All Forum Posts by: William Harvey

@Marty Boardman I would agree. However, raising money has come fairly easy for me so I think it depends on who you ask. I've certainly found it harder to find deals than raise money.

However, I have a partner and we buy hospitality properties in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He HATES raising money and dealing with investors, but loves sourcing deals. So, it is a great partnership where each of us has what the other does not. If you asked him he would say that sourcing deals is easier. 

Overall, I think more people would say that finding deals is harder though, just my opinion!

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@Anthony J Cappetto You should 100% request a refund, and you should also post the name of this "guru/mentor." You're doing a disservice to people in the real estate world by not posting this person's name. As you can see from the answers you've gotten, this is absolutely fraudulent and someone with zero moral compass like this shouldn't be teaching anything to anyone. 

@Brett Winiecki for a flip we shoot for a minimum of $40,000 or 10% of the ARV. Flips are a lot of risk/work (especially in this market) so anything less than that doesn't really excite me.

@Nathan Harden is spot on and this is something we do as often as possible. The biggest thing we started doing after our first 2-3 flips is focusing on the higher-roi aspects such as kitchens and baths, and then doing "just enough" for everything else. 

If you filter every renovation decision through the lens of "what is the cheapest option that brings the most value?" this will likely lead to you spending less money. We over improved our first 2 houses because we thought every little thing had to be perfect. I believe that by simply adopting this kind of mindset you'll cut costs tremendously. We certainly have. 

@Brock Salgado Nice work! As someone who thinks wholesaling is incredibly unethical (the way most people practice it) I am curious what happened that you missed in the wholesaler's contract?

Love that! I felt the same way and always had a buy/hold mindset until I flipped my first too. Since then I have pivoted and use the cash generated from flips to invest in multifamily syndicates as a passive investor. The tax benefits from multifamily help offset the gains from the flips too. 

We've flipped a few properties that took anywhere from 1-3 months and have walked away with over 6 figures on each of those deals. It is hard to think of a more time/effort-efficient way to make that kind of money that quickly.... 

@Michael Furey I agree with @Andy Sabisch. It is a calculated gamble. My first flip was in a flood plain....The 100 year map had the corner of the deck in the flood plain, but common sense showed there wasn't really any real danger of flooding and the property never had any issue in the past with this. In this situation we decided to forgo flood insurance and it all worked out. But like Andy mentioned, it is a gamble if you do this and you should try to make an intelligent decision.

One more thing to note is that it would probably make sense to "tee" everything up with an insurance company regardless of whether you get the policy or not. First time buyers (and most buyers in general) are nervous nellies, so if you can show them "hey, it's in a flood zone, but only slightly and here are a few insurance providers that you can reach out to" then that'll be helpful. We've found that when we guide the buyer and are proactive, things go much smoother. Hope this helps!

If I were you I would call the agent for the one under contract. They likely won't (and shouldn't) give you the price it is under contract for, but they should be able to tell you if it is north or south of the list price. I would also try to get as much context as possible for how it went while it was listed. If it was slow and few buyers saw it, then I would factor that into your estimate. 

We are being extremely conservative on our ARV's in the current market we are in. Things have changed and we are seeing inexperienced flippers getting crushed by not being conservative enough. When in doubt, lower your ARV estimate!

Couldn't agree more @Jorge Vazquez! You make money when you buy, not when you sell.... We didn't understand this on our first flip and over-improved it by about $10-15k. That money really didn't affect anything in terms of sale price and could have went right to the bottom line if we understood this back then.