All Forum Posts by: Preston Gealy

We built a townhouse as an investment with rent at $2350. We got a prospective tenant and went through the vetting process. We talked to them and it seemed great!  When we sent them our lease to review, they backed out saying we asked a lot of personal questions during the background check and after looking at the lease we should consider what kind of landlords we want to be.  We are used to Class D tenants where you need lots of fees and rules to keep them from destroying your property.  Should we make our Class A lease more lenient so we don't keep scaring off tenants? 

@Bob Stevens how do you choose a good one?

@Bob Stevens I'm in with an investor who doesn't want to rent it out and just wants his money back. My thoughts are to drop and get rid of it and consider a rental with the money that we get back. Right now it seems rentals are the way to go (like investing in gold vs startups) while the market settles. Flipping has been taxing for someone with a full time demanding job. I may consider BRRRRing in the future but it may be time to retire from managing flips and rentals to just focus on rentals. The Pittsburgh contractors have really hurt my business. For me 10 out of 10 contractors are crooks.

@Oren Kachel yes the area we are in is seeing prices dropping like flies

@Michael Scott this flip is in new kensington so the market is cooler than hot Cranberry Township. I ended up lowering 10k today so we will see what happens. I partnered with another investor and he does not want to keep it. If we drop another 20k, we will break even

I have a house that I'm flipping in Pittsburgh where we listed the rehabbed house as the market started tanking. Do we drop the price to get rid of it or sit tight and wait for an upswing to make some money on it?

@Santiago Marquez I guess I need to find one of the few non crooked investor friendly agents in Pittsburgh. Might be easier to find Bigfoot...

@Eliott Elias has that worked for you? I tried that with an agent in the past and they don't seem to like that

@Eliott Elias ARV has never been off on my 5 flips that I have done so far. My issue is with contractors going way over on budget, quitting, or getting paid and not working. I am currently with a contractor that I pay week to week. We gave him a credit card to buy materials which seems to be working. The only problem is that I am not doing a good job keeping the project on budget and letting him do his thing. I have a full time job and can't be there everyday to check progress. Any ideas?

@Jeremy Taggart thank you for that great advice! I have found that buyer and occupancy inspections can really add unaccounted for costs to the project and agree that buying cookie cutter houses helps. I have received the "don't like the layout" feedback a number of times. My biggest problems have been with the Contractor. One thing that bigger pockets doesn't do a good job explaining is how to ensure that they stay on the job, work the hours they reported, keep costs as low as reasonably possible, and do a good job. I have tried contracts but they don't hold up in court with enough BS from the Contractors side. And collecting a judgment on a drug addict is impossible.

I have used General Contractors for most of mine. Right now I am paying a contractor weekly with no contract other than one to give him 10% of the profits at the end. This seemed to motivate him until costs got out of control and the idea of a profit is dwindling each day. I feel a bad estimate and scope creep are the problems which are my fault. We want to see how the profit looks on the current flip before looking for the next. This is not motivating to the contractor either.

Do you have any suggestions on how to find a contractor that you trust? I could ask other flippers who they use but wouldn't get an answer if they don't want to give them up.