All Forum Posts by: Mario Ciccarelli

Hey Don! I'm an investor and realtor in Delaware. I need to update my deal profile but I moved here 2020 first buying a house hack and then slowly buying one rental a year until the last year and a half. As of today I own 13 doors; 3 of them UD student rentals and the rest in Wilmington. I've done one flip and will be doing more this year and I'm also an agent licensed in DE, PA, and MD. I'm in real estate full time so I'm happy to connect and help you get started. Feel free to shoot me a DM and we can connect! 

Quote from @Mario Ciccarelli:

There's a monthly meetup in Wilmington on Thursday nights. The next one is January 11th, 2024. 112 S French St, Wilmington DE 19801. There's usually pretty good food too. Come on by and say hi. 

 Sure do you have an email address? I can send you the info for the next one when available. 

There's a monthly meetup in Wilmington on Thursday nights. The next one is January 11th, 2024 6pm at 112 S French St, Wilmington DE 19801. There's usually pretty good food too. Come on by and say hi. 

Quote from @Alecia Loveless:

@Mario Ciccarelli Hi Mario, if you can build a good team who can work faster than you can it definitely starts to make sense once you get big enough to pay some, grow faster and focus on doing things that make the most sense.

I’m not very coordinated so I’ve got a team of workers to do my building projects for me. Last week my team was working hard to finish an apartment renovation that a tenant had temporarily relocated for. At the same time I have a propane project going on at another apartment building where the propane company needed access to the building all day. It made more sense for me to go to that building and focus on analyzing deals all day and assist the propane company than to pull one of my workers to go sit there instead of working on the renovation project.

While you’re starting out if you can focus on getting a team to do the things that make the most sense you’ll scale faster and increase your capital more quickly. Sometimes this allows you to do important things like find deals and sometimes it lets you save money by sitting in parking lots waiting on a gas company all day!

 That’s exactly what I’m working on now! Around Halloween I closed on a property I’m flipping and just this Tuesday I closed on another I’ll be BRRRRing. It’s a great feeling to be able to use my equity to pay for others to do the work. Going from 1 home a year for 3 years to 2 homes in one month is surreal. 

Investment Info:

Townhouse buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $160,000
Cash invested: $10,000

An on market townhome turned cash cow student rental!

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

This deal was on the MLS and at the time I was unlicensed so my rockstar agent locked it down for us.

How did you finance this deal?

This is the third investment I made and the last one where I will be doing the rehab myself. Purchase price was $160,000 and ARV $215,000. I used two other partners who brought the down payment and together we split the closing costs, holding costs, and rehab costs. My total costs are about $10,000 but total rehab was $30,000.

What was the outcome?

We made this a student rental, my third student rental. Now with three student rentals and a substantial amount of equity in all three, I was able to pull a line of credit from a local bank against all of them for a total of $100,000. I'm now using this line to buy 4 more deals at once and this place cash flows $660 after reserves and cap ex. Looking forward to next year. Check out my instagram for the before and after video @mario_is_me

Lessons learned? Challenges?

We learned that doing the work yourself, while a valuable learning experience and good way to build initial equity, is not a viable path to longterm growth.

Quote from @Toni Garcia:

Hi, I am Toni Garca, a relatively new investor in Wilmington, Delaware. I am excited about joining this community to connect with other investors, learn some new stategies and find great deals. 

Hey Toni! I’m an investor and agent in Delaware! Right now I primarily invest in Newark but I have contacts all over north Delaware. Once a month my friends host a big investor meetup in Wilmington. And once every other month or so I host a smaller get together at our local Buffalo Wild Wings. We are due to have our monthly Wilmington meetup soon so I will shoot you a DM!

Quote from @Ronald Stephenson:

Quote from @Scott Mac:

Quote from @Ronald Stephenson:

Situation: Business checking can not afford HVAC replacement. 

Ask: What are your suggestions in this type of situation? What did you do if you were in this type of situation? 

Background: I have a rental property in Wilmington, Delaware. I've been building the property's maintenance savings since acquiring the property, and now the HVAC & Gas Furnace requires a replacement; I've received three quotes, each above the property's maintenance savings. I attempted to acquire a business line of credit and was denied. I can pay out of pocket for the replacement in this situation, but I wanted to keep it within a business framework. Currently, looking at other lending opportunities. 

You could ask your tax professional how to lend personal money to the business so it conforms to IRS guidelines and is not a commingle situation for an LLC.

Good Luck!

 This is surely something I'll now look into. Thank you. 

I recently spoke with an attorney about setting up an LLC and, like you, I'll have limited (actually I'll have no) funds in it to start. He said you can do a "capital contribution" and put personal money into the business that way.

Quote from @Ronald Stephenson:

Quote from @Mario Ciccarelli:

This happened to me a few months ago on a new property without much reserves built yet. On top of it, I only have three rentals, two of which are the rented, the third is under rehab. So my overall business funds, and money in general is low. 

The AC failed and was 20+ years old and the furnace was too old to fit the newer air handlers out there. So the total cost was about $14k. The HVAC company allowed me to pay with a 0% interest for one year loan. I am just sacrificing all cash flow for one year and having the rent cover it. The yearly profit from this house will just about pay all this back. 

That’s the only option I see without sufficient reserves to cover this type of situation. 

 Thank you for sharing, was the 0% interest under your personal or business? 

 Under my and my partner’s personal names. We’re actually in the process of creating an entity now for our 2023 expansion goals. 

This happened to me a few months ago on a new property without much reserves built yet. On top of it, I only have three rentals, two of which are the rented, the third is under rehab. So my overall business funds, and money in general is low. 

The AC failed and was 20+ years old and the furnace was too old to fit the newer air handlers out there. So the total cost was about $14k. The HVAC company allowed me to pay with a 0% interest for one year loan. I am just sacrificing all cash flow for one year and having the rent cover it. The yearly profit from this house will just about pay all this back. 

That’s the only option I see without sufficient reserves to cover this type of situation. 

@Kimothy Bynum he’s a close friend of mine. He wanted to get into real estate and I had one deal as proof of concept in the area.