All Forum Posts by: William Harvey

Our first flip netted $47k and took about 5 months from cradle to grave. Best advice I can give is to buy right! On every deal we made less than anticipated (3 so far out of 14) we strayed from our initial analysis and did the deal when the seller countered. Whereas, we should have walked away. There are (and will be) plenty of deals out there, and the market has softened. Both are great reasons to focus on buying right!

@Pat Rach It is definitely possible. A few years ago I had a property that was 3 bedrooms and each bedroom had its own bath. I did 2 separate 12-month leases for 2 of the bedrooms and then did the basement room as an Airbnb with its own private entrance. 

In my experience, individual room renters are the best kinds of tenant. They usually keep to themselves, aren't disruptive, and take care of the house. 

As far as utilities, in that situation I had the 12-month tenants split the utilities and then I reimbursed them a portion each month since I was running the Airbnb separately. However, it is way easier to just bake the utilities into the rental payment. Way less complex. Hope this helps! 

@Chris Orme Not too familiar with their calculators, but this is definitely something to account for. Click the link in my signature if you want to check out our calculator. It certainly does this. 

Or maybe you could manually calculate the expected hard money cost and plug it into another expense line item such as insurance? Just a thought!

@Faith Importico 100% time and resources. There are multiple deals where we did not do very well (break-even or slight profit) but the effort expended was not a ton. We recently flipped a condo and made a whopping $400. Total dud. 

However, a couple years ago we flipped a rural property and it was a complete nightmare. We ended up making about $20k on it, but it was a huge drain of our time and energy. I would 100% rather do the $400 condo deal versus that one. Even if we lost $10-20k on a deal where the effort is minimal, I'd choose that over the nightmare property that makes money but ruins your life. 

If you gave me the choice between making $1,000,000 on a deal that is going to take a long time, will require tons of effort and time, and will not allow me to pursue many other additional ventures VS. A deal I'd make $75-100k on that is a routine house flip with nothing out of the ordinary, I would choose the 2nd option in a heartbeat. 

You can always make more money, time is invaluable!

@Alfredo Burgos I would check out Call Porter. They are a call answering service specifically for real estate investors. Calls go to them and they answer on your behalf and qualify the lead (based on your criteria) and then try to set an appointment if it is a good lead. 

We used them for a while before changing our marketing strategy to Google Ads exclusively. Now we simply just don't need them as we get very few calls. When we used them however, they set the appointment for a house we flipped that netted us $111k. Check them out!

 I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you listen to Grant Cardone? haha. I get the concept but for me the biggest reason I think owning your primary residence is good is because you don't have a landlord dictating anything for you. It would suck to have to move against your will because a landlord decides to sell. I've had 2 long term rentals and in multiple scenarios I affected the tenants situations because my will trumped theirs. In one situation I sold once the lease expired, in another situation I wanted to rent the property to a family member and kicked the current tenant out once their lease expired. Everything was done cordially, but that would still suck as a tenant. 

@Angel Velazquez I've not done it personally, but seen it done. We flipped a house a couple years ago and the couple we sold it to used hard money to purchase, and I assume they immediately refinanced. They did it because the market was super competitive then and it was a way for them to make a cash offer with no contingencies. 

I think this is a great strategy as long as you buy the house right. If I were in your shoes I would analyze the deal as if it were an investment property though. Don't overpay simply because you want to live in the house.

No prob, Aimee! Our hard money guys really only do local deals. We are in Northern VA. Where are you located?

@Dan White is very creative when it comes to foundations. He can likely throw you some pointers here. We've had 3-4 homes in the last few years we flipped that had foundation issues. Dan, what say you?

We use credit cards as often as we can. And we always have the cash to pay off immediately. We are paying for the materials anyways so may as well get the points and rewards from the card!