All Forum Posts by: Kate H.

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing. Some people pay thousands for a guru to teach them about REI, you earned $12k for your education, great job!

Interesting perspectives guys! This is an REO and the bank came in and fixed some stuff (new garage doors, paint inside etc.) so maybe they patched up the roof as well. Could be the reason why the roof seems to be in great shape, but that we still see those issues inside.

Chances are pretty slim that we even get this property under contract, even by offering list price and going all cash. It's so competitive right now. The educational value of looking at stuff like this and discussing it with professionals like you guys is priceless though! 

@Larry K. It's a single story house, no basement, build on a slab. Not sure about the drainage though! Definitely something to look into.

@Mark Elliott Thanks for the offer, but I doubt you're willing to travel >1000 miles to come and see it ;) Property is located in Florida (we're relocating soon).

@Pat L. This house is in SW Florida though, so no ice build-ups there! We're relocating to Florida soon.

@Geoffrey Hoffman The house was build around that time, however, I don't think it's Chinese Drywall since the copper wire in the electrical outlet right next to the affected area looked fine.

Good info @Colleen F.! 

Thanks for all the tips. So you guys think it could still be a roof issue, even though the problem is at the bottom of the drywall? Roof seems to be in good shape, but something is definitely going on. 

One strange thing though is that the same issue is apparent in two rooms on opposite sides of the house but facing the same side (west), it's pretty much perfectly "mirrored", for lack of a better word, so I'm thinking a construction issue.

Will definitely do our due diligence (if we even get it under contract!) and keep pricing in mind.

Thanks for all the replies! 

The fact that a similar thing is in two different locations/rooms worries me and points to that it's perhaps not an isolated problem. It's a relatively new house ('04, concrete block structure) but the house already needs a lot of repairs. We're trying to determine what to bid on the house (if anything at all) taking into account these issues, and how much we should discount our bid. 

One of the houses we're looking at has some strange drywall issues (mold?). Has anyone seen anything like this before? It's in two different locations in the house, both facing the outside wall although there are no apparent issues from the outside. Does anyone know if this could be a serious problem or perhaps an easy fix? We're unfortunately not able to see it in person so our realtor provided us with these images.

We're still very new at this and appreciate any imput!

Up close

Hi @Brittany Tucker 

First of all, congrats on finishing college! Smart move. 

Like you, we are also in the early stages of REI in the North Port area. Just looking at the pictures, I knew I had seen them before! This property (and others) has also been on our radar as well. I really like the North Port area and perhaps we can meet up some time and discuss investing.

If you can't sell the property after rehab, what are your other exit strategies? Do you have enough saved for any other major costs coming up ($1400 for unforeseen expenses seems a bit low) or for longer holding costs? Are you planning on doing the reno yourself?

@Andrew Ramler

 Thank you for keeping us updated. What a crazy story. What happened with your tenants, did you terminate their leases? Glad to hear the settlement worked out at least!

Start using websites such as Mint to track your expenses (they have an app too, all for free). Knowing what you spend your money on is so important and Mint sort of does it automatically and groups it into different categories. It's not perfect but good enough to get started.

I have to agree with Scott about your grocery budget. There are probably a lot of ways to cut costs first without worrying about your grocery bill too much. A cool website for affordable and healthy home cooked meals is BudgetBytes, look it up. She calculates the costs per ingredient and gives a total per recipe and so on.

Looks amazing!! Congrats, you really did an awesome job.