All Forum Posts by: William Alonso

Hi Josh, I have great individuals who can help with everything, and at excellent prices, except the kitchen and bath.  For those I would recommend checking out Angies list or posting an add on indeed can work as well. Most GCs are extremely busy and many of them are a couple months out right now.  Going with individual subs might be your quickest and least expensive route although more time consuming for you I know.  Hopefully some other investors on here can give you some recommendations as well. 

Please reach out to me if you’d like the contact info that I have. 

Thanks! 

Hey Jason, 

Appliancesmart was great, I used to buy there.  

Now, I just go with Lowes.  They have a Frigidaire package that you can get for typically around $2,500.  Makes it nice and easy for budgeting, delivery, and just process flow.  

I'd be interested in new places to buy as well if I could get a package for less.  

Thanks.

Hey Robert, for hard money lenders I’ve worked with a couple and from what I’ve seen, yes, those numbers are pretty typical. I like LendingHome for a hard money lender as they’re easy to work with and have a nice online portal for loading docs and keeping track with the loan progress, but their fees were very similar. 

Most of the small business community lenders I’ve worked with will do cash out but they’re not going to base the cash out on the market value at 6 months. They want to still base everything on the lesser of the of the value based on your rents or how much you’ve put into the property.  For example, if you buy a property for $100,000, and you put $50,000 into rehabbing, and now the value based on comps is $200,000, they will lend about 75% of the $150,000 as they still want you to have that 25% skin in the game, so total loan amount at $112,500. So for a non seasoned property that has less than a years worth of rent you’re not cashing out very much, just recouping some of the money you put in.  This isn’t every lender of course and you may get a difference answer from a conventional lender but I’ve ran into this situation a few times.

Good luck with whatever you choose I hope you find the program that works for you. 

Hey Jacob, welcome to the Columbus market!  There are a lot of great resources on BP so you're in great hands as people are very willing to help.  Is there something specific you're wanting information on?

Hey Allen, I use Rentometer as well but only really as a a guide. The problem is it pulls homes that may be from different pockets of the city that may not attract the same rents. For example, if you’re looking for what rents get in Vassor Village it may pull rents from across Parsons in Hungarian Village, and now your estimates are off. I also like to use Zillow and from there you can see what rent listings are, how long they’ve been on the market and how many contacts they’ve had. If you see a rent listed for $1,200 but they’ve only had 3 contacts in 2 weeks you know that’s probably a little high.  Both help, but if you don’t already have units you’re renting in the area the next best thing is to find a good property manager or agent as they should be able to help you pinpoint some rents. 

 Hey Joe, have you ever looked at Rentometer.com?  You can enter in an address and it will give you rents within a specific radius.  I've used it before and I feel it's fairly accurate.  The key is to know the different pockets of the city because even though the rent may only be .25 mile away, it could be a completely different tenant profile/market.  Also, I believe BP now has a similar tool you could check out.

Hey Joe, yes the 1% rule does still hold for us and the investors I work with and speak to. It's not easy to find properties which meet it that are listed online but they are out there. There's a couple listed on the MLS currently that work but in general if I'm just throwing out a number I feel like maybe 5%-10% of properties I see listed work using 1% rule.

Hey Joshua, I personally recommend either getting a 2 or 4 unit and renting out the extra units. You can still get low down payment owner financing and have your tenants pay most of your mortgage. To me this is much better than rent by room for privacy reasons for one, and also you can get your investment career started with a multifamily right off the bat.  I’ve seen investors use this strategy a few times in a row then after 3 or 4 years you could possibly have 3 multi unit investment properties that you bought with very little down. Good luck! 

Great idea Remington.  We need to look at that option as well.  Would like to start doing more in the area.