All Forum Posts by: Melissa Ewbank

Hi @Carl N. - Welcome to BP....and REI! I am a REALTOR ® and an active investor in the East Bay. I'll shoot you a PM with my contact info if you decide to enlist an agent I would be happy to assist.

Cheers!

I am a realtor and active investor in Oakland, if you need any additional assistance I'd be happy to help you out.  And, much like everyone else said....it is in your best interest to shop around a bit for the lender.  I've got a couple recommendations if you need them as well.

Best of luck.

You most certainly can use a conventional loan with a few restrictions...you have to hold the property for 6 months minimum and the property needs to be in a livable state (so more of a cosmetic fixer as opposed to anything structural). These are things that most flippers (the ones that are making money anyway) don't want to adhere to as the timeline is too long and the margins for profit aren't there on a cosmetic fixer in most markets.

oh, and for windows- Bestoff Windows. Sergey the owner is awesome and they are super affordable and do flawless work. They installed new windows in my entire house in less than 3 hours! Tell Sergey I sent you, he'll give you a great price.

Hey @Kyle Rosseau I've just purchased a bunch of materials for my current project.

United Granite in Richmond - great prices on cabinets and counters, they have granite and Quartz. Although they don't sell slabs so if you need something larger than 9' you'd probably need to go elsewhere

Granite Expo in Emeryville - they also have some good prices on counters but I found the cabinet prices much higher than UG. They do have a ton of inexpensive vanities though.

For my floors I used an online retailer, build direct.com. They have a ton of really nice laminate flooring options and I found them less expensive than lumber liquidators (i.e. I paid $1.59 sqft & for a comparable product at lumber liquidators it was $2.29). Only problem with builddirect is they don't have a lot of trim/molding pieces. I ended up getting molding from lumber liquidators and it matches perfectly.

Another online retailer, lightingdirect.com has really good prices on lighting and free delivery.

For tile I ended up going with Home Depot as they had some styles I liked that were in my price range, but all the other above places have tile too.

Another good source of info is to ask your contractor where they shop, good luck!

Melissa

I don't personally have any experience with this as I'm a novice flipper but an experienced flipper I know recommended commercial insurance, that's what he uses for all his properties.

Great post!  It's true that a lot of people forget to factor in ALL the costs associated with buying, rehabbing, and selling a property...and as you mentioned they can drastically change your overall profits.

I would suggest adding in capital gains taxes that you will likely be hit with upon selling the property.

Hello all,

I, too, would love to join up in a group like this. I'm in Oakland and working on my first real flip in Concord right now (did a live in flip in SoCal previously). My focus is fix and flip in the short term but would like to get into the hold side of things in the next 12-18 months. I would love to connect with other investors in the area.

I'm also a licensed real estate agent. My email [email protected].

Cheers!

I'm doing a reroof on a 1450 sqft in Concord right now and I'm looking at around $12,500. I got bids from $11-18k roughly.

100% agree with what J Scott said, especially here in the Bay Area. It took me a good 6 months to find the deal I'm working on now and my margins are pretty slim.