All Forum Posts by: Matthew Stokes

I do all my investing on the southeast side of the state, Idaho Falls area. But the market is great here if you have the desire and means to invest here it's a great time. Rentals fill up very quick and new homes sell very quick. I am a builder in the area so must of my experience is in the new construction side of things. 

As a builder I have done the profit sharing several time and has always worked well for me. The investor will come to me with land that they own, I will usually charge a fee to build it they charge a little extra for the lot and we profit share the remaining amount. There are some builders that aren't willing to do this or they are too busy but if you ask enough builders you will find the right one.

The best answer to this question is maybe? Like Greg said there are a lot of variables that go into building and each of those variables differ depending on what part of the country you're in, someone in California or Boston reading your post would say $100sqft is impossible. In South East Idaho where I live it would be doable but you would have to do a lot of work and network like crazy, to get the lowest material costs and the lowest labor rates. I have been able to find guys who will do my work as a side job and they offer me a pretty good rate but you need to make sure they meet the quality standards you are looking for. 

I am a builder and investor in South Eastern Idaho, and I am always looking for good people to work with. Message me and we can sit down and talk sometime. 

I am currently building a spec home in Victor, flipping a house in Idaho Falls and doing several remodeling/addition projects. 

@Joseph Stewart I would love to share our numbers with you. What would be the easiest way to share them with you?

Greg, I actually have started building spec homes now. Like you said it just made sense. I didn't have a lot of my own money so I used investors as partners and built these spec homes with them. They would purchase the land and hold the construction loan and I would do the rest. We have done 6 homes this way now and we are starting two more. It's been fun, my wife and I really enjoy the work. 

Any advice on scaling up as I plan for the future?

I live in an area where the is a very limited inventory on new homes and limited amount of developed land to build on. I have found a few pieces of land that have been surveyed and zoned for subdivisions but that's all that has happened. 

Does anyone know how to get financing for developments?

As Pedro has stated your best option is to call the local jurisdiction. If they are like the city I live in they will be happy to help and they will tell exactly what you need to know. 

When my wife and I first tried buying a home we spent about a year trying to find the perfect house hack. It was hard to do, maybe it was our market maybe it was us, not sure. Then, we had a conversation with one of our friends and they told us their plan. They would build a new home live in it for two years and sell it. I was interested. So my wife and I spent another 6 months putting together a plan on how we would do this. We started this back in 2010. We have built two homes (we did put a lot of sweat equity into the homes) and sold one (obviously we did sell every two years) and we are getting ready to sell the next one. If we sell it for what we are hoping our next house will be paid for.

I am interested if anyone else has had luck doing this method of house hacking?

@Leland James

Are you building this home for yourself or is it a spec home?

When I go to build a new home in a new area the first thing I do is call the local building department, ask them what is needed, often they will have these things listed on their website. Some counties or cities require engineered drawings and some don't. Some require me as a general contractor to have different liscensing. I always find it helpful to call and get as much information as possible.

As was stated already there can be many complexities to building a home from ground up. I find that I have differing considerations when I build for myself compared to when I am building a spec home. Don't get me wrong I want it to be high quality no matter what. But I also know that most consumers out there don't care if there is 1" closed cell spray foam on their walls and that we used fiberglass composite windows vs vinyl windows and the list could go on, but these are things that I care about. Most consumers want high quality at the lowest price and that's the balance I go for when building my spec homes.