All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Nicholas Morgan there's a lot to learn as you dive in to doing deals like this. I took the risk and dove in a few months ago, now I'm doing deals with private money. I have a lot of competitive advantages like doing most all the work myself, and tons of experience flipping homes for investors for 7 years. You have to dive in, know a deal the second you see it, make an offer!!!! Once they agree to your offer, then waist your time analyzing the specifics, but know a deal the second you see it, by knowing home integrity, construction and the major expenses that blow people out of the water, whether they apply or not. More important than those would be know your area, and values, and don't invest in ghettos. Quiiiiick tip: HML don't go below 50k. Peer to peer (Prosper) might give you 10-20k. Call HML and get the lowdown. If you need help estimating rehab costs, feel free to shoot me some photos.

@Justin K. I don’t have much compassion for people like you. Go make your 15k yourself instead of stealing it from people you oversaw for 2.5 months

@Justin K. Sounds like you are trying to steal from him if you are suing him for near the full amount you paid him, especially after he paid laborers to do your work and worked himself for 2, maybe 2 1/2 months. This is a detail oriented business with progress payments so both parties don’t get taken advantage of. As you read on here, people have way worse things happen to them by contractors than missing a coat of paint or a cabinet being off by 1”, or an outlet that needs to be slipped into the wall. He worked for a long time, when the real con artists take the money and never show up, or make a bunch of extra charges for you. I’d be surprised if nothing was added to the scope in the process and needed to be paid additionally for per an agreement also. You’re going to sue him for 10k plus? Hope you get good at it, because you’re going to be in a lot of lawsuits, especially if you are taking low ball bidding contractors that don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know how you sleep, especially after talking about killing the guy on here in a gun fight if you were going to go “talk” with him. I hope you can start doing things better with contractors, because paying them upfront is not motivating for them anyways, and they’re not going to refuse to do you’re job if you don’t pay it all upfront.

@Justin K. Somewhere else in this post, you said you knew he under bid the job and couldn’t finish. You also mentioned that you paid him most the money upfront, but first you said all the money, so that’s unclear too. You want him to pay you like 7k plus 3 months rent etc so he gets absolutely zero, plus pays out of his own pocket for trying and failing on your job. Ok, he screwed up and sucks. But you said he does clean work on jobs you have seen. And you did let him continue for over 2 months for only 15k laborers included, and I’m starting to think you might owe him $. This doesn’t sound right.

@Tina S. You do typically have to have that 3.5' clearance for code compliance, and it is a good upgrade to 200 amp if you don't have propane or natural gas running stove, and dryer. I built a house in VA once where the electrician was "saving me money" by doing a 100amp and it didn't pass the inspection. Had to wire in 200amp. I've seen people lock the panels outside and that works.

@Tina S. In CA we mainly have them outside. Back in the day, When I was young, I’m not a kid anymore but... this one day a kid went around the neighborhood turning people’s houses off for fun, so there are reasonable concerns there.

@Justin K. Well if you don’t care to be specific about what renovations your contractor completed, then there is no way to tell how just you are in trying to sue him for the full amount you paid him, for not completing the entire project and clean up and screwing some things up. He’s wrong for not finishing, but he might have been really wrong about his bid price and got to the point where he was beyond zero profit and starting to pay for your project by keeping his workers there. This does happen often with inexperienced construction guys that don’t know how to estimate. You paid him $15000 apparently but said you bought materials and in relation to him you’re $40,000 into it. So there were $25,000 in materials possibly and two months of work possibly. Sounds like a lot of work going on there, but without specifics, no one on BP can know the full picture, which I’m sure would be presented in court. Do you expect this guy to give you all the money back? Or even pay you on top of that? If his work was so bad, why did you let it continue for 2 months? You’ve presented a broad problem without important details that would be relevant to your case. I am not personally convinced your contractor should give you $15k and eat all his laborers payments and gas + overhead especially when he says he under bid the job. Move on.

@Justin K. I’m not a fan of these stories! What you did goes against everything the BP community warns against; not paying a contractor in full before work. The contractor should finish the work, or if he literally can’t, you should be able to reason together about progress made and damages done. If you can’t get to this point, then help us consider your situation. The contractor has been “working” on the project since November and just quit mid January for $15000? No body could afford to hire guys and contract a job for that price. Did he buy materials too? How much positive construction did you get done? I know you said some of it needs to be redone, but do you think you got close to $15000 worth of labor and material out of this guy? That’s not very much money if they did some positive work over the last couple months. What specific work did he contractor complete? NO REAL CONTRACTOR SHOULD ASK FOR ALL MONEY UP FRONT. Sorry to hear about your situation. Very disappointing if that’s what you budgeted for.

@Shawn Kross I just bought 2 foreclosed houses. The second one I asked the realtor if he knew any good contractors in he area (out of state). He referred me to a guy. When I talked to the contractor, he told me he is the one who cleaned the house out and he works for the banks and knows all he foreclosed properties before they hit the market. Find the contractor that’s cleaning em out for the bank and you might get the leads on these things early with contacts to the sellers. You’ll want to use the contractors services some as well to keep the deals coming your way. Haven’t tried it yet, but seems like a good way to get early access to the sellers on foreclosed properties. Only problem with early access is they don’t know if they can get an offer for more. If you let them list, and they sit there for a little bit, then the banks might take a low ball all cash offer. Especially before the end of the year, and maybe even in this time of market scare!

@Brandon Carriere ok, thanks. I usually bring my problems to BP when they are beyond me. Part of the reason this is so complicated is because my agent went on Christmas vacation to another country during this process and I couldn’t get a hold of her. Finally I called her office and found this out and they set me up with a newbie guy that helped me close a different house but is very disattached from these problems and told me the $ is with their broker in their office and to call him. The broker doesn’t care enough to respond to my email, or call me back so it’s just a snowball scenario. My realtor bailed and isn’t helping me at all, even though she took her commission on a house I closed on a month ago. The title company chewed her out for not being responsive when it was time to close escrow on the one I purchased and I expressed through email frustration that she wasn’t helping me and out of country on the whole closing week without telling me haha. Doesn’t get much worse than that? Seems like all these type of problems work out for good in the process somehow. The other day I was bidding to buy a house on Auction.com and my customer distracted me in the last few minutes of the auction and I missed a property I had researched for 2 weeks because of her! A few days later I took that same $ and found a house 10x better for same price, so who knows. Maybe I could go back to the seller and offer way less because of the mega problems and find a way to negotiate the thing into a deal for the 1 acre it sits on. I’m starting to get to the point of being over leveraged, but my new real estate addiction is pushing me forward to excellent deals, but the rehab needs to catch up to the purchases! Fun stuff.