All Forum Posts by: Steuart Wright

Contact your mortgage company and ask for a Streamline Refi. I just finished one that took my loan from 4.75% to 3.85%. It's saving me over $100 a month. You'll be able to cash flow more per month and ride the savings until the 20k debt is gone. Use the other 20k to leverage another property. 

@Stephanie Cabral great advice, very much appreciated! I guess you're right, reserves are important to have in case of emergency and unforeseen circumstances. I'll just have to wholesale the first few deals I find :/ . Thanks for all the info!

Congrats Stephanie! This is a very inspiring story, makes me want to start looking for HUDs immediately! A couple questions:

- How much did you bid? I know you said it was listed @ $85k but how much did you bid?

- Did you put in the full $12k for rehab or did the $5000 your lender saved you bring your cost down to $7k?

- Did the hard money lender require you to have a certain amount of money in reserves aside from the private money loan? In other words, could you literally have had no money on hand to finance the deal? 

Thanks for sharing!

Hey Kelly,

Welcome to BP. I'm an investor in Northeast Philly. From what I've heard thus far, good(reliable) contractors are tough to come by in this city when you're not doing a million deals a month. Nonetheless, they're out there. If I hear anything I'll send the info your way. Good luck!

@Eleena de Lisser I wasn't able to make this event, but I wish I could've been there. Do you hold regular events like this in the city?

Awesome story, thanks for sharing. Would love to see the spreadsheet you made. Keep us posted on what you decided to do with house!

Welcome to BP Yvette!

I currently live in one half my duplex in Northeast Philly. 20k is more than double what it took for me to close but my house was only $121k. I hope those numbers give you a frame of reference. I think you have more than enough to get started my only advice is to KNOW YOUR NUMBERS make sure you're making a good investment. BP is a great place to help you figure out how to do that. Happy house hunting! :)

@Angela Henderson yo go 'head, keep it up!!

@Michael Enriquez I think single family owners still have to pay for garbage(people in Philly call it trash lol) but I know that since I live in part of my duplex I only pay half which ends up being $150 a year.

@Tiffany Campbell I'm not sure on the specifics of the expenses, my job was done once it got rented. Lawn/snow removal is on the tenant. If I had to take an educated guess I'd say water, garbage, property management, taxes, capex and vacancy are probably his expenses. Most of which you should budget for in any rental property.  

@Tiffany Campbell Hello there, I read your welcome post, I too am a transplanted New Yorker, grew up upstate(Schenectady), went to school in Philly, moved to brooklyn in 2011 and moved back to Philly last year. Currently living in one of the two apartments in my duplex, studying the Philly market and looking to continue buying and holding. 

One of my RE hustles has me finding tenants for rental properties for some of my mentors. One of the most recent houses I got rented was in Lawncrest. I'm not sure about the whole of Lawncrest but this block was very quiet, close to Rising Sun, 2(ish) bed 2 bath getting $1200/month with some very solid tenants. You'll hear this alot about Philly, it very much a block to block city. One block may be sketchy, 2 blocks over might be Gold. 

All that to say, do your due diligence, walk/drive the areas and learn which blocks are good and which blocks aren't. 

Good luck!