All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

 @Mania Emami: Are you looking in Detroit the city, or in metro Detroit? Metro Detroit in areas like westland, dearborn heights, wayne, taylor and other cities are very good for renting and safe. I wouldn't recommend Detroit because its not very safe, but there are plenty of people who do invest and make money in Detroit. There are many out of state investors in Michigan and the midwest in general, so its definitely a great place to invest in.

Very nice work Diego. How much did the renovation cost? Can you give a breakdown of the cost of material and labor.

 @Andrew David Evans: Thanks for your suggestion.

I actually did drive for dollars a bit. I drove couldn't even find one house that had potential. I know I shouldn't of given up that early but it just felt like this isn't going to work. And yes you are right about the MLS, one time i found a house at a good deal and within 24 hours it had a pending offer. I think I might put up signs and try networking.

Where did you first learn about these properties? Do you advertise or have a network that sends you deals.

Ted,

When I said "so straight and clean", I meant on flips i seen on pictures. 

Thanks Dean for the advice.

I wish I could find houses for $50k. They are more like 80k.

I can see why you are frustrated Harry, since you told to him to fix it so that you have no problems with the boiler. But you need to review that statement again to understand its impossible. Surely it will have problems somewhere down the road, maybe in 1 year, maybe 10 years. Maybe to him fixing it so it doesn't have problems means that it work for a day and then you are on your own.

 I really blame the contractor since he should really explain that eventually everything breaks down. Not giving you this false feeling that everything is going to be fine. It reminds me when I was younger and looking for a used car. The salesman would say this is a great car, you won't have any problems. Then I would say ok great, can you put a two year warranty on it. Then they would say oh that will cost you 3k more lol.

Most of the houses in my market are older homes. I can't really avoid older homes. Since I'm new to flipping I don't want to invest out of state.

My problem is that I keep passing up houses because the deals never make sense. I am only using the MLS. Is that my problem. How often are you guys getting deals that make financial sense?

Hi everyone,

I am looking to do my first flip, and have seen some houses. I think I might be overestimating the cost to repair. The way I got my repair cost was just calling up local contractors putting prices of various services in an excel. I am curious to know how others estimate cost to repair.

After viewing some houses, I ran into several problems.

1. When you are remodeling a bathroom do you replace the plumbing. A lot of the houses I see were built before 1950, so the plumbing must be worn out. It would suck to remodel a bathroom, only having to tear it out when the plumbing goes bad. The problem with this is it adds significant cost and I suspect my competition wouldn’t take the extra cost.

2. Do you replace the drywall? Some of the houses look so dirty that I doubt painting over would give it any life. Some of them are like bowing inwards. When I see the pictures of other flips, the walls look so straight, so clean.

3. I noticed that brick houses looked a lot nicer. With vinyl and aluminum siding a lot of the houses looked really ugly. Replacing the siding would be very expensive.

Please share your experience and your opinions. I saw before and after of flips, but never really seen the detail of worked to create the finished product. In the Metro Detroit area I don’t think you could put in more than $30k because most houses will only sell for $120k. That’s why I really want to get my repair cost as low as needed to sell the house.

You should try the library. In Michigan we have an program where libraries can loan books to other libraries. So you pretty much have access to any book in the state of Michigan. 

Go to your local court house and they should have a form for evicting tenants and they will be able to explain what are the requirements. In Michigan If they are late paying their bill, you send them a 7 day notice. After that you can go back to court and file something that requires the tenant to attend court. Its not really hard, just go to your local court and ask. A lawyer can do the job but it will cost around $2000.