All Forum Posts by: Robert McConnell

Thanks for the replies. 

Ian - I did not test the market much. I did a good amount of screening but wanted to get someone in asap as both units were vacant and I was paying back the heloc at the time. I will test the waters a bit more the next time I have a vacancy. 

I gave some thought to structuring the leases April to April. I wonder if the student rental market drives rents higher in the Spring in Albany? I am near Albany Med/Albany Law.College of Pharmacy.

Greetings,

I wanted to post the results of my first fix and hold. The property is a two family in Albany, NY. Each unit has three bedrooms and one bath. It was vacant foreclosure at the time of purchase. I used a HELOC to purchase the property "cash" and did a cash out refiniance after six months. I was able to pay back most of my HELOC debt using the refi and payed the rest out of pocket.

Purchase Price: $127,000

Rehab/holding cost:  $54,000

Total: $181,000

After Rehab Appraisal: $225,000

70% LTV cash out Refi: $157,500.

The remaining $23,500 on my HELOC I payed off so my balance is down to zero and ready to be deployed again.

Monthly Rent: Unit 1 - $1,100    Unit 2 - $1,000  

Monthly Mortgage (with tax and insurance) - 1,524

Monthly Cash Flow - $576

Lessons learned:

- The total rehab took about 8 weeks. Two - Three weeks longer than anticipated. 

- The foundation had issues which I knew would be expensive to address but these costs crept much higher than anticipated.

- Building departments can be difficult to deal with.

- The house was broken into twice while it was being worked on. On the first instance they just took copper piping I was replacing with pex anyway. On the second instance they knocked over and broke my newly replaced water heaters. Next time I will start with improved lighting and try to fortify windows and doors. 

My goal at the start of the project was to have the post rehab refi cover all the money I invested. I ended up having to leave $23,500 on the table.  

I like this strategy but would also like to move onto bigger multifamily apartment investing.  Let me know what you guys think. 

I attached a few before/after pictures below.

thanks,

Bob 

After about a year of just reading posts and listing to the BP podcasts I decided I should get my profile going.

I am a newer real estate investor in the Albany, NY area. I have one SFH rented and just closed on a 2 family buy-flip-hold project. Looking to get some increased cash flow and build long term equity.

I will post pics of my progress with the rehab.

Also, thanks to Josh and Brandon and everyone from BP. I have tapped into a lot of the information from the site. It has really helped a lot.