All Forum Posts by: Christos Philippou

I've done a decent amount of reading about CAP rates and how they really shouldn't even have any attention paid to when you're only dealing with a few units in a building (1 to 3 or 4?). In order to come up with a good offer, I'd take a few things into consideration:

How much you're monthly payment will be (if any) including mortgage, taxes, insurance, expenses, etc.

How much the rent is currently, is there any room for improvement?

From here, you can figure out how much you'd like to receive each month after expenses etc. If you're okay with breaking even, cool. If you require $500/mo, youll have to try and make that work. Another really quick way and complete rule of thumb is the 2% rule. You should aim to have your monthly rent be 2% of the purchase price. If you pay $100,000 for a house, you should get $2,000 in rent each month. It seems that this 2% can be really difficult to get, but that's your goal to shoot for I guess.

I have one at 2.1% but with higher expenses and one I'm developing that will be 1.6% hopefully.

Who is Donald Trump?

I just bought an electronic deadbolt lock for my primary residence to try it out. They ranged from $50-120. I picked a medium/upper one since it was my primary residence and wanted to see how they are. They are AWESOME. I frickin love it.

I never leave my house with a key now. Granted, I have the key to the deadbolt in the garage just in case the battery goes. I will probably be placing a few for tenants. Tenant can never get locked out now. 

The one I got says "If you do 15 actions a day on the deadbolt, the batteries will last 1 year." Not too shabby.

The city isn't going to a thing... if nobody is living there and it isn't inhabited, why does the city care? If the neighbor is that stubborn and isn't going to budge, cut out the headache and just rent it for a 1 year lease and see where ti goes from there.

Battling with the city (which isn't going to do anything) and battling the neighbor (which will probably upset him more and make him even MORE stubborn) is just going to make everything worse. Rent it out, get a thousand bucks a month or whatever it is and wait a year and see what's up then.

I just cringed reading your post about the painting haha. My wife and I bought our primary residence a month or two ago. We were still running our lease out at an apartment when we closed, so we had time to make some repairs etc. before we moved in.

I figured I would paint the whole house myself, since I did NOT want to spend thousands (or whatever it costs) to paint an entire house. Omg... still having nightmares about how long it took haha. Sanding every wall, taping out everything... cutting in... make it stop! lol

I think too many people get butt hurt these days. If you want to lose money, sure, submit your "best offer" and over pay. There are so many deals to be had on the market, why would you EVER worry what somebody is going to think about you if you make a lower offer. Get over yourself.

House was listed for $65k, we offered $25 and signed the purchase agreement within 24 hours of our original offer at $40. But go ahead and submit your "best offer" then try and negotiate down from there, ha.

Turns out the building is condemned by the city. I requested a copy from the city for the reasons. Some small stuff, some larger stuff: Smoke/carbon monoxide detectors Cleaning throughout Removal of noxious odor Fix leak in wall and ceiling Repair damages/ holes on interior walls Remove mold Insect treatment Etc... I smell a deal coming.

The small wins in real estate certainly need to be celebrated, especially with new investors and real estate professionals.

I purchased my primary residence on a nice "quieter" street in the city about 2 months ago and have been loving it. We bought it for $128. Since then, another flip across the street is currently for sale for $135, and another a few houses up for $130. There is one house though, in particular, that caught my eye. It's directly across the street from me and appears to have been vacant for many years.

Yesterday, out of curiosity, I wanted to see how far I could get with some googling. I did a parcel search and found the owner. Owner seems to be deceased though and possibly co-owned by a relative. Did some more googling on the property and found an old related court case, listing 2 owners (husband and wife). Seems like the passing of the owner triggered some kind of court settlement to pass on to the kids.

After more googling, linkedin, and FB searching, I found the owner. Shot her a message and said hey, if you are the owner of this place, let me know! I would love to go take a look at it and see what we can come up with.

Several hours later, boom. Email provided, she explained the situation and said I can go take a look at it at any time. Now, this place is  certain to have problems as it's been vacant for years. But definitely excited to see what's in store! There are always leads to be found!

I'm not too sure about the taxes on Long Island, but I'd be willing to be significantlyyyyyy higher than Delaware, just btw. Most town homes in Delaware (Wilmington specifically) have property taxes under $1,000. It's stupid cheap here in Delaware for property taxes. It's great

I love Delaware. Went to school here at UD and made fun of all my friends who were born and raised he and never left, but ended up buying a house and staying here too. We are a few properties into our investing portfolio and love the wilmington area. DELREIA is great has a lot of valuable information on there. Lots of friendly people to help answer questions. If you have your eyes on a few areas, neighborhoods, or properties shoot me a message and I can give you some info with boots on the ground here.