All Forum Posts by: Josh Mac

Depending on your situation financially, there are also traditional; renovation loans for investors on single family that require a 15% minimum done payment. But your hand is held, an ARV appraisal is done as well as analysis of the rehab components. If the deal doesn't make sense the loan will not be approved. No prior experience needed and rate under hard money.

For every one that's close, the next one is way off. Recent sales will be the closest. Properties which haven't been sold in 10, 20, or 30 years, are most likely messed up. Zillow borrows heavily from local assessor data. Valuations will be off because there's no market determination, and an assessor has not seen the inside to know what's really going on. Marble counters, gold plated toilet, whatever, uncle Harry's kitchen cabs from 1920.

I've flipped property worth over 1.5 million all the way down to 50,000. Every area and every deal brings different risks. Higher price points present more risk from a capital allocation method but in really low-price points typically a higher crime rate. Regardless it's important to protect the asset and yourself.

Heres 9 things I’ve learned to do to prevent getting robbed.

1. Airtags are devices developed by apple to track things like keys or bags, I use this to airtag items most susceptible to theft like hot water tanks or furnaces and provide this data to the police to track the perpetrators.

2. Trail cams are small cameras typically used by wildlife photographers or hunters but I use them to capture license plates.

3. Get steel reinforced deadbolts on all exterior doors

4. Call the police - Get ahold of the OIC (Officer in Charge) of the division of the city where you're renovating the property. You can then ask for special protection.

5. Make connections with your neighbors and ask a neighbor to park their car in the driveway overnight to give the appearance someone is living there.

6. Get floodlights installed on the property beaming out front. Well light properties are less likely to be approached by burglars.

7. Leave a light on in the property facing the street overnight

8. Get one of the units turned and rented out quickly as possible.

9. Get a security system installed. Do not skimp on this, it could save you thousands.

Let me know in the comments below what else you would do to prevent break ins. Would love to hear from the community!

I developed my own tool for this purpose. It not only displays comparable properties like Propstream does but also retrieves estimates from various sources, including Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and others. It then presents each estimate individually, along with the average. I can share access if anyone is interested.

Some of the more seasoned vets here know all about foundation repair, but for thought this could be helpful for anyone starting out.  

60 seconds background:

Houston is essentially built up on a swamp, couple that with back 2 back brutal summers with little rain, and nearly everyone I've talked with recently has some sort of foundation issues creeping up.  Our personal  house had previous work done but the piers were poorly done, and we noticed dry wall cracks and tile floor "separation"  about 2 years back.   As with many big problems, it's easy to keep kicking the can down the road, but we needed to get this done. Here's the highlights

1. If you are certain you need foundation work, get minimum of 3-4 quotes. Try one of the big names, but HIGHLY recommend you ask everyone in the R.E. world if they have a referral, or call some of the smaller LLC companies in the area.

2. The quote we got varied WILDLY.  Of the 4 quotes we got,   2 were more than $50,000 !  This was for 14 interior piers, and roughly 38 exterior piers.    

3.  Be sure to educate yourself on what the fine print says. Some companies give a "Full Transferable Warranty" but then hammer your with fees on labor or some other way to get more $

4. pic below is of the severe fdn. settling in the kitchen.   

5.  The mess is always significant.  This was our personal home, doing a rehab or for a rental that's vacant would be much easier as far as moving furnitture, boxes, etc.   Be sure to talk with your guys the expectations for "clean up" as ours was still caked in layers of dirt, but the guys swept up the broken floor and pieces.  This was not what we expected. 

6.  Before the work, our house elevation was +0.5  readings the highest,  - 2.5  in several other low spots.  It was in rough shape.  

7. 2 days of work with a crew of 12-13 guys, and the job was finished.  They didn't go as deep as some other companies go ( that's what she said...), but I've been happy with the referrals and professionalism from this crew.   Life time warranty.   Local guy who some other investors use. 

8.  Nursery room post- piers being filled and after scrubbing floors, before replacing with LVP Pro tip.... do foundation BEFORE you have a 1 year old in the house. 

9.   Finished install of  large  SPC  ( LVP w/ stone ) from Lions FLoors.  $2.99 / sq feet.   total of 1900 sq. feet in the house.  Cost for the flooring job was $4,100 start to finish.  We floated the most affected areas, probaly should have spent the extra $1000 to float the entire house.  But we're  95% satisfied. 

10.  Other small items:    Our drywall was already cracking in 15 + places, but we thought we could get it done a week or so after the foundation lift.   NOPE, recommendation is to wait 3 - 6 months  afterwards to let it completely settle.  To avoid more hairline cracks.  

11.   Almost no body told us about Root barrier, which are simple digging  about 2-3 into the ground, near your foundation to cut invasive  tree roots.  our 3 big oak trees slowly and surely did damage over time, so that's being done soon for about $3000. 

All in.....

$13000 for Foundation repair 2  days

$600  Misc.   door frame adjustments and other issues

$7800  for flooring 1,900 sq feet 

$4100 for  install

$1,000- 2000 for dry wall  based on quotes

Total -  Approx $27,000

Considering a quote from Olshan  for a "full -tilt"  repair was   $93,000    ( LOL ), we're happy with the work done.  

Hope this is helpful for newbies or anyone who lives in Texas.   Water that foundation and keep those big tree roots away from your house!!!

Happy to elaborate if anyone has questions

@Josh Mac are they wifi or cell phone based?  because the delay issue is a cell phone based camera not connected to wifi at all only on a cell network. I thought blink was all hooked up to wifi at least that is what i've read and I don't mean hard wired.   I have mine on the lowest sensitivity, still miss things. This garage location is too far to use wifi.

Sorry about that,yes it's wifi operated.

My husband and I started by saving up our money and purchasing a single family house with 5 bedrooms and a bonus room. We've been househacking it for the past 3.5 years with roommates. Which has allowed us to save up enough money to buy two more STR's! I am now a full time real estate agent and my husband is a full time STR manager

What I would share with all of you about cell phone driven cameras is there is a delay in the video. If you are trying to capture quick events  your camera might not activate soon enough to capture a plate number. I have had an arlo for a while and we are going to wired because it isn't successful in catching dumping incidents in this location. Could be the location of the property and cell signal. Test it.

Zillow discloses their accuracy. 

Go to their website, lower left corner in the footer, click on Zesitmate. You want to look at off-market and find your metro area. You can look at the median error. usually 6-8%. And 20% of the time they are 20% off.

What I found that it works pretty well in uniform neighborhoods like some of the older Milwaukee suburbs. The algorithm really struggles a lot in neighborhoods with a very diverse mix of home sizes and vintages.