbia, where they grow it more so than anywhere else haha).  So I do consider his opinion valued in that sense.  The other interesting thing to note is that this is an "as is" sale and you are not allowed to enter the property.  For me to consider this an option, I'd have to acquire the property at an extremely low value.

So I did a little searching and haven't seen any talk about people flipping a grow op before, maybe nobody around here has done it?

A little background, my cousin bought a townhouse for $215,000 back in the summer.  There was basically an identical unit with pictures of what looked like unfinished renovations.  The price was $30,000 less to account for that.  I'm from Canada by the way, prices and renovation costs may seem a lot higher than you're used to.
What I later found out after contacting the realtor was that it was a grow op and they sent me a pdf with a ton of images and the legal documentation saying that it is not habitable.  From what I understand, it was probably raided just over a year ago, inspected and then put into this environmental hazard state and deemed illegal to live in until certain criteria are met.  Things like electrical and plumbing and mold need to be taken care of and brought up to code.

I showed these pictures to my contractor who said, "that's not a grow op, they had maybe 10 plants."  Basically saying it was such a small and crappy operation that there probably isn't even mold in the house.  He was estimating that repairs could be in the $40,000 range and also suggested that I write an offer for something around $110,000 since it is currently bank owned and just sitting there losing them money.  He said they'd counter offer as is expected.  Anything under $100,000 might be too much of an insult to the bank though.

With all this in mind, the ARV is about the same as what my cousin paid for her townhouse. If I were to acquire the place at say $135,000 and borrow $40,000 for renos (from an investor/lender) then I'm asking for ~$175,000. I am supposed to offer 12% ROI for the investor/lender right? ($21,000 to them). I should end up with $10k - $20,000 on this project I'm guesstimating. These are very crude numbers, I know there are additional costs that I haven't worked out on paper yet, just providing a quick example. Such costs as holding, insurance, selling, etc. Feel free to point out things I miss :)

What I'm more interested in is if people have dealt with this kind of situation before.  I've known about this unit for a few months now and haven't had any motivation to act on it.  I've never done a flip before so you can understand my hesitation, especially playing with others' money and there being extra hoops I need to jump through.  When I think about it, it's not THAT bad.  Making sure my contractors are certified and pull permits and bring everything up to code.  If anything I'm most concerned about the renovation costs.  If I could get the property at a much lower value then that would free up a lot of room.

I also recently just found a site that lists local houses that are deemed uninhabitable.  So I have a few distressed homes to choose from.  I could make this my niche haha.

Let me know what you all think.  Thanks!

I'm liking this rent to reward site.  Sounds like they know what they're doing.  I'm curious what sort of financing deals they have with foreign investors so I'll contact them.  Thanks.

Hello and thanks for the info both of you @Account Closed and @Derrick Craig 

I did find a guy in one thread that had a Memphis website as well.  I noticed that the prices seemed slightly higher and the rent slightly lower than what I've found searching around.  That was one thing that I'm still unsure about though.  Like foreclosure homes costing around $30,000-$50,000 yet renting for about the $1000 range.  I checked out Derrick's site quickly and saw some properties that cost more but rent for $600.  I suppose I am looking for just cash flow so having an extra $400 a month would be nice regardless.  But if I can locate properties for under $50,000 that rent out for near $1000 then that's a much better deal.  Also on your site Derrick, I wasn't sure what it meant with purchase price versus estimated price.  Are you selling some of your properties at the purchase but think it should be estimated higher?  Why not sell at the higher price if that's the case?

Thanks for any info/help.

How the heck to you PM someone haha.  Seems I can't find Ram when I go to my inbox to try and search/send a message.  Seeing as though you're close to me and look to be just starting out, I wanted to ask about how you got started.  How you found your property and anything you did to set up a corporation or how you handle taxes?  Just looking to gather info myself.