All Forum Posts by: Owen Dashner

Today I learned...  Just when I thought I knew a little bit about real estate, a post like this shows up.  Thank you for sharing this - very interesting!

I can tell you from 20 years of both corporate (IBM, ConAgra Foods, HP, Ricoh) and agency recruiting, that your real estate investing experience will not matter on your resume unless the skills and experience you have are directly relevant to the job requirements.

You can add it as a talking point, but I would not spend much time on it unless it has job relevancy (property management, acquisitions, etc).

Good luck on the gig hunt!

Why not just do it yourself? You are only (hopefully) going to have any interaction with the tenant for the next 30 days, then they will be out of your life. If you don't want anything to do with it personally, call PM's and ask, or just have your attorney as the point person until they move out.

It's difficult to answer your question because your tolerance for certain things is going to be vastly different than other people. Most things construction related can be fixed by writing a check. So the question becomes, how big of a check are you willing to write and will the deal still make sense?

Personally, I don't like buying property with major fire damage, or properties that have groundwater intrusion issues that can't be easily fixed by downspout re-routing and/or grading. 

Look for galvanized plumbing lines and Federal/Stab Lok electrical panels. You'll want to make sure that if your property has either of these, get them replaced before you lease out the property. 

1. Do it yourself 2. Have an attorney do it 3. Explain your situation to the PM you want to go with and see if they will handle. 

It depends on the PM, but some will do this for you to get your business. 

The bigger issue is, what are you going to do after the tenant moves out and there is a little or a lot of work that needs to be done to the property? Are you expecting the repairs and updates to be handled by the PM as well, or are you going to use a crew local to the property? Some (not all) PM's will handle project management for you for a fee.

Going to meetups, REIA's, etc. will be the best way to develop relationships with other investors who can give you referrals to the best contractors. At the very least, join and be an active participant in your local FB investor groups J Scott also has a great (if a little dated) book on estimating rehab costs in the BP bookstore.

You can certainly have a contractor walk properties with you to give you a ballpark idea on costs, but I would not expect them to do it for free.

You might consider partnering with another multifamily investor with experience in rehabs. This will allow you to learn from them as well as mitigating your risk on making bad decisions.

Good luck!

Welcome to BP and congrats on getting started!

Yes, do it if the property will cashflow enough after debt service. As Joe mentioned above, you are going to have a hard time doing this with a conventional loan.  Use commercial financing and you can do this over and over again if you buy good enough deals.  Lots of commercial lenders do not have a seasoning period for the refi. Will rates be higher?  Yes. Will you likely have a shorter fixed period for your rate and a shorter amortization period? Yes. Should you do it anyway if the deal is good enough and the property still cashflows? Also yes.

Almost everyone ends up using commercial debt eventually, don't let it be the obstacle that stops your growth.

Sorry, accidentally tagged Jesse instead of @Sawyer Dina in my last post. #sausagefingers

@Jesse LeBlanc why do you say that hard money doesn't make sense for this situation? My HML biz has a lot of customers that wholetail using this exact method. I'm assuming your HML must have points and/or a minimum hold time of more than 1 month? Not all HML's have these loan requirements - you may want to check around for other options.

You could also fund with: A policy loan from a cash value life insurance policy, a line of credit (yours or someone else's), use asset hypothecation to get a LOC (basically using an asset of someone else's to collateralize the loan, giving you access to the LOC directly), borrow money from friends/family/private lender in exchange for a flat fee, Get a HELOC on your primary residence to fund the purchase, offer the seller some additional money to delay the closing for a month, use a lease-option instead, take over the property subject to the existing financing (if applicable), offer another investor some equity in a future deal in exchange for funding this one, etc., etc.

If paying points is the only hangup you have with using hard money, just look at the points as a line item. Meaning, wouldn't you spend $2500 (or whatever the points amount to) to make $40K? I would if it was my quickest, easiest funding option.