All Forum Posts by: Michael Marcoux

I can't tell from the pictures, but did you also get new windows or did you just sand down and paint the existing jams? I'm also taking it you did most of the work yourself? Impressive either way, congrads with finding such a good deal!

Also, while the house is old, I had a contractor come through with me and identify everything that needs fixed. Everything else seems to have been well maintained. Although, the plumbing and electric were winterized - so we'll only find out if we buy it and turn the utilities on I suppose. But no evidence of major damage anywhere so...

What should I use to gauge rents? 

Hey BP,

Got a deal I'm agonizing over. It's a 1000 sq ft, 3 bed, 1 bath victorian duplex built in the 1890's. The asking price is $25,000, and it needs 10-15k in repairs, mostly cosmetic (i.e. resand/stain floor, drywall work, paint, etc.) The wholesaler is saying the place could rent easily for $800, which I confirmed with rentometer.com.

That being said, I'm agonizing over the cash flow for the property. I know what taxes and insurance will be,  but since I've never done this before I have no idea how to estimate the cost of future repairs, property management, etc. I just pulled the rest of the figures out of thin air, they are as follows:

(I'm actually not sure who pays for the utilities - I thought the tenant did, but I saw it in the BP analysis list, so...)

If that's the case, this place only cash flows $196/month, or $2352 a year. 

Do these figures look right at all?Do you think 3k/yr for repairs is too much (hopefully not too little?) I'm hoping something is wrong. If they figures are right, is this a deal you would do?

Craigslist proved to be a disaster for me - it was everything bad discussed here and more (the people who did show up were mostly lazy and slow workers - and were paid per hour.) What worked was going to the local Lowes and Home Depot, developing good relations with some of the check-out staff who had worked there a while, and asking them for recommendations. Found an amazing GC through Home Depot and had him complete most of the project. Highly recommend the approach.

Hey all,

just finished my first flip and we have it listed now! (http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3961-School-St-T...) You should have seen what a disaster it was when we started...anyways. We've gotten conflicting advice from our investors, realtor, and wholesaler, so I wanted to take the issue to you guys. Mainly: how important are crisp, sharp photos and/or staging to the selling process? The investors think we should pull the listing until nice hi-res photos are taken after the staging. But we only have until November 30th to get the house sold or refinance to pay the investors back so...I'm not sure if the existing photos will scare away buyers or not. 

As to staging...at the brokers open house, 3 out of 5 brokers said the house looked good enough to not even bother staging, whereas the wholesaler said that staging is an absolute MUST to get people envisioning themselves living in the house. Any advice on that?...

I can actually already hear some people saying "what on EARTH is with that hardwood floor?," don't worry, we're getting that fixed. 

Also- the wholesaler advised us to drop the price every week we don't have at least 2 showings of the house. Does that sound like good advice to you all?

Wow! Nice job. I'm amazed a 2000 sq ft house that looks so unique will sell for so little - but I'm used to DC prices anyways.

I, and I think a lot of others, are really really interested in seeing your cost list. When do you think you could have it up? I'm particularly curious because I just finished my first flip on a similar old house and just listed it - and boy oh BOY did we spend a lot more than what we thought. 40k turned into 60k pretty easily. 

Love the light olive green paint. Did you put the fireplace in?

Thanks for the outpouring of response guys. Although- where are these people who will work for, as Curt said, $15/hr? We're paying a GC now and his crew $30/hr each as we struggle to finish what work we can (because we made too many costly mistakes to afford to contract everything out and make a profit.) They're great workers and I couldn't ask for better work from them. But it sounds like we could do cheaper. Granted, we are on the Eastern shore of MD- maybe those rates for good work don't fly in certain areas? We started with ads on craigslist, paying people 11 an hour and got the worst quality work you could imagine- people didn't nail siding down, spilled paint on shingles, some even stole money...it just didn't seem worth going the cheap route. Is there some fine tuning we can do there? What would you do in my shoes?

Hi BP,

New rehabber here. Been working on my first project for almost 2 months now. Bought it for 81k, ARV of 210k. I'm learning a lot, and they're unforgettable lessons (i.e. the hard way.) One of the ways my partner and I have been trying to decrease costs is doing as much of the labor ourselves as possible. While it was a nice idea at start, after 2 months I (and he, to a lesser extent) are absolutely burned out from the non-stop work. And then I work my own job after we work 10 hours 6 days a week...

That being said, I'd love to know - how much work do you guys do yourself and how much do you contract out? Is it common/possible to find deals where you can contract 80-90% of the work out and still make a decent profit? 

Sincerely,

One freakin' tired rehabber