All Forum Posts by: Joel Colvos

There are a lot of opportunities between Gig Harbor and PO.  The Puget Sound region has a lot to offer and that is a nice area to focus on.  Welcome

I agree with Mike that a positive cash flowing house will weather most any storm.  A few things you should be aware of, as a possible owner/occupant of a house you can get first option on many houses that investors can not.  Set up owner occupant in your keyword searches and you can find things like this

https://www.redfin.com/WA/Port-Orchard/1020-Kitsap...

Also start tracking Kitsap tax foreclosures.  Auctions are held in early December so you have plenty of time to do some research

http://www.kitsapgov.com/treas/Treasurers_Auction/...

I just want to give a second shout out to Formica, it not only reasonably priced but lasts a very long time.  In fact we have one rental in the family with Formica that is at least 60 years old and still looks great.

I love the look of concrete and butcher block but concrete costs too much for a rental and butcher block won't last.

I tried PMing it to you, I think it worked?

We use instagram to promote a certain PNW geographic area where our family frequently hikes and camps. I'm over on the paranoid side of not letting out any photos of family or personal information AND our properties in that area are listed back to an LLC with a PO Box so it would be difficult to trace it back to me personally.

However I had someone recently do exactly that and traced it back to my personal Facebook page which I found a little creepy.  There are some people with waaaaay too much time on their hands.

Another vote for Cozy, it makes life a lot easier for collecting payments but I have not used it accept applications.  I'm not sure what their business model is because its great for a free service, my fear is that they will get us all hooked and then start charging fees.

Think of a legal relationship like a relationship with your mechanic.  For me it took awhile to find a mechanic that I could trust and that did good work at a reasonable price.  Now its nice because he knows my car and the things to keep an eye on and I really appreciate his honesty.

A good lawyer is even more like this and this is particularly helpful in Kitsap where business transactions can be somewhat old school and a lot of deals are done with a handshake.  If things do go south and get ugly you want someone in your corner that already knows your situation and has gone over your contracts and probably has done business already with other local contractors and county government.

Just an example, I'm involved with a legal case now and when my Kitsap lawyer looked through my notes he realized that one of the other contractors I referred to was another one of his clients and this helped get good information a lot more quickly.  That is not going to happen with legal zoom or rocket lawyer or whatever.

p.s. don't ask for my lawyers name, he costs too much.

Kitsap is great, and as Paul mentioned if you are willing to owner occupy (as this only makes sense for beginning investors) then you already have jump on the competition.  You can see Kitsap listings at 

https://www.auction.com/

and filter for your interested areas.  You will need a Realtor to be able to bid on these so that is one thing that you can start figuring out now while you start to get your finances in order, reading and doing research.

Keep us posted on how this works out, it's always interesting and you never know what type of person you are dealing with.

The Kitsap Health Dept has a list of 'certified septic planners' that are certified to determine if a property can handle a septic system which is based on the number of bedrooms in a house.  They will come out and dig test holes and take measurements for around $250 during escrow.  They can either leave the holes until the official application or they can cover the holes back up if the land owner wants and then they will have to be redug after closing.  It is then usually around $1000 for them to design a system plus fees to the county health dept for another $500ish depending on the system and design and they can turn in the actual application.  You should probably brush up on basic setbacks and types of allowable systems within Kitsap first so that you will be able to quickly asses if a property can sustain a system.