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All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Account Closed has started 6 posts and replied 27 times.

Post: What to include in marketing to sell your rehab

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

I'm presently getting a flyer done up that I intend to mail out to people who rent within a certain radius of the property I've just finished rehabbing. I've got most of the language down for the flyer for my first time out, but I've hit a sticking point with my price. I currently have it listed like this:

"All this for only $63,000, or a monthly payment of $399.18*!" With the * at the bottom being "*Principal and interest payment on a mortgage of $60,000 assuming $3,000 down and 7% interest." My question is, should that even be included? My line of thinking is that people looking for this level of house are payment-oriented and want to see that this will be a cheap house if they can get a reasonable loan through a bank. I am also of the opinion, however, that most people won't have the credit to secure such a loan, and that I'm probably goofing in assuming that $3,000 would be an acceptable down payment to any bank. And if they get a loan at 10% that payment starts looking more like $525. Basically, I want to try to make it attractive to them while being comfortably assured that I'm not misrepresenting my property to them. Help!

One more question: The flyer also includes language about the possibility of seller financing. The house lists at $63,000 cash but I was thinking that if I'm going to be doing seller financing I would probably raise the price a bit to increase our spread for taking on the risk (I had $69,000 in my mind) and then loan the money at 10% or so. Is that acceptable, or even legal? I haven't been able to find an answer on this one in my searching. I would greatly appreciate it if somebody with experience in seller financing could chime in and guide me (or point me to the thread I must have missed on this :lol: ).

Post: A newbie from (near) start to finish

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

Hey all,

We're nearing completion on our first deal and just need to sell the property now. I thought I'd show my series of Youtube videos that took the house from the end of demolition to completion. I wish I had had a video of how it all started but I didn't have my new camera then. We goofed in several spots and put more of our own time than we should have, and probably only came in at around our budget numbers because of the number of man-hours my family and I put in the property. Still, for our first house I don't think it's too shabby. :) Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOMJz728FJg

From there you can go to the 'Part 2' and 'Part 3' vids and then the updates are just done by date in single movies. It's about 9 3-minute videos in all. I hope somebody finds it educational, or at least entertaining. :) I'll put up one more when I'm done and go over the numbers of the property in some detail along with what we learned in the process.

Post: I got a 800 and it is saving me a lot of time

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

John,

Thank you for your detailed reply. It gave me a lot more to think about in regards to what sort of services I would need. My thinking has been along the lines that some relatively significant portion of the proceeds of our first deal should be sunk into a marketing campaign to get the word out and get some better/easier deals sent our way. I think quality would be very important in an answering service, not just for the answers you get but the mood that you put potential sellers in; somebody who is subjected to a disinterested person making nearly minimum wage is not going to be flattered by such an obvious service gathering their data!

I have one more question for you though. You mention 9-5 versus 24/7 answering services. Do you find that most interested sellers call in the 9-5 range? My first impression was that they would be more likely to call after work so the highest volume would be in the evenings, but it's just a guess. Thanks again.

Post: I got a 800 and it is saving me a lot of time

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

Good points on the answering service. I've been considering it myself because my schedule is unorthodox and I don't want to miss calls just because I'm getting some rest (or sacrifice sleep to talk to folks. Any recommendations for service, or a rundown of what it costs you? Also, what area of Ohio do you work in (I'm in Dayton, myself)? Thanks again for the information; I'm looking forward to getting it set up for myself.

Post: Roofing Material!!!!

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

In my area the contractor supply houses are the way to go. Home Depot's selection is extremely limited and costs the same or more for worse material, whereas if you find a roofing supply house in your area your options open up wide and you'll get a reasonable price (and as all cash mentioned, they'll give you rooftop delivery for a reasonable price which is absolutely worth it).

Architectural shingles are nice because they're good at hiding minor imperfections. They won't help if you've got a big sag in your roof, but if it's just a small dip between the beams it will become harder to pick out. I wish our current house was so easy though. We had to take the plywood off and start from the beams on that roof. :)

Anyway, you can look for that sort of thing online but honestly the supply houses that I've seen are not looking to cater to Joe Average surfing the internet so I had to physically visit the places and try to establish an account. Even then some of them will be unfriendly if you're not a 'real' contractor. Go to several, find one that treats you decently and use them. In my experience the price differences are basically negligible between each place.

Post: Opinions on the real Estate Guru's

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

It must still work or they wouldn't be doing it, right? Much like direct mail, of which I learned a great deal about over the weekend. Jon Goldman had some excellent information to put to use, and Marko Rubel had a piece of software called Profit Grabber Pro that I was very interested in for automating the marketing process somewhat. He was probably the worst offender in the check-flashing department, but I also believed he had a piece of software worth investigating. Ultimately the only thing we actually got was Vena Jones-Cox's wholesaling system.

I'll catch you next year John. I have some interest in going out to the UK sometime anyway. Are there similar clubs out your way?

Post: Opinions on the real Estate Guru's

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

I'm freshly back from the Ohio REIA convention actually. It was excellent; lots of people there, lots of good information and some ideas I hadn't thought about, and plenty of good speakers besides. All that for a fairly cheap price (through a special, a partner and I got registered for $59). Every guru there will want to sell you something, of course, and after attending the seminars I see the old practice of flashing big checks up on the screen and claiming that you can make a million dollars with no effort still hasn't died with some of these guys. But between the vendors, the attendees and the free info gained from the seminars, it was a very positive experience.

Definitely look for courses on Ebay where you can as REI says. The bigger names (and even some of the smaller ones) will have a course available that you can buy for a rather significant discount off of list. If that fails, consider paying full price after you've got some profits from a deal. If you can wait for a conference or for them to speak nearby though, they always seem to offer better deals when they're turning the pressure up on the audience.

Post: Where to find various REI related data?

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

Thanks John. I got your e-mail and replied but I didn't hear anything back after that. I'm starting to think your e-mail system is wacky. :)

About the numbers themselves, knowing the general numbers for a neighborhood can be good if you're trying to project whether you'll need to raise or lower rents in the future, but if you're buying a house as a rental the first thing you'll need to know is whether it will make you money right now. The quick and dirty method as I learned it from MikeOH is to expect 50% of your gross rent as expenses (taxes, insurance, maintenance, vacancies, et cetera) and with the other half you can pay the mortgage on the house. Anything left over is your cash flow for the property. If it doesn't make money like that, it is likely not a good candidate. Appreciation is nice but shouldn't be considered the main goal of your property.

Anyway, you might try rentometer.com for some rents around the area you're looking it. I'm on the fence about how much I like it though. It seems like they just post whatever people put in on the start page (and I wasn't able to find a way to look at the data without submitting); I guessed at what rent on our property would be, and a few weeks later when I came back it was one of the data points. It's something, but I wouldn't rely solely on it.

Post: All Cash is moving to Colorado!

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

Very nice digs indeed. Congrats on the purchase, all cash!

Post: Where to find various REI related data?

Account ClosedPosted
  • QA Engineer
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Posts 32
  • Votes 2

The numbers you list are somewhat helpful in finding a neighborhood (and the short answer I'd give is zillow.com for some neighborhood comparisons), but I wouldn't rely on them for finding a specific deal. For each deal you need to know several numbers in particular to determine the maximum amount you can offer for a house:

ARV (after repair value) which is basically what you're going to sell it for. For that you need comparable houses, and zillow.com works okay for this as long as you're only having a look at what was recently sold. Make sure you use the filter on the side to narrow it down to recently sold houses with the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms as what you're looking at and you can get some idea of what things have been going for. A realtor can provide a better list in my experience, though.

Profit: Simply put, how much you want to make on a house. This number is subjective of course.

Rehab cost: You'll need to be able to estimate the cost to bring a house into move-in condition. Some of this is intuitive, some is learned. Most people could guess that an average water heater will ballpark something like $500, and there are some formulas for determining other items (for flooring we budget $2 x square footage of house). Sometimes a local REIA can be very helpful in this, as commercial members looking for business may be able to give you some guidance in regards to costs.

Holding costs: How much it costs to keep a house while you're working on it and before it sells. The mortgage has to be paid along with taxes and insurance until you sell it. This is dependent on how much you paid and how long houses sit on the market in your area. The first you can figure out easily with an amortization calculator. The second is information a realtor would have easy access to. You can also do some driving/walking through your neighborhood and the sheets offered in the information packets for houses have quite often had the CMOD (current days on market) number on the sheet as well as the date the report was run. From that you can just work out yourself when the house was listed. For my area, just using a much simpler formula like 1% of ARV per month is pretty close for mental calculations.

Hard money costs: Will you be getting money from a hard money lender? They're more expensive than a conventional loan but if you need money fast for an investment property they can be useful. They often charge a few points along with a higher interest rate so that causes you to come up with a different number for your holding costs.

Realtor costs: Will you sell your house by owner or use a realtor? Assume 6% of the ARV will go towards that.

So from all these numbers you can work backwards from the ARV to the maximum purchase price.

Maximum offer = ARV - profit - selling costs - holding costs - rehab costs

As you can see this formula has nothing to do with the asking price of the house in question. In my limited experience, it's just not possible to determine if a place is a deal or not by looking at the asking price and location, plus you don't know what they may or may not take. But once you can more or less figure it out in your own mind as you're touring a house, you can make an offer on every house you walk into and know that you're working a reasonable profit into any place that you potentially purchase.