All Forum Posts by: Sean H.

Massive six bedroom, three bathroom house in highly desirable Highland Park / East Liberty.

two car garage with mother in law suite above

the house is currently configured in a choppy manner and used as rental by the room

original woodwork

check out the video here

We have a 3 bedroom, 1 bath flip in the highly desirable Sewickley suburb of Pittsburgh.  It would need kitchen and bathroom updates as well as some drywall repair and paint, but there are no major mechanical problems to remedy.  It is on a very quiet street with similar style houses all around making it easy to comp.  

Here is the video of the property.

@Brian M Sweeney What part of Pittsburgh were you doing this in?

Great Move-In Ready Property On a Quiet Street

614 Chester Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15214 - $54,900

Nearby Single Family Properties in these 3 blocks tend to sell between $68,000 and $80,000

Rents estimates are $1,000 (Zillow) to $1,038 (Rentometer)

Overall the property is clean and move in ready. It has been very well maintained.

Please Note: The Reduced Price in comparison is due to the fact that the seller is looking for a quick sale. Also, there are not a lot of houses that have sold by this house in the last 3 years.

What the House Has:

• 3 Bed Rooms
• 1 Full Bath
• Large Living Room
• Great Fireplace
• Strong Foundation
• Fenced in Back Yard
• Internal Garage
• Double Lot

Houses that Sold on this Block

651 Chester Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15214 SOLD $66,300 on 6.14.2016

606 W Burgess St, Pittsburgh, PA 15214 Listed $72,000

3 RUSSELL ST Pittsburgh, PA 15214 Listed $77,000

Check out pictures and video here:

http://sth-development.com/property/614-chester-av...

The size of the home and how many people will be living there are some of the things to consider when sizing the septic system.  For a family of 4 people, we were quoted $22,000 for a sand mound up here in PA.  

I would recommend mastering one marketing channel before spreading yourself too thin.  For example, if you are going to focus on Google Adwords, you have ads and are continually running optimization tests, you have all keywords setup (including negative keywords!) and you have the systems in place to handle the lead flow that will come in from the a consistent, concentrated effort.  

What can also happen if you have a smaller budget and try a little bit in every marketing channel is that you end up not being able to invest enough into any one channel to get results.  

Pittsburgh has a lot going for it, unfortunately population growth is not one of them.  Between the local universities (CMU, Pitt, etc), large employers like UPMC, and investments by high tech companies like Uber, Facebook, Amazon there are a lot of positive things happening.  There is always a wild card of Amazon HQ2, although it is not likely for Pittsburgh.  

Like any major metro there are some downsides, like traffic, which was just rated as some of the worst in the nation.  

I do see this was posted in the mobile home forums.  In order to invest in mobile home parks you would need to head outside of the city to smaller outlying areas who could definitely be impacted by aging populations that are not being replaced.  

Great job so far. It looks like you may have set your goal a little low if you have two deals and over 60% of the way to your goal and it's not even August!

How are you compensating your boots on the ground? 

Try calling around to different property management companies.  Say you are thinking about buying in the area and get their opinion.  They don't have a dog in the fight and know the local area well.  They should be able to give you information about which areas to steer clear of.  

We put a 5 day grace period in our lease after the 1st of the month.  Even if they have communicated with us, the excuse is valid, and we agree on a payment plan, we will still post the property with a 10 day pay or quit notice.  Often times people will have the best intentions of catching up on rent, but can't for whatever reason.  If we do not post the property, we lose that time.  

Every time that I tried to be the nice guy and work with a tenant, I found myself wishing that I started the eviction process earlier.