All Forum Posts by: Oscar Brooks

Your photos look fantastic, it's a beautiful building. I bought my owner occupied Minneapolis duplex in June and as an first-time buyer significant sloping was definitely one thing that changed my opinion on some properties. The main reason is contractors I've talked to say there is no cost effective way to fix it so you basically have to be OK with uneven floors. As an owner occupied buyer that was one thing I understood is hard to avoid in Minneapolis (100% of the places I looked at had some level of settling), but also something I was looking to minimize. If you are priced right an investor likely won't care, but you may lose some of the OO market if folks have specific criteria like I did.

Rashad,

I do real estate photography as a side gig and am happy to send you some photos as reference. Shoot me a message if you are interested. Otherwise, Spacecrafting is the big player in MN for real estate photography.

@Peter Ulstad great question! Very helpful to see the responses and learn from others in MN.

Jennifer Spadine runs Guardian Property Management and she's awesome.

Hi @James Shinn - nice first couple of posts! First thing, @Bruce Runn is a great guy and an amazing resource on BP (and real life if you are lucky enough to meet him).

Second, I'd say you are hunting for deal where a lot of things need to fall into place for it to work. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but it may be worth going for more of a sure thing or getting creative with financing for a pre-forclosure like Bruce suggested. 

Right now you would need 1. a motivated seller who 2. hasn't paid their mortgage and is in pre-foreclosure but 3. also put money into the property to keep it in good enough shape to pass FHA requirements for loan approval (not sure exactly how much leeway 203k gives you on these requirements) and 4. isn't aware of how hot the market is for rental property in Minneapolis so they 5. don't open it up to others to drive up the price or find cash buyers

You are on the right track and asking smart questions. Good luck on your hunt for a du/triplex

@Account Closed when you say 'transition to living off one-income' what does that look like for you? Reading your plan it sounds like you anticipate that transition to be immediate, but I'm thinking until you have a handful of properties and decent rental income you won't have enough to keep you busy full time or enough rental income to allow you to save up for future acquisitions. Any reason why you wouldn't continue to work?

@Greg Scott may be toast, gotten crusted, cooked from the start...your reply is making me hungry for brunch for some reason

@Matt Zimmerman congrats on the purchase. I very much agree with Greg that you want as much down in writing as possible. Here on BP I've read lots of stories of challenging situations that were made much worse because agreement were verbal or even just implied. I lost out on a duplex in the Kingfield neighborhood because I had a verbal commitment on my offer but by the time I had a formal offer written up (and was in the hole $450 to an attorney) the seller backed out. I just moved into my first owner occupied duplex in July so I'm still learning as I go as well. So far the biggest challenge has been finding time to get everything on my to-do list done. I'll definitely build in more room to spend money on repairs for my next purchase because trying to do everything myself is taking a long time.

I'd highly recommend Guardian Property Management. Jennifer Spadine has been super helpful in teaching me about REI from not only her perspective as a property manager, but also in connecting me to other folks in this community. She's often at MREE (Minnesota Real Estate Exchangors) meetings and is happy to answer questions.

Nice! Congrats. Hope it's the first of many successes in REI for you.

Very unique situation you have @Jackson Lee. This is exactly why BP is so cool. Awesome that @Jordan Moorhead has already responded and has insight into your challenges. Best of luck and congrats on your first place