All Forum Posts by: Travis D.

Thanks Michael! Good to hear from someone in RE that has lived in the area. 

We heard from our family that the Carbondale area would be good for rental properties, I just don't believe we are ready $$ wise to get into rental properties quite yet. One of our main goals is to get out of the corporate world and become financially independent doing RE. While Jessica has a very good career at 3M, it is a very taxing life on her and my business fixing cars has been slowly getting worse and worse income wise, so we have been thinking its time for a change. I can do just about anything home repair wise so home rehab is looking to be our best bet for first getting our feet into RE. 

Thanks for the info on the coal mining and union workers work force, that seems like some very solid information. Your dead on, the prices in the area and surrounding areas all seem very low. Is it a "depressed" area in general I wonder? If there aren't many jobs how would people buy houses? We also have our doubts on how hot the RE market is in those areas. I think it may be "hot" compared to what they are used to in their area but nothing like how it is up here in MN or other parts of the country. Here in MN we had a friend sell their home this year within 6 hours of putting it on the market and another friend sold theirs the first day on the market for $10k over asking price, in my opinion that is just too HOT... 

Thanks again Michael, we love getting out hiking so if we do move down to Southern Illinois we will be out there for sure, and the wine trail also sounds pretty interesting. Blessings to you and yours. 

Hi guys, thanks for chiming in. Yeah the MN market is so hot that what can be found for deals seem to need some serious, serious rehab 75k+. In some cases I would almost think knock down and rebuilding would be a safer option with these properties. 

Also we have been digging into the blogs, podcast and other areas of BP. BP really is a great place to soak up a ton of information. Also been reading the J Scott book on flipping houses and that has been great as well. 

Hi My name is Travis, my wife's name is Jessica and I am posting from the great state of Minnesota. Just getting into RE and looking to learn a bunch on BP! So glad to be here getting to know this awesome community of RE professionals .  

Long story is me and my wife are looking to go into RE full time, leave our job/current business and get into rehabbing houses. And maybe later on get into rentals or development. Our current home we have been in for 2 years and its currently worth about $395K, we bought it low at $267k. We have $245k left on the mortgage, so there is a good chunk of tax free money to be made if we sell. We also have about $40k in cash and another $35k in a 401k account. 

The problem we have been trying to work around is MN property values have skyrocketed in the last few years. We would be hard pressed to make much happen in the area. We have family down in southern Illinois (Carterville/Marion area) and from what we have researched SFR's are selling for pretty cheap down there. We just don't know if its a good area to try and flip houses in. Our family says that the market is "hot" if you can find homes in the "desired" school district around there, but that's about all we know besides what the prices are on realtor.com and trulia etc. The family did just build a house in that area last spring so I think they may know something about the current market.

Our plan so far sounds like it would consist of: buying a home for cash to live in, somewhere in the $75k range + or -, nothing fancy just a "home base", something needing remodeling. And then try and get going on flipping SFR's worth $130k or so. My wife has a college degree but the job opportunities aren't available in southern Illinois like here in MN so it doesn't look like we would really have any income coming in, so we would have to save some of our money as backup for a year of expenses, but owning the house free and clear would keep expenses pretty low, and we wont have any car loans to pay either. Jessica would be getting her RE license right away, so there could be some potential income there but most likely it would just be for the resources available with the RE license.

Any and all advice or ideas are welcome and HI ALL!