All Forum Posts by: Karin Crompton

Hey, Daniel Nield, you're off to a great start! Most people would've quit before slogging through all of that and figuring out how to get those letters sent out. I'll cross my fingers that you get some good leads ... plus I know who you're coming to first on those SFRs, right? ;-)

Message me on how the class went. I saw Dave speak for a couple of hours a few months ago and their info seemed decent, though they are going to pitch you HARD on the boot camp and coaching program and whatever else. They have a serious machine going on that end. Beware the price tag. Raymond B. and Ann Bellamy are right on the words of caution ... and I would agree with Ann, J Scott's books are amazing and packed with solid, useable info.

At the same time, if a speaker/guru can help give you a road map to follow and save you some time and trouble, I say go for it if the price is reasonable. That's how I started out, w/a reasonably priced 5-day boot camp that had solid info. From there, BP, networking and experience have filled in the gaps so far.

And I applaud you on being a great father! I have a 3-year-old and have been working the r.e. thing around parenting, so I know exactly where you are and how much work it is to juggle both. Keep on keepin' on!

Hi Latonna Hill,

This is of course just my own experience, but I would steer clear of Foxx. He spoke to our REIA about 3 years ago and I went to his follow-up one-day seminar afterward. He was long on bravado and short on expertise. He tried to pass himself off as a big-timer and constantly checked his phone throughout the day ... WHILE speaking. He insulted attendees. I found him rude and arrogant and wound up somewhat amused by his act by the end of the day.

I was a complete newbie and probably totally naive - this was the first speaker I had ever seen through our REIA - and I wound up signing up for a weekend conference that was supposedly being put on by a guest speaker who came in for an hour during that day (I didn't want anything to do w/Foxx, but I thought this other speaker had potential). The weekend seminar turned out to be coordinated by Foxx, NOT the other speaker. The event was scheduled for about 2 months later in Toronto and I live in CT; Foxx's company didn't announce the exact location, nor the schedule, until a few days prior to the event. I had been hounding the company for details for about a month so I could ask for the right days off of work and I subsequently asked for a refund, as I couldn't maneuver my way to a conference in Toronto on such short notice. They repeatedly, and rudely, refused. Thankfully, I was only out $500. Coulda been worse, and lesson learned on my end.

Perhaps coincidentally (I never did ask), Foxx has never spoken again to our REIA. And our REIA is enormous, well attended, and has all the national gurus speak.

Hi Edward, and welcome! CTREIA meeting would be a good place to be on Monday; there are lots of people from your area of the state and you can probably find some folks to run this scenario past. Maybe you could even find someone to wholesale it to.

Sounds like a heckuva project for your first one. My first reaction is, are you sure you want to take all that on? There are other deals out there. And assuming you do want to move forward, are you absolutely sure you can bump the ARV from 130k to 190k?

And you probably know this, but are you familiar w/the 70% formula? ARV times .70, minus repairs = your maximum allowable offer (aka MAO). A lot of people go even more conservative and use 65%. To me it depends on the area.

So if you use this formula and your 190k ARV, you get: 190k x .70 = $133,000. Subtract $112,000 (your 90k in rehab, plus 20k in medical lien and 2k in taxes) and you're at 21k for your max purchase price. Even lower if the area is somewhat depressed and you want to go with 65%.

I think I'd offer him a flat number, not a percentage of the profit. That seems like it could get messy and he wants cash anyway.

Whatever you decide, good luck! You obviously have ambition and have gotten farther than a lot of people just by the fact that you're in there negotiating with a homeowner.

lololol Ibrahim S. True, that whole I-95 north thing is all out of whack in CT. My parents live north of me, but I need to take 95 SOUTH to see them! Ha.

Do you have an Ocean Beach rehab? I'm looking ... ;-)

Hi, Ibrahim S! I'm not sure I understand ... everyone I know calls it southeastern CT! It's south to the shoreline, and it's east toward RI, so, um, what else would our little corner be called? ;-)

We have the Childrens Museum of Southeastern CT; the SE CT Council of Governments (SECCOG); a tourism group, SECTER (SE CT Enterprise Region); and a bundle of other organizations w/'southeastern CT" in their names that I won't mention lest I start to sound like Forrest Gump's friend. haha

Regardless of what you call it, there's a lot of opportunity here. Some great rental areas.

Hi Scott - I'm in SECT as well! We just flipped a house on Montauk Ave, in fact ... right down the road from your alma mater. :)

Have you checked out CTREIA? There are a lot of great networking opportunities there and some very experienced investors. Next meeting is July 15. They have a website you can scope out, too. Guru-heavy on the monthly speakers, but usually a good Q&A session before that and, again, some good networking. But pay attention - I've found that the really successful guys are the quieter ones, so sometimes it takes a little while to figure out who they are.

I'm a bit of a newbie myself and am focused on single-family rehabs w/an eye toward buy-and-holds (I need to learn a lot more in that arena). There's a lot of opportunity in our part of the state.

Brandon Turner, values can vary widely in our corner of CT, which has everything from minimum wage casino workers to million-dollar homes in some affluent towns and particularly the seaside areas. I'll let Scott Koss answer, but there are a lot of properties in his 130k range as well.

Good luck!

I would echo what Kenneth Estes and Phil Z. say. In CT, they would consider this practicing real estate without a license, and you could find yourselves in hot water. Only licensed brokers can receive commission, which it sounds like he's essentially proposing.

BUT - Phil makes a great point about paying per lead, not as a percentage of the sale. Just make sure to check your state's laws so you're clear on what's allowed! There are various ways to reimburse someone for helping you out, but you've gotta make sure you're not treading into territory where you're acting as licensed brokers or salespeople, whose actions are governed by state and federal laws - hence, the reason you can't act like one without being properly licensed. (I hold a salesperson license in CT.)

Good luck on the potential partnership!

Thank you both. It's Tapestry Beige, which is very light and neutral. I saw it at someone else's flip the other day and knew right away that it's one I want to incorporate into my projects. The flipper I met had used it in just a couple of impact rooms, then used a less expensive paint for the rest of the house; but I'm going to wind up using quite a bit of this color in my current flip and wanted to figure out how to do so in a cost-effective way.

And K. Marie Poe, I'm nerdy like that, too! I have blocks of different colors all over the walls right now. (The goal, of course, being to figure out what works and use the same ones repeatedly in the future! But for now, it's all about the samples.)

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

My paint question has to do with bringing a paint swatch from one brand to another store and asking that second place to match the color.

Specifically, I've found a Ben Moore color I love that would work fabulously in our current and future flips. However, I get a discount on Sherwin-Williams through our REIA, and my contractor also gets a good price on Behr. So I think I can save a good amount by going w/a different brand (much as I love Benjamin Moore personally, this is business!).

So my question isn't about which brand is the best (I know that's been covered here before), but rather - if I bring my Ben Moore sample to Sherwin-Williams or Behr, how well will they match it?

Thanks for any help!

Karin

Welcome, Asa Clancy! What part of CT are you in? I'm a rehabber in SECT.

You've found a great forum to research all different aspects of r.e. investing. You might want to start reading up on private money and hard money loans, which are both great alternatives to a traditional mortgage. You typically need to have skin in the game, but at the same time you certainly don't want to drain all of your personal reserves if you don't have to (i.e. if you used up all of your reserves on a traditional downpayment w/a bank - not only would it be gone, but then what's next? How do you do another one?).

A lot of people also suggest wholesaling as a way to build up cash reserves to move on to other endeavors ... or maybe you wind up liking wholesaling as a business model and stay with that.

Good luck w/whatever direction you head!