All Forum Posts by: Kami S.

Hey Tristan S. As we discussed the other day I ordered mine locally. If you are interested PM me I can give you more info. Cheers!

Originally posted by @Jerryll Noorden:

a question...

I see your photography. Seems a bit like a wide lens.  Would love some opinions from all of you.

Pictures like these are a bit deceiving. The house looks bigger than it really is. Does this have a negative impact on when buyers walk through the door and they were expecting something bigger?

I wonder if it is good or bad to do pics like this? thoughts?

I Picked this photographer on purpose and wanted the pictures stand out on MLS, however although they are taken with wide angle, my intention was not to exaggerate the size of the rooms rather to cover more of the features of each room in one picture. The buyers saw it online, set appointment same day and placed full price offer same night. So I don't believe the pictures were deceiving. Also "before" pictures were taken with iPhone camera which can't be compared to a 5K-6K professional camera.

Wow Guys and gals! thank you for all nice comments, it certainly means a lot to me and I am very glad that this post could add some encouragement to your REI path. I will try to answer questions as far as I can.

@Alexcia White I hooked up with contractor in local meet-ups

@Varinder Kumar the numbers are in the post and it was private money

@Jazmine S. five weeks of rehab and total of 3.5 months close to close

@James A. I was calculated to get as close as possible to 70% formula

@Andrea EllisKaty is oversaturated and most of deals are suitable for buy and hold

@Jerryll Noorden lol! Outside was Sherwin Williams Dove grey and inside was light eggshell grey and white the flooring was engineered hand scraped dark oak laminate

@Ntiense Inokon I used 12% of original rehab budget as contingency

@Vanessa Castillo Used private money and used contractor

Hope these help answer some of the questions.

Thank you @Tony Castronovo

@Will Schryver My estimate actually was very close to actual rehab, however I had to replace HVAC and had a broken sewege line that the contingency I calculated in my estimated rehab cost covered it.

@Michael Ardoin Privet money was source of funds.

Thanks everyone! the property was purchased at 130k, 50k rehab and ARV of 232k

I started my REI journey a little less than a year ago here in Houston, TX. As like a lot of other investors it started with idea of RE to be a good vehicle to invest in, not having any source of info obviously googled for "REI forums" and guess what? I landed on BP, that's where my real journey started by listening to podcasts, reading articles, books and attending local RE meet-ups and connecting to other investors and vendors. Obviously RE field is so vast that I had many days of being overwhelmed and I still get overwhelmed sometimes with amount of information to absorb and digest, however that did not stop me form progressing in my journey, I continuously progressed little by little.

During this time thanks to my networking, started receiving wholesale "deals" from various wholesalers in town and without exaggeration I had to pass on at least 80 different deals until I landed on the one that made sense.  I was looking on fix and flip and not buy and hold, as you know you need to have higher margins, this is to those who say there is no good deal from wholesalers, you just have to look and pass on those that don't make sense to you.  I closed on a little bungalow (1060sqft) in East of downtown end of September of 2016 Started the rehab in October and finished by end of November, against all odds and suggestions listed the property end of November (typically the market is slow in December, and to reduce DOM people tend to hold on to their properties till new year) and within first week of listing received a full offer on asking price and closed on the house on the second week of January.

Lessons Learned:

1. Always do your own due diligence (ARV, Rehab Cost, Holding cost, market analysis, Purchase price...)

2.build your team of to go people, and investigate their track record

3.Don't listen to naysayers, and believe me there are so many out there

4. build contingency in your rehab numbers

5. never be afraid of jumping in and do it

6. Be consistence

7.and start taking action

Here are few pictures of before and after:

Contact Jerel Ehlert. You can google him or Facebook. He is pretty good!

I would say if you are looking at a neighborhood of 1300 houses and you know the neighborhood the best list can be developed by driving For dollars and look for typical signs of distressed or abandoned properties, this way you build your own specific list that no one else has. Sending letters to all 1300 houses is not going to get you anywhere with owners that are not motivated. Keep in mind deals come from people with motivation.

I use an app called "DealCheck" and like any other app has its pluses and minuses but I like it as it organizes your deals and also generates pretty good reports, it also is somewhat customizable (the paid version of course will let you do that). It has a section for notes too.