All Forum Posts by: Frank Gucciardo

Are you planing to mortgage or do you want to pay cash $25k for a house?

A few notes on the area from my observations:

1) stay away from Newburgh, housing is cheap but it's a war zone and schools are bad

2) single family is hard to cashflow in the area because taxes are too high relevant to rental rates.  You need to be all in around 40k in order to flow and you are not getting a house that cheap that is rent ready

3) stay away from Newburgh

Ps. I'm not completely drunk. My autocorrect took over that last post.

Newburgh = war zone. I grew up there and let be 20 min away and it's a disaster. My advice is to stay as far away as possible. Poughkeepsie - I've written a few posts but I'm too lazy and full of wine and turkey to find and let's be them. The hospital is doubling in size and there are multiple colleges that drive rental demand. Stay away from the war zones though.

I've heard that the city of Poughkeepsie building department is extremely tough to work with and charge tons of fees for every little change to a property.  You may want to put a call into them and talk through your plans for the house so you can get an idea of what hurdles you will need to jump through. 

The HV never really appreciates or drastically depreciates.  The city helps to keep the area constant and unfortunately more people from the city move out of NY entirely instead of heading north. 

Also, we don't have business friendly policies in Cuomos "Progressive Paradise", so we never get the big growth that we should be getting as a benefit from being so close to the biggest city in the country. 

With that said, there are good buy and hold deals to be had because people are always looking to rent and there are decent commuting options to NYC. 

I would reach out and build a relationship before asking for leads. Invite them out for coffee and bring a two page version of your business plan along.  People do business with those they know. 

@John Weber, thanks.  Glad to hear you are locking up a deal in Kingston.  The city has some great areas, amazing history, and historical buildings.  It's certainly an area that I'm interested in expanding into eventually.  Best of luck!

Thanks everyone.. I haven't been able to get back to this thread as we've been busy getting the existing tenants on our m2m lease and creating a punch list of what needs to get done on the property.

I'm going to omit the purchase price and details for now but will circle back later on and add in.  Suffice to say the cash flow numbers are all solid and in line with the area.  Only time will tell if my extensive spreadsheets are right.

It's a brick, three family, from 1903 that was completely rented out.  we have a lot of old stock in the Hudson Valley and My wife and I actually prefer older homes since we live in one and know how to handle repairs/maintenance. Besides, they have more character than newer homes.

Due diligence showed that the tenants all paid on time every month and since we closed on 10/31 I can confirm that all have paid by 11/1 (minor victory and damn it felt good to see that first bit of cash flow).

It's going to need a new front porch (spring) and some repair and painting to the soffits which I'd like to get completed this month.  Thats about it for the exterior.  Both the roof and the heating system were replaced within the last 5 years.  The foyer needs some minor patching, a cleaning, and a new paint job.  We are not going to do anything except some minor repairs in the apartments until a tenant moves out.  All are in live able shape and really could just use an updating.

Rents are somewhat under market and we will be raising them in the spring, once we've had a chance to show the tenants that we are fixing up the place (something the previous owner said they were going to do and never really did).

Thats it for now.. more to come as we progress.  Just happy that the first one is done.  The goal for 2017 is 6 additional units.

Thanks @Ruth Bayang.  It's a buy and hold property for us.  That's our main strategy with a little flip sprinkled in to help with down payment funds.

Finally. We are closing on our first property, a three family in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York, tomorrow. Wife and I are excited but nervous. It's been three years and more than a few purchases that didn't happen for one reason or another. We couldn't have done it without this awesome site and community. Thanks Josh, Brandon, and the rest of the BP team for making tons of valuable content available. First of many.