All Forum Posts by: Lionel Quiambao

@Dan Heuschele If off market properties are not subject to a valuation based on PP, what are they based off of?

Also, another question I had was I'm not currently working with an agent on this as it was just brought to my attention via family ties. Is an agent necessary/recommended or just an added expense to this kind of transaction? I'm assuming if I wanted to have this listed on the MLS to benefit from what you were saying earlier, then I'd have to work with an agent to do that?

Hi all, I recently created a post about wanting to house hack in San Diego. However, an opportunity came up for me in Sacramento that I'm finding incredibly hard to pass up. I would really appreciate some advice as I underwrite this potential house hack!

The Situation

A family friend of ours wants to sell their 3/2 townhome for $150k. Utilizing PropStream (PS), a similar renovated townhome nearby sold for $365k, so I immediately started questioning what's wrong with it. I'll be walking the property Mar 20th or 21st. She had it rented before, and an unfortunate thing happened where she had left all of her late husband's things in one room, and she recently discovered that all of his stuff is now gone. I'm thinking that could be her motivation for wanting to sell and just be done with the property. She also overheard from my mom that I'm in the market for a home, so that unfortunate incident plus our familial ties combined could be why it's at a good price? But it doesn't hurt to be cautious.

The Expenses

I was planning to finance my first house through an FHA 203k loan. 3.5% of $150k is $5,250. FHA rates today appear to be 6.19%. After researching the 203k loan, I could use that to fund the rehab, inspection fees, title fees, etc. According to PS, this property also has an HOA fee of $410 (yikes). Property Taxes appear to be approaching $1,250 this year, so I'm estimating $104 monthly. To estimate insurance, I'm using an investor rule of thumb I heard (ARV / $1,000 * 3.5%) which equals $1,277 or $107 monthly.

For repairs & maintenance, I'm not quite sure what to allocate here. I plan to rehab the property, modernize the kitchens and bathrooms, new flooring and paint, exterior paint (if the HOA will let me). It's all hard to tell right now, but once I walk the property, and get an inspection, and contractor bids, I can give a more accurate estimate. This is my first time even talking about getting an inspection or bids so I'm quite nervous haha. Conservatively, I would typically do 10% for R&M, but If I do the rehab, I heard people will allocate less, like 5% since everything is updated? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Vacancy (5%). CapEx (10%). Management (10%), although, for this first one, we'll probably manage it ourselves, so we'll get to save on that for now. Just adding it here since I don't want to be managing forever.

Not sure how to estimate utilities other than making some calls to utility companies on Monday. If anyone has guidance on this, I'd love to know!

The Income

As a traditional rental, according to Trulia, it looks like my 3/2 could rent for on average $2,000 per month. I was curious as to other strategies profitabilities. Checking Craigslist, it appears renting by the room should be able to get me $600-$900. That's what I would have to do my first year of living there. Short-term rental also doesn't appear that great in the property's area, as data.rabbu.com shows the average going rate for a single room in that area would be $880 per month.

This doesn't look all that great from a cash flow perspective, but maybe I can utilize the live-in flip strategy. Purchase for ~$150k, put $X into it, cash out refi or 1031 out of it in a year, or sell in 2 years to avoid capital gains? Assuming my ARV is correct with $365k, that might be worth the negative cash flow for a bit? What do y'all think?

Thank you all for the insightful responses!

@Jon Schwartz "Income is taxed, savings isn't" That's genius! Thanks for the first-hand examples and the perspective shift!

@Kenneth Donaghy I'd love to hop on a call! I'll DM you my info, appreciate it!

@Twana Rasoul So glad that worked out for you! Gives me hope!

Thank you all for accompanying me on this journey!

What tool is everyone using to run their numbers? I don't see a dedicated house-hacking calculator on BP. I was thinking about building a spreadsheet but was worried about reinventing the wheel. I'd love to start practicing analyzing deals in SD!

Hi everyone, I'm looking to do my first house hack in San Diego and would just like to network with those that did it before me!

I heard that it's hard to cash flow positively at first, so I'd like to know when y'all first started house hacking, what was your initial cash flow like, and how do you like your investment now?

Thank you for the tip! Yea, I try to follow people that are putting what they see into practice. And I believe that Jamil with KeyGlee, Pace, and Jerry have actually made their careers with wholesaling and flipping, but provide courses as a way to provide value (while making nice coin, lol) to some newbies that need to spend money to take something more seriously (like school, haha). But yes, going forward, I'd rather conserve my money for actual real estate investments, and self-educate through BP, partnerships, and experience (:

Awesome! Thanks, I'll check those out! 

Haha yeah! Nothing I can do about it now but move forward and be more resourceful lol and if that offer is still on the table, I would gladly split my first deal with you in exchange for your advice on getting started! Do you go to any Sac meetups?

Edit: I also have a friend just getting started, and he's thinking about wholesaling as well. I'm sure he'd be glad to do the same for his first deal! Right now, I've just been sharing with him all the things I spent money on so he won't have to haha but yes, if you're willing, we'd love to learn from you

Thanks for the tips, will do! There's so much to see! What is your favorite perk?

Oh cool! Do you manage other people's STRs or your own? And which market are you in? I'd love to connect also!

Hi everyone, I'm a new investor from Sacramento! I'm posting my introduction because Brandon Turner told me to (from the podcast, mentioning Washington here so that he might see it lol)! Aside from the BP subscription, my next big investment was the BP Rookie Bootcamp for Fall 2021. Met wonderful people through that from all across the US! I decided wholesaling would be the low-money option I wanted to take, and I attended my first local REIA meetup not long after. There was exactly one wholesaler at that meetup, which I was set on approaching. We got together for lunch, and he told me he dropped $5k on a mentor back in July 2021, and it was the best money he had ever spent because he made that money back many times over.

That got me thinking, and after watching non-stop cheesy Jamil Damji ads from AstroFlipping, knowing I wanted to get into wholesaling, I called them up on Dec 10th, 2021. The course was $7,800! But my thought process was if I could do at least 1 deal and 1 deal averages about $9,000 - $10,000, that would pay for the course itself. The person on the phone got me in at $1,950 a month for the next four months. Going into it, I've heard some people doing their first deal within 2-3 months. After a few weeks, I also heard of it taking as long as 7 months to a year for some to get their first deal. But I guess it all depends on the amount of work a person puts in. The course came with A LOT of information. There were 6 modules for 6 weeks, each containing about 20 videos and relevant contracts. There were also Q&As every Sunday and Tuesday and Comping sessions every Thursday and Friday, each of which are recorded for all students. There were also recorded calls featuring some of the more successful students talking with various professionals, like agents, buyers, sellers, etc. Then, you also get the support of the Facebook community group with people itching to JV or help out the nubs.

In the middle of this (about 4 weeks in), I got sold on a Jerry Norton course, called the 10K Club, which dealt with bringing deals to Jerry, and if they were good deals that met his criteria, you would get $10,000. Also, if you brought Jerry a deal, you would get a refund on your initial $1,000. I've come to find out that you must get a deal every 30 days for the first 90 days to qualify for that refund. The course was 6 much more brief videos than what AstroFlipping provided. And it came with a ton of Jerry's software, which admittedly, I haven't had much time to play around with except for the Automatic Deal Finder, a Craigslist ad scraper for campaigns. But there's various tools for finding on-market and off-market leads and analyzing deals.

I missed my initial goal of closing a deal last month, but I'm working towards that goal this month! I got into wholesaling to supplement my W2 income to further my goal of purchasing rentals. I believe wholesaling is a good start for building the fundamental skills and developing the relationships necessary to accomplish that goal. This is my first business, so any advice is gladly appreciated! As for those courses I bought, I only regret the Flipping Mastery one because I don't use it, but I did learn a lot from the AstroFlipping as well as the BP Rookie Bootcamp, and like I said, met other amazing investors!

Edit: Also, forgot to mention, at the end of the AstroFlipping course, Jamil plugged Pace's SubTo course with a little introduction that sounded super intriguing! I said to myself I might take that course, but I want to do a few successful deals first. OR I might just try pair up with someone who's experienced in that area (Who Not How) lol