All Forum Posts by: Justin Owens

Nice work @Benjamin Riehle !!

Hi Rhiannon. Any good framer can tell you if it's load bearing or not and would charge a lot less to nothing either by looking above the wall in the attic or looking at the framing in the wall behind the drywall.

@Edgar Martin If you look up you property either by parcel number or by the county assessor maps it will contain a link to the tax information including the assessed value and taxes due. http://maps.mcassessor.maricopa.gov/

@Lynn Chua I sent you a reply as a private message.

How many units do you own currently?

@Candace Majedi plus school teachers are having to cook meth just to survive. . .

@Mikki McConville I acquired my license in 2003 intending to use for my own real estate needs. I have since grown to work with many buyers and sellers over the years as well. You mentioned access to the MLS, which is one key component to finding deals but what will happen when you do find that deal? Will you then want to go use a lockbox key to view the property quickly without having to wait for a real estate agent? I would. Would you want to be able to act as your own agent and save/earn the commission offered by the selling agent? I would.

Look at the whole fee structure to be a fully licensed agent per year and compare that to the commission offered on just one investment deal you may purchase. I bet that the commission from the single deal would pay for all of the fees for that year or more. It does for me. 

Case in point, several months ago or maybe last year I set up alerts on MLS to send me emails whenever any property in my target areas comes on market or there is a status change. By watching the area via the updated emails I know what values are. One morning in June I awoke about 6 am and noticed I had an alert email. As I was wiping the sleep from my eyes I clicked on the email then followed a link to the MLS listing for a home in an area I want to buy in. I saw a home far below what the market value should be. I figured it needed a lot of work but there was a HUGE spread on the cost of this home and the ARV for that area. I had prepared the offer and saved it in an email draft. I then drove by the property and sent it from my phone in the car. This all happened in a matter of 2 hours. I was one of many offers received by the seller (it's a very hot market). Ultimately my offer was accepted and we are in the very early stages of preparing the property for renovation. If I had to wait for my real estate agent to write an offer for me, I likely would have been too late to be a viable offer for this home.

In your state things may be different but in Arizona being a fully licensed agent has been very beneficial for me.

I have been lazy about posting this but I had a great experience with @Jesse Burrell at Equity Connect. I had subscribed to BP as a pro for about 6 months at the time. I have been "in" real estate for years but hadn't owned rentals in years. I wanted back in. I had been scouring MLS, the BP Marketplace, wholesale lists, auction sites etc. and running numbers with the BP calculators. Nothing looked too promising in the East Valley of Phoenix. Then in January of this year, Jesse posted a property on the BP Marketplace. I had alerts set and responded within an hour or two. I ran the numbers, they looked decent, better than most of what I had been seeing. I told him I was interested. Several others were as well but they were out of state and he went with me as we are both local. The listed property was a townhome in Mesa.

Shortly after I got in touch, and I believe after we were under contract for the townhome Jesse said he had another that was coming in a group of homes with the Mesa property. This one was out in San Tan Valley. I crunched the numbers and they looked even better than the Mesa property. I gladly told him I would buy both. I had a HELOC established last fall and it was enough to purchase the properties. The escrow period had a few bumps but nothing major. I never saw the interior as they were occupied by tenants. I thought at the price I was paying, even if I had to do some updating, I'd still be ahead. Now thinking I should have asked to do a walk through but I was just happy to be getting a deal.

We closed and did finally meet the tenants. The tenant in Mesa still had a few months left on his lease. He was very pleasant and had planned on moving out when the lease expired because the previous owner was going to raise the rent. I knew the rent he was paying was top of the market for the area and told him I would be happy to keep him at the current rent on a month to month basis until he can get buy his own home. I used the line from one of the BP Podcasts, "buy with me, and we'll tear up the lease for free". He has been a great tenant, just great. I hope he stays for a while.

The home in San Tan Valley the previous owner had issued the 30 day notice that the lease would not be renewed and asked the tenants to leave. He moved out about a week after we closed. The place was pretty dated. I put about 5,000 into new flooring, baseboard and repairs plus sweat equity. I should have hired it out but it was only a month of evenings and weekends. I enjoy projects (for a week or two) but by the end I was so done. As I got close I put ads on Zillow, Trulia, Craigslist and had 4-5 inquiries a day. Found a young couple that have been decent tenants and I think I have learned a few things to inquire about for the next go round. They took occupancy 2 weeks after the work was complete. In all it was vacant a month and a half.

Finally, since these were BRRR deals, I looked around for someone who would refi prior to 6 months and a local broker who I found on a podcast looked into it and found the delayed financing exception and was able to get me 30 year loans. One down side with delayed financing is they can only lend 75% of the new appraisal and they won't go above the purchase price and closing costs. So at the end of it all we had to leave $18,000 in both deals (combined) but we had attained about $54,000 in equity and the properties cash flow about $100 each a month (plus more for self-management).

I love BP, just love this place.

@Chatree C. It's up to you. You could keep it in one bank account but using a spreadsheet or accounting software like Quickbooks and divide it up from there. I get the desire to want to separate things but if you grow, do you really want multiple bank accounts per property?

I reinvest all cash flow so putting it all into one account works for me.

Welcome @Sheley Seiser! I have learned so much here. A great community. Jump right in!