All Forum Posts by: Mike Flowers

I would definitely say to expand your knowledge but, do not spend a whole bunch of money on it. There are tons of free resources that you can use to learn investing and at the beginner level, you can use your starting money in better ways with (marketing). I would also say to start in the beginning as a wholesaler. It is a good way for you to be able to learn the business and make some money in it before you sink tons of it into a property and possibly lose it. I would also search for a local investing club to go to and get your network built up in your market. those relationships will take you farther than anything else because of the knowledge and experience they bring. Once you get your feet wet and do a couple wholesale deals and have a name built for yourself in your market, I would say start trying to find private money to use on rehab projects. I would never do your first job with your 100% your own money. I would go find a very experienced real estate investor to partner with and even if you have to take a smaller percentage of the deal because you bring less money, at least you have the experience of going through a rehab and seeing the details of it. After that, just keep doing all of it. rehabbing, wholesaling, even buy a few rentals for monthly cash flow that you can use to buy more properties. This is my plan anyway. I am 25 and am about 1/4 through this plan and it is going well. good luck my friend.  

@Andrew Herrig The normal flip in our market has at least 70% ROI. It is not SUPER competitive here yet but, it is getting there and the low hanging fruit type deals are fewer and farther between but, We are still able to get 70%. This deal was an amazing deal at first site. I mean with our original thought of repairs, I could have gotten the property at 65k, and help out to get 75k from it. In order to create HUGE demand for the property, we offered it lower and that sold it in the first day for a 13k profit. I will do that all day long.

@Aaron Thivierge The original lead for both properties came from bandit signs.

@Derrick Strope Not  a commercial but, I am a believer in sharing what works for me and this thing definitely does. 

Hey BPers,

I wanted to write this up to let everyone know why bringing a contract to an appointment is so important. I personally think it is the one thing that you can do in your market that will get you a deal almost 100% of the time over your competition.

A couple of weeks ago, @JPaul Mills and I got a contract on a property in my local area for 11K. Little did we know, the owner of our local REIA had also offered 11K on this property a day before us but, we brought them a contract and left it with them signed by us with the offer price. They called us back on Monday and we got the deal.

We talked to him about it since our monthly meeting was the next Tuesday. He is a great guy and congratulated us on getting the deal and even talked about it in the meeting.

A few days before the meeting, we had gotten a lead on a GREAT deal over in an AMAZING neighborhood that everyone around here will about knock each other over to come buy in. We had to wait on the property because the owners had a tenant that they were at the end of evicting and needed until the following Friday to get the keys and let us in. 

We ended up calling them back on Thursday to see if they had the keys early, and they did. We immediately hopped in the car and drove over to this house (that good of a deal). We get there and whose car do you think was in the driveway? That's right, the REIA owner. He was meeting with the seller right before we got there. (he had gotten the lead 2 weeks before us but, was delayed by the same eviction).

 We see them walking out of the house and talk tot he owner for a few minutes and then we meet with the seller. We go through the house and figure the house will need 60K in repairs but, it will be worth (conservatively) 195K at the end. We ask the guy, what is the lowest you are willing to take. He said 52K. Knowing that this was well within our doable range, we thought about it for a few minutes and then accepted it at his price. Knowing he had another offer, we didn't want to play too much hard ball especially since it was in a neighborhood that is would sell fast. 

But, in our rush to get out to this property. We forgot the most important thing THE CONTRACT!!!! Luckily, I had my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (greatest investment in a comp ever IMO) and I wrote up the contract, had them sign and emailed them a copy immediately. 

That deal is a net profit of  57.4% as a rehab. Our strategy with it will be wholesale though simply because of the amount of things we have going on. 

We blasted the email out to our buyers list and within 2 hours, we already had multiple offers and the one we are assigning it for today is 65K a net profit of 13K. I am very happy with that. 

This post is to show to all the investors out there that if you bring a contract, even if you are second and have the same price, you will get the contract. 

Good luck with all of your future endeavors my fellow BPers.   

@Don Hines One thing I would recommend is to meet with someone in the new market that you are looking in and see if they have some different information about valuing the property. Maybe you are not seeing something in the value of the houses that the people that are more familiar to the market are seeing. If you get that information, you may be able to make more competitive offers on the properties in that area. 

yes, @JPaul Mills and I do it with every deal. It takes a certain amount of trust in the person to make sure that you have the correct split but, it does work. 

welcome to the area @Tom Linnik You should definitely come to the PIG meeting on February 10th. You can come met @JPaul Mills and I there. I will send you a colleague request and if you have questions, I will answer them if I can.  

 Mike is correct. If you do not have the out clauses in your contract, you could be stuck buying the property. A couple of follow up questions.

1. did you put any earnest money down?

2. How much of a difference if the buyer going to pay you. Can you talk to the buyer about the deal and negotiate a better price?

3. Have you spoken to the buyer about possibly needing to renegotiate or back out of the deal?

I may think of more questions but, these are my first ones. 

Can you clarify you question a bit. DO not give specifics about the deal but, make up some figures and give an example of what you are talking about. 

It sounds like you are paying to sell a property and that would net you nothing. In fact you would be losing money.