All Forum Posts by: Michael Haas

Hey @Franklin Beebe - welcome to Seattle! This is a city of transplants, and a great place to forge your way and get a new start as an entrepreneur in any industry. @Eric Yu is a great resource and super generous with his time and experience. @Jess Haas & I are experienced investor-agents locally here, and always open to partnerships, especially with those that have a construction background as most of our projects are heavy renovation BRRRR's or flips.

Let us know if you'd like to meetup with Eric Yu, Jess & I sometime in and around Seattle ; the three of us work together in our office in Fremont, "The Center of the Universe" ;). 

@Ananya Mohanty are you looking for investment potential (HouseHacking, Airbnb, live in flip, short plat, etc?) in this next home? You didn’t mention it but since we are on Bigger Pockets figured I’d ask ;). 

A 3-3 for under $1M is 100% achievable in Seattle and almost all surrounding neighborhoods except maybe Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond on the Eastside. shoot me a message if you want to get on our off market / on market property opportunity list or talk more about the area and your search. Happy to help and welcome to Seattle!

I second looking for meetups - you can find our HouseHack Seattle meetup and others on Meetup.com

If you make it down to Seattle, here's our networking event: https://www.meetup.com/pro/hou...

@Jamie Laliberte welcome to BP! Sounds like you're an Realtor, right? The "start with wholesaling" advice is not very good advice in my opinion, but if you go that route just use the regular NWMLS contracts you write every day in your agent business. Buyer is "Your LLC And Or Assigns" and write up a form 34 that gives visibility to the seller that the contract may be assigned.

The #1 question a prospective investor-client will ask you is "are you an investor yourself?" It sounds like your answer to that question is no, so I would start investing personally before marketing yourself to clients a an Investment focused realtor. 

Interior, Exterior, or Interior and Exterior? And is this labor and materials included? 

If its exterior then yes, $5,000 or so labor and materials sounds pretty typical, depending on number of stories, access, number of windows, etc. We have a few folks that have done it for a lot less over the years, but those solid, affordable subs are few and far between since COVID and inflation.

Thanks for the mention @Carlos Valencia. @Sai Venkat Vara Prasad Masaram happy to help, here's a couple questions to get started:

1. Do you have any real estate or general contracting experience?

2. How long have you lived in the Seattle area? How many connections do you have here, and how well do you know the market and neighborhoods?

3. Why flipping? What are your real estate goals and how did you decide that flipping was the way to get there?

Thanks for recommending us @Ryan Thomson, & glad you're looking into HouseHacking @Adam Wayne! It really is the best way to get started in a High Cost Of Living area like Seattle.

A lot of this depends on your loan pre-approval amount and the affordability of each of the neighboorhoods you're looking at, but as Seattle and surrounding areas are very friendly towards DADU's & ADU's it may be possible to get a home with multiple living spaces - so rather than a 6 bedroom house, you get a 3 bed 2 bath house with a 2 bed 1 bath ADU, with the potential to build another 2 bed 2 bath detached ADU in the future. Lots to get into I know, but here's a couple general tips for you as you get started Househacking:
1. If you find a property with a second kitchen (ADU or MIL), be aware that 80% or more of those units have been built without permits. Not a deal breaker necessarily, but a risk to be aware of and mitigate.
2. Brush up on building code requirements: in basements you're looking for egress windows that are 5.7 sq feet or more openable (3ft by 3ft casement style windows work best), and ceiling heights 6ft 8 inches or greater (as little as 6 ft 4 inches is ok under ductwork and beams though)
2. Check the unrelated persons count in any city you're interested in. Seattle allows 8 unrelated persons in a rental house, unincorporated Snohomish County allows 6, but some cities allow as few as 3-4. House hacking financials get significantly stronger as you increase the bed count above 4, or add a ADU or separate dwelling unit. *This is more important if you're "renting by the room" with roommates than if you're "Renting by the unit" in a multifamily or a single family with your own private kitchen and entrance. 
3. I've had success with cashflow rentals around Seattle by getting off the beaten path- there are established investors bidding up the price (and therefore compressing the cap rate) on many small multi-families, but those same investors are not going after large 5-9 bedrooms SFHs that you can househack by the room or split up with an ADU / MIL. Establishing a short term rental / airbnb in part of the home is another great way to maximize rental income.
4. There are first time homebuyer assistance programs like WSHFC that you can get into a house for pretty much just the closing costs- could be just $6k - $25k up front cash to close on a $500k house. If that house has a unfinished basement you can finish and rent out, or even just extra rent-able bedrooms, your mortgage payment will likely be significantly less than you currently pay for rent, + you reap all the tax benefits and forced savings effects of home-ownership.
If you have good credit, good W-2 income, and just a little bit of savings buying a house hack is a financial no-brainer. We started with this strategy in 2013 and nearly ten years later we have 13 properties in King County / Seattle and $15,000 / month of passive income profit - if you stick with it the results compound quickly!

Cheers and good luck! And seriously, message me anytime if you'd like to talk more about house-hacking, it's definitely changed my family's financial life and the lives of almost 100 of our clients for the better!

@Rogelio M. definitely. It doesn’t mean the BP featured agents are bad agents, it just means that you should put them through the same due diligence you would any agent, and know that the Reccomendation does not necessarily correlate with experience or skill. As always, reccomendations from corporations will typically be profit-motivated, while reccomendations from friends, family, and other investors will typically be genuine and should be given much more weight.

@James Thomas A few things to add to your search criteria:

1. Bigger Pockets Agent Finder is a good resource, but don't use it exclusively. I think its important to know that Agent Finder is a paid service, so the agents that are recommended to you are the agents that have chosen to pay Bigger Pockets thousands of dollars to be recommended, not necessarily the best agents or the agents with the most experience. Often times its the opposite- the best agents work by referral and keep busy without paying for marketing, so they don't pay for Zillow, Bigger Pockets, or other service's "featured agents" advertisements.

2.Look for investor-agents that have personal experience in your Niche. If you want to HouseHack, don't chose an agent that hasn't HouseHacked at least once, ideally multiple times successfully. Ask detailed questions here about experiences, dates of investment, and addresses / example addresses. As the popularity of HouseHacking and Investing has increased I've seen many agents suggest they have HouseHacking and Investing experience as a way to win clients, but that experience may be very limited or even not existent... make sure to ask probing questions to get the full story!

3. Recommendations & Reviews: Make sure to read lots of reviews and ask for referrals / recommendations - that's what's going to give you the most information about what working with this agent will actually look like!

Looking forward to talking more. Cheers!