All Forum Posts by: Samuel S.

Bienes,
Easy way to check the mark up is to ask some good questions. First check what car is he driving. If it's $40k pick up truck, his overhead goes up and mark up will be higher. Ask about his office. If he has an office building, if yes here is your next overhead cost. What about employees? Secretary, how many full time employee, accounant etc etc. I'm GC myself and loaded with work just because of my overhead at minimum, right scheduling and planning and the lowest material coast on the east coast. You can find out where he would go for materials, if local homedepot or lowes I can assure you that his material prices won't be too low. A lot of GC subcontract they work as well. You might want to see if he will be on the job site, or he will just "send some guys" to do the job. As you see there is a lot to the question! Good luck!

Thank you all for great replies. Very thoughtful. Rich, even though we're in downturn i did manage to grow my company. I work in couple states (Washington DC, VA, WV, FL, GA, PA) and usually manage to have 2 - 3 projects the same time. I do live in lawrenceville, GA though 30045 and I'm barely home (my wife don't like that too much). Never thought about duplex or triplex and wouldn't mind leaving next to the tenants Jon :) (or maybe I still don't understand what it means to live next to your tenants :). Rich, I don't understand though why did you say to re-finance after fix up? I don't find much duplex or triplex in atlanta though, do you have any suggestions for that?
Jon - any advice how to find those good dumpers in atlanta area? Should I go with any realtor up here, or just go to auction place or some website I don't know about :) Also I found lots of HUD homes for sale, all the realtors claim they paid by seller so they don't make any comission from you. Some homes are priced pretty low and they look like a good deals. The reason realtor told me to wait till november with buy because of craziness around tax-credit last two weeks when everyone tried to close to qualify, and homes down here in lawrenceville (in $100k range) were getting up to 30 offers usually 8k - 10k higher than the listed price.

Can anyone advice what they would do if it was their start up in current economic downturn?

Hello everyone!
My name is Samuel, I'm 24, and married. I found the forum after countless hours of searching through different website like metrobrokers.com, hud.gov, bidselect.com, georgiamls, craigslist.com and more :) for property. Thank you for everyone who contributed their time to make that forum such a great place of advice I'm more looking for a word of advice from some of you, EXPERIENCE people :) I'm in commercial construction, own the company with this year gross sales hitting $1mln. I managed to save up so far $42,000 this year, pay of the car, wedding :) and all credit cards. My wife is working on W-2 and she is the one able to get a loan (I'm 1099, with thought of switching to W-2 next year) I heard a lot of people talking about buying property straight from the bank and bargain for it. I know couple realtors who adviced me to wait for the tax credit to end, when the selling will cool off a bit (I'm first timer). What would you advice me? I live currently with my wife's parents in Atlanta, GA (my father in law working for me) and I'm helping with all the bills. I have couple options. Can buy property for rental and keep living with the parents, buy property that needs some work done on it, fix it up and resell it or buy a house/townhome (something up to $120k), live in it, pay it of in 2 years and than buy something else (having equity already)