All Forum Posts by: Joelle Parker

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $65,000
Cash invested: $11,000

Our first investment has been a long time coming. We’ve been working towards this for a few years, and it is very exciting to finally see the fruit of our labor!

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We were especially thrilled to start our investing journey with a duplex, and it was even better that the tenants desired to stay and had been consistent with rent for many many years.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

This deal was brought us off-market by a friend. He knew the person selling this property and asked if we were interested. We were not interested in the initial asking price, but countered with a much lower price. We feared it was too low, but we were not willing to accept anything more and left it in Gods hands. They surprisingly agreed.

How did you finance this deal?

The friend who shared this deal with us offered to provide the loan.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

So far, it’s almost going a little too smoothly and we sort of feel like we’re just waiting for the fall. But maybe not. The only thing about it is that the property hasn’t been very well taken care of, so we know there’s a lot of work to do to fix it. But we’re ready for that. :)

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Not at this time.

Hi! I can’t really give you any advice here, but I can tell you that you aren’t the only one experiencing this. My husband and I have been in this very position since last summer. It’s easy  to feel discouraged, but don’t give up!

After making attempts to find something on our own and not having any luck, we finally decided to partner. Something is better than nothing, and we still get hands on experience with investing. After finding a few experienced local investors willing to work with us, we have a renewed hope for our investment journey.

So, that would be my suggestion. If you begin to feel discouraged to the point of waiting for the market to settle, find a partner. Do SOMETHING to get started, but don’t wait. 

I found this post to be really exciting! I love how you categorized it.

I greatly enjoy reading and want to find more time for it. You mentioned a few that are on my list for 2022.

I’ve actually been searching for a particular type of book that I haven’t been able to find… until this post. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but after reading your little description I feel like I have finally found it! Thank you!! How to Win Friends and Influence People will be my very next read. 

I’m curious about this too. We are very rural and have had a hard time finding comps for some of the properties we are interested in. 

@Will Barnard The HML would be providing around $140,000 if I remember correctly.

I remember reading about incentivizing/penalizing contractors in Luke Webers The Flipping Blueprint. Thank you for reinforcing that. 

I had never heard of usury laws before. I looked it up last night, so I thank you for providing an opportunity to learn. Very helpful information!

@Dave Schmidt That does help. I greatly appreciate your input. Thank you!

@Will Barnard Thank you for responding! Debt financing was our main preference, but we wanted to ask about partnerships to keep our options open. In my mind, the financing option would look better than the partnership because they wouldn’t be affected by any potential loss. Am I thinking correctly here?

When coming up with the numbers for the deal, we were extremely conservative. We wanted to leave a good amount of wiggle room. These are the estimated numbers:

Purchase price: $85,000

Rehab: $90,000

ARV: $250,000

The $30,000 profit we’re estimating is really a worst case scenario. There’s potential for a much higher profit. However, we are new and trying to be realistic. Our contractor said he could have things done in about 3 months. (As a side note, the house isn’t really in terrible condition. The high rehab cost comes from 3 big ticket items.) However, when running our numbers we have allotted 6 months since this is our first flip. 

Hi all! We are looking at our first deal and currently have one thing stopping us. Enough capital! We have a well reviewed local HML that wants to work with us, but being that we are new they want more down than we currently have. We might consider looking for a partner, but we are curious about how much profit would be enough for someone to want to partner with us?

We have $20,000 to put down and will handle all of the financing and rehab. We would simply need someone to put another $20,000 in. The estimated profit in this particular deal is $30,000. 

Is this a deal worth partnering for? What would you suggest in regards to the split of the profit? I know every partnership is unique and it really just depends on the two parties involved, but having the general opinions of other investors will help us to understand more about what we should or should not expect. 

Thanking you for taking the time to read my post!

Hi! Welcome to Bigger Pockets. This has been a fantastic place to learn about investing. We are new and sort of young. Maybe not as young as you, but we’re young. :)

We haven’t done our first deal yet, but we’re close. We are looking at one right now. We are currently interested in flipping, and might consider new construction, but our end goal is rentals. We are flipping to build capital, and then plan to buy rentals with 20% down. We might have to do turnkey in the beginning (we’ve been checking out Rent to Retirement) since my husbands work schedule is a little much right now. 

If we had started younger, we would have done things differently. For example, if you don’t have kids (or if you do and it’s not terribly inconvenient for you) I would suggest house hacking. 

Feel free to reach out anytime! We love to meet new people. 

Hi! We just got ours started through ZenBusiness. They are highly rated, and when we talked to our CPA, he also said that it was good and they are pretty thorough.

Hope this helps some.

I’ve noticed you’re a frequent poster! Congratulations. I don’t have any specific questions… yet. We will be looking at a single family this week. If all goes well, it will be our first flip. We are SUPER excited! It’s also a little bit scary. There is so so so much information! We don’t know nearly enough yet, but we have been on BP long enough to know that most of the learning comes by doing, so we’re ready to get to it. Many of your posts have been helpful to us, so thank you!