All Forum Posts by: Robert Myjak

@Alex Furini

@Zackary C Dunn

I’ve been watching YouTube videos and it’s given me a better understanding. I read (and try to understand) building codes and city ordinances, and without getting hands on, it’s harder for me to learn only by video/reading. I’ve gone to the city a few times for help, but they are so swamped and when they did “help” me, it felt counter productive because I waited for 3 hours (walk-in, not an appointment) and the employee was a little rude/condescending.

I’ll definitely have to check out and see if they offer any of those classes/meetings because that would be great.

Thank you both for your input!

My partner and I live in San Diego. We live together and she owns the house. Its a 3 bed/2 bath with a detached single car garage. We're currently house hacking and looking at turning the garage (about 275 sq ft) into an ADU. We're starting to get quotes for the conversion, and it's coming in a lot of money. We believe it will increase the value of the house and there's plenty of equity to refinance and recoup the money spent; but we're trying to save that money to reinvest into something else.

We are DIY'ers and we both work m-f 9-5 jobs, so putting in sweat equity isn't a deterrence for us while we save and learn valuable skills. With that being said, does anyone have any experience hiring a contractor/gc to "baby" us through the process (show and help us to pull permits, how to run proper plumbing, framing etc) from start to finish? We want to do the work ourselves (our own labor, we pay permits, we buy materials etc) to save the money and gain the experience/knowledge and we're willing to pay for their time. We just don't quite know how to approach it and to determine what would be a fair price (one example was his price was about 62K for the architectural plans, permits, labor, materials, demo)

I was trying to find other articles online about these kinds of ventures, but didn't turn up anything; so I figured some of you fine folks might have some insight into this. Thanks!

Alright, not to self: don't click on a profile after having written a response and before posting reply, haha. so, @Ali Boone I know there isn't much room for appreciation, but the 12-19 per cent does sound appealing. I guess I would have to run the numbers to see if I would recoup that money faster, or if it would make enough financial sense.

@Lee Ripma I'm still learning how to differentiate between the classes of property and neighborhoods, but not many gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling about their location. Of course, just about anything out of state I'm not familiar with, so it's hard to know the market for me starting out. Those are really good points you made, but I never really thought of the quality of work. Without being there to inspect the property (pre or post rehab), there's no way to definitively know the condition of it. I'm very hands-on, and I think I would have some kind of anxiety of not knowing the condition of the property, haha.

@James Wise I'm not implying that enough people aren't interested in them. I just happened to see a lot of properties that are either MFR or SFR that need no repair, are already occupied and offered 12-19% (give or take a percentage point or two). I'm sure that as time goes on and I track them a more frequently, Ill start to see the trend.

@Jonathan Oh I understand what you mean in terms of diversification. Ill keep that in mind and see how things go in my local market before I look at spreading to other areas.

After a few weeks of browsing the site and reading the forums almost daily, it's time to get my feet wet and start asking some questions. I live in San Diego and my market is kind of tight for investment properties. While I am actively search for deals and start networking here, I don't want to limit myself to only San Diego. I see some people talk about turnkey properties, and there's a marketplace on BP for them; but with those 12%-19% ROI's, why aren't more people interested in them? I understand that not everyone may have the cash/resources to put those down payments of 20%-25%, and not everyone wants to invest in an unfamiliar area/market; but for everyone else, why aren't they getting scooped up?