All Forum Posts by: Travis Biziorek

Hey @Steven Graber, I haven't heard of the guy or company you mentioned. I'm local here in the Detroit area. I purchased my first 4 properties in the last three months. I'm self-managing, and I'll be buying at least four more by the end of the year.

My first bit of advice is to be cautious. I have zero knowledge of any "turnkey" operators in the Detroit market, and I'm quite active with local meetups, private Facebook groups for Detroit investors, etc. IMO the margins just aren't there for turnkey folks. I've met people that have purchased what they were told are turnkey properties only to have to put tens of thousands of dollars into them in an effort to get them rent ready. 

Search the forums, Detroit is an extremely unique market. You need someone on the ground you can build a long-term relationship with if you're planning to take investing here seriously. PMs here are also notoriously terrible. 

Feel free to reach out if you have specific questions. Happy to give you my quick two-cents on any properties you're considering. But again, I'd warn you on dipping your toe in without a bulletproof plan to acquire and manage the homes.

This is tough, @Ernest Alexander . As a purchase you aren't going to comp out each house individually, not in my opinion at least. I'd look at general info for the houses (number of beds/baths, brick or frame, etc.), then general condition and location. I also assume these homes are mostly rented? If so, what they're renting for can give you a fair bit of info too.

Your best bet is to compile this info and come up with a "per door" average price to get your total ballpark number.

This is tough, @Ernest Alexander. As a purchase you aren't going to comp out each house individually, not in my opinion at least. I'd look at general info for the houses (number of beds/baths, brick or frame, etc.), then general condition and location. I also assume these homes are mostly rented? If so, what they're renting for can give you a fair bit of info too.

Your best bet is to compile this info and come up with a "per door" average price to get your total ballpark number. 

Hi Jamila, I’d strongly suggest searching the forums for “Detroit”. There’s a ton of recent info here already, and other threads asking these same questions. 

That's just too general of a question to answer. If you have specific questions, I'd be happy to answer those. But spending a ton of time trying to cover and extremely general question doesn't make sense.

Search the forums. There's a ton about investing in Detroit. If your questions still aren't answered try posting something far more specific.

No. Absolutely not.

There are very few people that make Detroit investing work from out of state. Those that do visit often and have partnered with other local investors. I've purchased four rental properties in Detroit in the last three months. The learning curve is steep. I can't imagine not being here locally. 

Along the way I've met folks that are attempting to invest from out of state. Property managers screw them, contractor screw them, their houses are constantly being broken into, they are getting ripped off during the initial purchase, the tenants are terrible, etc. etc. The list goes on and on.

If you aren't here, or you don't have someone you can 100% trust that's already here, I'd stay away.

Nobody can tell you what you should do. That's a very personal decision based on a lot of factors you can't fully communicate. But here are some initial thoughts.

2-2.5 years is not a long time. Buying a home with the idea of selling it (at a profit) is more of a gamble than a strategy unless you buy something with the intention of doing a live-in flip. That means renovating while you live there. Trust me, this is extremely taxing on your family (I've done a live in reno). 

But if you're simply trying to buy and hold for appreciation for a 2-2.5 year period of time, it's a bit risky IMO. What if you can't sell the house for more than you paid? I suppose you could rent it, sure. But what would you do about a down payment for your new primary house in NC? Would you rent again? Not sure if that would make a ton of sense.

If you know you're going to move in just a couple years, I'd save as much as you can now. If you're itching to get into real estate investing, buy a modest home when you move to NC so you have cash left over to invest. 

I'm blushing over here, Jamiel. lol

But seriously, hit me up. We gotta hang soon. Been busy since last time we met up.

Absolutely, man. Let me know when your next one is and I'll try and make it. Saw your one last weekend on FB but didn't know about it beforehand.

Oh, Tom. Where do I begin?!

I'm a cash buyer in Detroit. I've purchased 4 properties in the last 3 months. 

I HATE wholesalers. Like legit detest them.

Most of the hate is for the reasons you say. They bring terrible, ****** deals that are priced at, or even worse, than retail stuff. Of my 4 deals I've done, 3 of them have come from the MLS. The one that was off-market came from a very reputable broker/investor that's here locally. It's what every wholesale deal should aspire to be.

But yes, 99% of "wholesalers" are people that want to get into real estate but have no money. They believe that they can make big bucks wholesaling houses to investors, so they go out and find anything they can get their hands on. It's attractive because there's basically zero barrier to entry. 99% of these guys fail because it's just not that easy.

I walked through a house with a guy trying to wholesale a property for $55,000. I knew it was overpriced, but I was still learning the market and decided to check it out anyway. He was young and this was his first deal. I was catching stuff that needed fixing in the house that he wasn't even aware of. Amazing.

As we're walking it I looked at him and said, "There is zero chance I'd buy this house, even for a price that I think is fair". So he wanted to know what I'd buy it for even if I was willing to do the rehab work it required. I told him, "Maybe $20-$25k". He nodded in silence.

So I asked, "You know I'm not buying this house, so tell me... what are you under contract for?" He says, "$25,000".

So this guy is sitting here trying to sell a $25,000 house for a $30,000 profit. This isn't uncommon with these new guys... trying to make big bucks on one or two deals. They have it backwards.

What he should have been doing was negotiating with the owner to get the house under contract for $15k and flip it to me for $20k. He makes $5k and makes it fast. He's on to the next deal. How many of those could he do in a month? Instead, he sat on this house for months, wasting his time. He never ended up selling it and the owner is going to "fix it up herself" (probably just let it continue to degrade).

So yes, the wholesaler market is over saturated. It will always be that way because there's no barrier to entry. Find a house and an owner that wants to sell, and agree to buy it from them. Then try and flip it. It's easy. But it actually isn't.

There will always be a market for GOOD wholesalers. If you want to find deals like the one I did the other week, all you need to do is find serious buyers and you'll sell them the next day. The hard part is going to be finding attractive deals. I'm happy to pay a reasonable wholesale fee for that effort.