All Forum Posts by: Matt McCurdy

Good insight @Dalton Foote! It is definitely a tough market to find good help.

 Hey Dalton,

Yes, I've heard of that as well.  Since you are a contractor, you may be the best to ask this.  I like the idea of a $50 per day penalty, but it often gets messy. What if the part they need isn't in? The contractor has a question on a unforeseen scope creep?  Once some of these things happen, it opens up a can of worms and the SOW typically is rendered useless.  Not to mention, if I enforce a $50/day penalty, what's the likelihood of the contractor wanting to work for me again when there's plenty of work out there?

Hi Steve, 

I applaud your reaching out and being vulnerable on the forum by providing your detailed financials.  It takes great discipline to crawl out of debt and get to a better financial higher ground.  The issue is in the short term it takes sacrifice to yield long term gain.  Most aren't willing to do this, so they continue down the path of living paycheck to paycheck.  I've heard over 2/3's of Americans have less than $1k in their checking account.

To answer your question, I like your idea of being able to house hack, since your travel nursing job could leverage a unique position for your future. I would certainly try to remove any debt where you are paying 7%+, because by eliminating that debt you are in essence creating 7% return on that money you save.  It sounds wild to think of it this way, but certainly will free up cash to invest in the next couple of years.  Once all bad debt is removed, find ways to either increase your W2 income and/or reduce your monthly expenses.  For example: could you sell the furniture off (even though 0%) and buy some that is $500-$1k and pocket the difference to use for a future investment?  My uncle is a financial coach who helps those to get out of debt (one of his passions).  I'd be happy to send you his contact information if you'd like?  If not, I'm sure there's plenty of tools online that can help you budget and keep you accountable to your budget.  When you get closer to be ready to invest, I'd be happy to talk with you more on RE investing in Iowa.

Best of luck!

In today's labor market, we are all hard pressed to find good, reliable, and affordable contractors to renovate investment property.  I'm certainly not a newbie, but open to ideas on how to handle a delicate/finesse part of the business.

I've had mild success in finding contractors who fulfill the three descriptors above.  When I do find a contractor, I typically find one who makes a mistake (we are all human & sometimes there are communication issues).  Ultimately, the burden is felt by me through a longer renovation time and/or a higher cost to correct the contractor issue.  Does anyone have any strategies/tricks to work with contractors in the time of conflict?  There are two schools of thought I know of:

1) Take the cost/time on my own chin and hope the contractor makes up for it in the future on the next project.

2) Ask for a concession from the contractor to make up for the mistake, but risk the contractor out right quitting or charging a higher price for the next project trying to recoup the cost from the previous project.

This is good therapy! LOL! Logan, I like your ideas. However, I question how you would govern whose listing is whose and the nightmare of ensuring people aren’t abusing the system. The $20k fee is interesting. It certainly would weed out the low income producing agents, but may deter some competent agents in the Midwest where prices are lower. What are your thoughts on requiring realtors to register in a niche? For example, a realtor only works in the investment property industry, first time home buyer/sellers, luxury market, etc? I question if some of this incompetence is a level of a realtor trying to know every market and master of none.

Welcome Asa!  I live and invest in the Cedar Rapids market.  Feel free to reach out to me if you need some guidance.

I'm in total agreement Logan!  Realtors have no training on how to comp. and/or run a financial analysis of investment property.  These skills are learned on the job or maybe the broker helps with this training.  It's certainly a big issue when it comes to how much it could cost their clients due to mis pricing the property (either too low or too high).

I've been on the positive end of a realtor "faking it" and pricing a property too low and we have certainly seen property priced too high over the past 6-12 months.

What would you do if you were president of NAR (National Association of Realtors) to implement positive change?

Cole, I was born and raised in the Des Moines area.  Des Moines has seen some significant growth in the suburbs and investment in it's downtown core.  I don't see an end in sight, especially with the governor dropping state income taxes over the next few years.  I see the job market continuing to be robust with companies continuing to invest in the Des Moines metro area.

I have a couple of rental properties in Des Moines, but I primarily focus on Cedar Rapids (smaller scale and 2 hours east of DM), but I like it for it's lower price point entry on housing and it's positive momentum it is seeing (just like DM).  Best of luck deciding on a market, I don't think you can go wrong with DM!

Congrats Enrique!  What area are you focusing on in DM to building your real estate portfolio?

Simply put: junk data in, junk data out.  I've found many deals by peeling a few layers back to discover the market rent is higher and/or the purchase includes other tangible things outside of just rental cashflow (i.e. instant equity).