All Forum Posts by: Andy M.

@Jordan Lee Love seeing posts from local guys. If you want to try your hand at property management I'll let you "intern" with some of my properties. :)

@Skyler Smith I flip in Ogden. A lot of investors in Northern Utah have a  love/hate relationship with Ogden. I made 40k earlier this year on a flip in Ogden, and I've had friends who have broke even or lost money. Ogden is definitely a place where you need to know EXACTLY what part of town you are in. South of a certain street, or west of another and you are looking at different values. You really need to educate yourself if your going to flip there.

@Jay Hinrichs Good points. I would say the profit was a combination of: 

1. Buying right

2. Adding square footage and doing the RIGHT remodel (vision)

3. Getting things done for less

You're right, there isn't much talk about getting the max profit for the seller, but as self interested people, they sell for their own reasons and it isn't always about money. I definitely see what I do as a wholesaler as a service and not deceiving people out of their equity. I've never bought a house from someone who didn't want to sell it. 

Thanks for opening up some interesting conversation!

@Jay Hinrichs I've struggled with that same thing. I buy a lot of houses wholesale and I definitely try to be fair to the sellers. This "little old lady" that you see in the video was actually a 1/5 owner, she was one of the only ones who lived local so I only met with her. I can assure you that they knew exactly what they were doing. That was why it took so long to actually purchase it. They (the group of owners that she represented) called all of my references. They wanted two things: 1. A fair value for the house. 2. To make sure that the home could "live on" through another family living in a fixed up home. 

Although $113,000 was a good price to purchase the house at, we added value through a lot of work and expertise. This remodel would have cost others with lesser contacts 200k ish or more. Plus, as you know, remodeling a house is an art, not a science. Choosing the finishes and look will make or brake you. With this home we also added value through finishing the basement and upstairs square footage. Finishing the attic the way we did (I don't know if you noticed, but we literally created a new staircase in the front of the house so the upstairs "master suite" could be accessed) really added a lot of value. 

When it was all done she walked back through the house in tears, hugged us, and loved the house. There was a for sale sign in the front yard for 500k and she didn't bat an eye at it. She was THRILLED at how we handled the project. :)

Good question though.

@Will Barnard Good question. I always look at people's "Net" numbers and feel the same way. I didn't incur any money costs on this deal because we didn't borrow any, I guess you could tack on opportunity costs, but I didn't. Commissions were $18,690 (we paid the listing agent less than full commission). Seller concessions were $4654, and property taxes, insurance, utilities, and other misc stuff rounded out the field. Hope that helps.

@Aaron Mazzrillo What's up buddy? Thanks for the compliment. I'd trade this deal for your Mobile home park deal. :)

I had a seller contact me directly from a mailer that I sent him. He had a property listed on the MLS for $125,900 and it had been listed for awhile. The house was really beat up. I really wasn't that interested so I just offered the seller where it was worth it to me.... $31,800. He didn't take my offer at first but he called me back a week later and I met with him and signed it up. His agent found out about it after his client had signed up the offer and he tried to talk him out of it, but it was what the seller wanted to do. For the record, the listing agent did get a commission on the sale. :)

That was definitely the craziest drop i've ever seen.

I totally agree with @Brian Burke and what you are seeing in the Utah market reflects what he said about "amateurs bidding up prices". The MLS is drying up, but the market is good and everyone wants to be a flipper. People are definitely bidding down the returns on flips and if you are inexperienced you could get burned.

Educate yourself, get lined up with someone local who is doing the business and they can cut your learning curve. Best of luck!

@Katie Neason Thanks, I love watching it just to see my kids faces and comments. I read books to them every night and it looks pretty much just like that. Good luck out there in Texas!

Robert, I flip in Northern Utah all of the time. The determination as to weather or not a property is "flip able" is more on the spread you get when you purchase the property. Most flips will make great rentals (as long as they are starter home flips), but buy and hold numbers don't make for great flips. 

@Account Closed You're right, the home runs definitely make the roller coaster ride of real estate investing worth it. I'm still chasing the 100k wholesale deal! :)