All Forum Posts by: Kelsey VanSleen

2505 11th St, Galena Park, TX 77547

Investment Info:

Single-family residence fix & flip investment.

Purchase price: $106,000
Cash invested: $43,000

Fix & Flip, Sell and cash out

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

Over 60k profit Margin

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Wholesaler - FCFS and placed offer at day 1 of listing

How did you finance this deal?

Backflip, Short Term Loan, 83% LTV. about $35k down

How did you add value to the deal?

Big Remodeling

What was the outcome?

The remodels is estimated to complete in 8 months. It was a medium-level remodeling. However in the middle of the project, we find major flaws in the A/C so we have to re-do the entire A/C Duct replacement. This extra scope of work make it over budget and start eating profits.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

1. Manage a big remodeling jobs is not an easy task, however you need persistance.
2. Don't underestimate the delay in a flip project. some accidents and events (e.g. Houston's Hurricane, Flooding) will stop a project for a long time.

3. Always try to double the project budget & time to prepare for the worst.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Backflip LLC is an awesome company, they provided a lot of helps in this remodeling.

Investment Info:

Single-family residence fix & flip investment.

Purchase price: $300,000
Cash invested: $90,000
Sale price: $485,000

This was a fun one I got to do a few houses down from where I live. It was also fun to tackle an eyesore to our neighborhood. There were bushes and poison ivy so mature, you could barely see the home before. The interior had gorgeous hardwood floors under the carpet, and large rooms all around on a large lot. This was the ideal value add situation, where I didn't have to change much on the layout.. mostly just design.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

It had a lot of square footage and already had some cool historic touches. It just needed cleaned up and redesigned.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

It was a few doors down from my home so I kept my eye on it. I got this one like many.. I put in an offer where it would work for my budget and waited it out over a few weeks of being in touch with the realtor and letting him know my interest at my price.

How did you finance this deal?

Private money lender

How did you add value to the deal?

remodeled everything inside and out. Also finished the basement which had a good amount of space, adding two bedrooms and moving the laundry to a closet upstairs where it made more sense.

What was the outcome?

After the first offer fell through I got another strong back up offer and made a good payday along with a young couple happy.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

The first offer fell through due to some outlandish requests from the Buyer. We tried to appease the buyer with one request after another. It got to a point I felt the buyer would never be happy so we pulled out of the deal. The end result was getting some excited buyers that didn't care about all of the issues the first buyer was making up. The lesson learned is vetting the potential buyers before pulling the trigger on the one that might look the best on the surface.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

I used myself as the buying and selling agent

1) The seasoned professional was usually there first. That’s why the newbie showed up. 

2). After one graduates from newbie to seasoned are they supposed to bail from the forum that helped them?

3) what would be the purpose of a forum full of questions with no answers? I would LOVE to join a forum where I was the newb. How else will I learn? I’ve learned more from the top 5-10 BP contributors than anywhere on the internet not named Google  

Ps.

This often asked the other way around. 

1) why doesn’t the newbie show any gratitude for the FREE expert/professional advice?

2) why does the newbie often ask a question where any answer other than the one they want is unacceptable?

3) why do they ask questions that they could research themselves in less than 10 seconds on Google or with the magnifying glass on BP?

4) why is their question often who will do this for me, who will research this for me, how to I get to my destination without any money,  work or effort?

It’s all in you POV. 

 Would love to see these as well!

Thanks, @Rene Hosman for the shout out.

@Ryan Dickerson There really is no silver bullet, this gets asked a LOT. You really need an experienced (read old fart) GC to walk the project with you to be accurate and even then things can be missed. I wrote a Blog on this very subject.

You will eventually learn enough to be of help to yourself, just keep doing it and record the prices so you can start to get a feel for SF costs.

One thing I can offer is this website,I have checked them out and they are fairly accurate , you enter your zipcode, I just hate for people to be off by even $10k, that could be your profit on some projects, right? But try this: https://www.homewyse.com/services/cost_to_estimate_home_remo...

Let me ask you this.....I was even considering offering a service to 'walk the property' via video conference and throw out some rough numbers....do you think that would help people?

@Kelsey VanSleen, along the lines of Andrew's comment, it all comes down to seller's needs and solving a problem for them. 

While seller financing is less common with flips, there is no real reason it can't be used, as long as it satisfy your needs and the sellers.  

I always take seller financing cautiously though.  Like anything is sales (and you are in sales even when you are trying to buy a property), the less clean cut the deal, the more likely it is to get rejected.

It's totally feasible.  Think of making 3 offers on any property:

1. Cash / very fast close

2. Financed / slightly longer close (appraisal may be needed)

3. Owner finance / short to longer closing based on seller's needs

It's all about finding out the needs of the seller and helping to address those needs.  If you simply don't know or can't easily find out - making multiple offers can be a great way to help meet the sellers needs.  When I make the above 3 offers to a seller, any one of the 3 would be fine with me.  Cash will be lowest, owner financing tends to be the highest (price) offer.