All Forum Posts by: Wendell Butler

@Niyi Oyeniyi Our team over at Envoy has experience doing these loans as well. If you have questions reach out to me anytime!

Hey everyone!

My name is Wendell and I am 26 years old. Just purchased my first multifamily property in Worcester, MA and I am currently doing a good amount of rehab work to it. Going to move in early June and house hack it while I start investing in other opportunities. I am interested in doing some BRRRR with single family as well as continue investing in multifamily. My goal is to get into commercial eventually and keep on growing. I am also a newly license Loan Officer. Interested to meet you all and network!

Hello everyone!

I am just wondering everyone's opinion on using Home Depot/Lowes or something similar to quickly redo kitchen/baths. I am military so I can utilize a nice discount from them, even though I know they contract out and probably charge more than normal contractors.

Just curious on how well they do, timeliness, quality, pricings and if it's worth looking at for a bid. I have also heard if you find cheaper prices and bring it back to them, they will beat almost anyone.

I will install the kitchen cabinets myself - not the granite. Either way how is the labor costs? (curious for the future when I won't be doing the labor here and there).

I am all ears! Thank you!

@Robert S. I would love that as well! I am making a list as I learn, but having a standard practice one would be great. Most books I have read actually didn't mention the zoning laws (had to learn on my own and thankfully I did) so I am sure there are others I am missing.

@Damaso Bautista absolutely, this was a great learning experience!

When investing in real estate remember to DO YOUR OWN DUE DILIGENCE!

Just had an offer accepted on a nice little multifamily unit property. I was set to do a final walkthrough within 72 hours and start the process to close. I noticed the multifamily was zoned as an R-1 (single family), so I checked the towns zoning bylaws and found it was illegal to have a duplex in that zone in that town. Maybe it had permits to be a duplex, maybe it was grandfathered in, maybe not, but I checked it out to make sure.

After calling the town and speaking to a few building/code enforcement staff, I found this was an illegal duplex with no permits. They already have been notified of this and sent letters to the owners about it.

Now if I continued and bought this property, I would have been on the hook for an illegal duplex - meaning the town could make me rip it apart and convert it back to a single family with my own money.

Safe to say we walked from this property. Remember to always do your due diligence on anything you do, especially in this quick crazy sellers market right now. Realtors, sellers etc. won't give you all the information.

Do not make a mistake which can cost you a lot of money because you got too excited about a property. Always protect yourself!

I am pretty new to investing and if I got caught up in this property that would have been a real bad way to start off my real estate career. 

Anyone else have any stories or lessons they learned similar to this?

@Brandon Sturgill Thank you! I will check them out and reach out if I have any questions.

@Brandon Sturgill definitely going to check out Ohio. For some reason I never thought of that area.

@Marc Rice never thought Ohio would be a good market, I definitely need to check it out. Thank you!

@James Bradin thank you for your input! I’ll have to check them out!