All Forum Posts by: Shane H.

Hello,

I'm looking at refinancing our SBA loan debt this summer or fall - and looking at obtaining an FHA Sec 232 loan or I've seen there are some Fannie/Freddie loan programs as well depending on the lender.

I like the fact these are non recourse with carve-outs and depending on the loan can be assumable and with far better interest rates for the life of the loan.

However I'm a bit paranoid about the controls the lender would have over myself/our business and how much it would cost to have audited financial statements.  My accountant quoted $5-10k as he has a couple clients that have to have them done and of course he's familiar with our books and knows the complexity.

Anyways - would be great to connect with someone who has experience in this arena and has obtained one of these loans.

Thanks!

@Alexandra Hughes Pailet    Will look forward to details.  There is a national convention for the health care assoc I belong to the same time as this one.  Maybe I can make 2021 if the dates arent the same.

@Alexandra Hughes Pailet @Mindy Jensen

I know this is probably way too premature to ask but have you thought about where 2021 conference will be?   

Have you asked why they want to sell and what they plan on doing once they sell?   May give some motivations for the goal they want to reach.

@Luke Moore    

If you haven't chosen your flooring yet here's what I've learned -- Our place is much bigger (twice the size - 36 beds but can really hold more if we wanted )    and much older.

Anyways some things I've noticed on LVP -- pay the extra for commercial grade stuff (IE like what will go in a hospital)   It has a much thicker mill/wear layer on top - but will be $5-7 a sq foot for material - pricey but longevity wise should be worth it - that is what we will be putting in all our common areas.   Since our bathrooms are VERY small (place was built in the 60s) compared to likely the size of your bathrooms I've put residential LVP in there since it really doesnt get walker or wheel chair traffic.   

If your bathrooms are bigger and will see it - Should definitely think about going with commercial grade/hospital grade LVP stuff they'd put in a grocery store or on the floor of a hospital wing if you've been to any to do marketing you should be familiar with what I'm talking about.

One of my flooring suppliers pointed out to me that the High end commercial grade stuff does not have the "texture" that the residential pieces do - it maybe can detract from the look but there is a practical reason for it - with heavy foot traffic (wheel chairs & walkers) they will constantly catch the edges of the textured stuff and it will wear much quicker and unevenly - also will make it difficult to maintain as dirt/stuff can get ground into the crevices of the texture.mmm

If you want to see what wheel chair & walker traffic can do to a floor in short order I'd be glad to show you our place...ha - we have old school VCT floors in our hallways and everytime after we get it waxed/maintained it looks good for about 3 days then bam - gets a lot of marks on it again and begins to look dull quickly. When I choose my LVP floor I hope I pick a color that hides a lot of that.

I'm going to be putting heaters in our common bathrooms hopefully soon - your new build probably wont be an issue - but a big complaint we've gotten in the winter at our resident council is they dont want to take showers when the bathroom is cold which is valid.  I dont like that either at my personal house so I understand where they are coming from.   We take HCBS so get compensated on what we do for the residents so skipping out on showers can be a bad thing not only for hygiene reasons but for reimbursement reasons.    How your bathrooms will feel I'm guessing is all dependent on what HVAC system you be installing - as I'd guess the bathrooms will "feel" cold in the winter since you are slab construction and further north than us.

What kind of HVAC system are you using?     Are you using a mitsubishi multizone ductless system?   I'm going on a limb and guessing Iowa regs are similar to KS in that each resident must be able to control their heating/cooling within a certain temp?   (I should have it memorized but I think they must be able to set temp down to 70 something or as high as 80 something -- anything outside those ranges  you could block out for efficiency reasons if you wanted to)

Since our building is so old with no central HVAC the Mits ductless system is what I'm going to install in our common hallway areas - what kills me is the cost of the return air.   Probably costs much less to install in a new build.  

Here's an example of how rewarding this can be --- hopefully there is no one that is of Santa Believing age reading this forum -- ha

Our Washer died at the facility - I had to run and buy one at Lowes - the guy that helped me looked like St Nick - somehow we got to talking and he in fact played santa -- so we booked him -- he'd never came to a senior living center before - so it was new to him too - we advertised a family event online - didnt know how many people would come - 

Our Nurse is AWESOME at decorating - I handed over the business card to her, our exec dir and our activities dire - and said spend away - they have our place looking really Christmasy - and set up our TV room with a spot for Santa to sit, tree the whole 9 and made 20 gift bags for kids -- All of our residents but 4 (we have 33 or 34 now - cant remember the census) participated in some form or another which is an amazing participation rate for us - the smiles --- DAMN that was rewarding - I didnt know if they'd like it or not - they are often forgotten on the holidays -- our residents with heavy dementia even responded well and lit up with Smiles -- We took Santa around to the few rooms of folks that couldnt make it down to the activity room for 1 on one --- He wants to come back next year and we will set it up.

Check out our FB -- we have photos there --- those are the little things that make it worth it.  I still have plenty of stress and risk - but this beats my crappy 9-5 I had any day of the week.  Worth all the sacrifices we made to get here.

Just dont be a greedy heartless bxstard. As for experience I didnt have any save for learning from someone for a week, and what I learned from exposure via my wife who was a CNA/CMA (she's graduating from nursing school this Sunday!! Cant wait) So it can be done - but I got lucky and the business had an executive director with lots of experience who stuck by me. I've tried to treat her very well.

Your staff are the key and appreciating your staff/taking care of the residents and placing them #1 is the key to success.  We've been doing ok - I've been in it over 2  years now - that's my .02 --- the out of state corps that buy here and suck every dollar out just have unhappy employees and will have high turnover and develop bad reputations.

How you treat everyone and tell your story is the basis for how I'm trying to be successful (We use Facebook and maintain a good reputation so get lots of word of mouth -- I spend money on FB ads, a Social Media/Marketing firm to handle photos/bulk of the social media and about $600 a mo for old school radio on a station that skews to the children of 80-90 yr old parents)   I had to work up to this advertising budget by fixing a hole host of other things but working so far - I haven't been in it long enough to declare myself a success.   Our team has been what's made or broken us - we've gotten a much improved one from the day I took over.   We still have lots of room left myself included to get better - but it's an everyday grind.

Do not believe the bs you read on here - this is not a get rich quick scheme and it's not hands off - if you leave it to someone else to manage they wont care and it will show.   Great appreciated Staff are everything!

@Luke Moore  Did you do radiant heat on the sidewalks (or drive) and in the "community" shower room (if you have one)?

The latter for snow and the other for comfort in the winter.

@Rick Rascoe   Yes we did buy.  Closed on the transaction Oct 2017.   Lots of issues to work on and I've been reinvesting lots of money back in the people, facility (rooms, technology, equipment etc)   

Going into 2020 we have one more big project to tackle then knock on wood all that's left is some more capital improvements and fine tuning our processes/adding benefits etc.   

We could probably make more money if we operated like some of the out of state people who dont care and just rape and pillage but I like having happy staff and not having to stress when I'm not there.  (as much).   Want to expand - I think after our next big project is completed that I mentioned we will have mostly everything down that I want to transfer on to the next one.

If you search for my name I'm sure you can find some replies I've put about the topic - take it with a grain of salt - I'm still learning lots and have plenty to learn, but we've made it 2 years as a team and I think have made great strides over the previous ownership.  Also I did hit my goal of being self employed so that's a win.  

@Michael Ndjondo makadi   Here's my .02 fwiw -- Do you have to live in San Diego?  If it makes you happy I've adopted the Gary V mindset and hey great for you --- but if it doesnt make you happy and you dont need to live there for status, job reason etc - then move.

Who the heck wants to pay $1900 a mo in rent?   There are many places in the US that you can rent for $500-600 a mo and get a liveable place - on up to $1k a mo.   You can also buy a dump and live in it and sacrifice.  You must be willing to do what most others aren't going to do to get ahead.   But it all really matters what you want in life and are willing to sacrifice to get it.   If you want the nice apartment/house etc, new cars beautiful weather then you must be prepared to pay for it and if you do not have enough extra income to invest that is due to the choices you've made.   But again it all boils down to happiness and how bad you want something.

I'll toot my own horn a minute - I never made more than $60-65k for the most part in a W2 job and for the past 7 years have supported a wife/1 child on that - was able to slowly get some rentals -- not perfect investments but they've paid for themselves - knowing the payoff would be long term.  Moved a few places - went back to what I called home (Wichita) then again wanting to make changes we left our fully remodeled house we never had the pleasure of enjoying as it was under remodel when we left and moved to a complete shxt hole that is dated back to the 70s was dirty and full of bugs and with some land that was a complete overgrown jungle - we could have bought a nicer house but I wanted to keep it very affordable and lower our stress  --- the house was also 2.5 hours away from family to pursue our business purchase.  I do NOT like the house we live in - like the land - like the low mortgage payment but we're willing to sacrifice this otherwise we wouldnt have been able to get a 7 figure SBA loan to purchase our biz.   We drive old cars, I dont buy new clothes on the reg etc -- things have slowly started to get better and I anticipate them to over time but really the material stuff doesnt matter -- if our business is a success and pays off later no one will know the sacrifices we made to get there -- you must be willing to do that and turn your life upside down to get what you want.  If you're not willing to do that and happy where you're at that's awesome too.  Either way it all boils down to what you want and what will make you satisfied and but most importantly you must take action.