All Forum Posts by: N/A N/A

Howdy,

My wife and I are working on our first rehab and we have some questions about interior paint. Everything I've read about painting when it comes to rehabbing says use high quality paints. With that in mind I went down to Sherwin Williams and priced out their Duration and Super Paint. Even with their current promo their prices are running around $38/gallon or so. We are repainting the entire house (1400 hsqft) including the ceilings. Also the garage needs to be repainted which is about another 350 sqft or so.

From trolling various painting contractor forums that a lot of painting contractors use Sherwin Williams CoverMax for the ceilings and either ProMar400 or ProMar200 for the walls. The prices for such products are much more reasonable ($9, $16 and $18.50 per gallon).

I'm curious to what the rest of you guys choose (or what your painters use) for your rehabs. Our choices are Lowes, Home Depot and Sherwin Williams. There is a Ace Hardware but I'm not sure if they sell BM paints or not so lets just leave them out of the equation.

One last question about selecting the finishes. I was thinking flat for all the walls except for the bathrooms and kitchen. In the bathrooms and kitchen we are planning on textured the walls with knockdown and going over with probably an egshell or satin finish. We really want all the trim and doors to really pop so originally I was thinking gloss on the white trim. But now after doing some comparing of samples and this and that maybe we should go with semi-gloss on the trim because it is an older home (1975) that has seen several families and the gloss might show off any dents and dings in the trim more readily than semi-gloss. Also the semi-gloss should be a big enough contrast when layed over the flat walls.

So in recap ...

Walls = flat
Bathrooms/Kitchen = satin/eggshell
Trim = semi-gloss

Yah or nay?

Thanks.

Hello,

I've been researching properties in my area and have a pretty good list of properties I'd like to make offers on. When I start making the offers and the realtor or seller asks for a pre-qual letter or proof of funds statement I have a question. I intend to make the purchase with my own funds. Though currently I have my funds split over a couple different CD accounts and a money market account. I spoke with my bank where the funds are and they said they could give me individual current statements for each account with an official stamp indicating authenticity. Is this acceptable for proof of funds? Fax over copy of current CD accounts and money market account with bank stamp? Or do I have to pull the funds from the CDs (set to mature in Feb07) and consolidate them with the money market account?

Also, if and when an offer is finally accepted and for whatever reason I opt to get a hard money loan instead of using my personal funds there should be a problem with this should there? I mean the seller doesn't really care as long as we close within the given time frame for the agreed price. Whether it is a HML or my cash it shouldn't make no difference? Right?

Thanks.

In my local paper in the real estate section there is always a couple ads that look something like the following ...

FORECLOSURE
$19,900! 5 bedroom,
2 bath [b]For lisings:
1(800)XXX-XXXX X GXXX[/b]

I finally called one of the ads and it was answered by a telemarketing firm (could hear all the chatter in the background). They called themselves Bargain Network, offering listings of automobiles and home listings of foreclosures, repossed and FSBO's. They provide a listing of these properties for a fee. He said $1.95 for the first week then $9.95/week thereafter until canceled.

Based on what they show on their website the listings look almost exactly the same as what you'd find at foreclosurelistings.com, rehablist.foreclosure.com, and other such sites. I seriously doubt any of the listings they can give will be ones that are new and haven't already been picked over by other investors.

Anyhow I was curious if anyone has tried one of these services that was listed in the newspaper? Thanks.

I remember reading an article somewhere about this but unfortunately I can't recall it's whereabouts. Basically what it said though is that the important thing is to run the numbers; if the numbers work at 70%, 75%, 80% or whatever, then go with it. It is all about the numbers. If they work good. If they don't move on and look for the next deal.

What are your rehab costs? Also does your max acquisition price include the cost of securing a loan (points and closing)? Does it also include your holding costs (mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, etc)? Also what is your exit strategy? Do you plan on retailing the property? If so did you factor in realtor commissions to sell the property? If your forgoing the realtor did you factor in your marketing costs?

Did you have a particular numbers in mind?

I've been going through my county website and noticing that a lot of bank owned and hud homes are multi-sectional homes. I'm guessing that multi-sectional is another term for prefab or site delivered homes. I'm curious to what people's thoughts are here in regards to multi-sectional or prefabricated homes (not mobile homes or trailers).

My main area to concentrate on is rehabbing and retailing houses. I don't feel like multisectional homes fit into my gameplan very well. But some where down the road I'm going to diversify and get into the rental aspect of rei once I build up additional cash reserves. Does anyone use these multisectional homes in their rental portofolios? Thanks.

Not long ago when we opened an equity line on our house I think our credit score was somewhere in the 650 range (maybe 630), don't recall exactly. I have asking some hard money lenders about the feasability of a loan. The responses have been generally high points and large down payments (10,20 or 30%). I'm beginning to think that in my current situation (average credit, decent amount of capital), that I should just purchase using my capital rather than pursuing a HML. In the end I'll be saving considerably because I'm not paying all the points, junk fees, interest payments while holding property and so forth. True I'm exposing myself to more risk because I'm sinking my funds into the property but then again when I take out a loan I'm personally guaranting responsiblity for the loan just as well. The key ultimately is as wesley said, buying the property at the right price to ensure that I'm not cutting it too close so incase I do have to dump the property I'm not taking a loss but rather a small profit.

Granite tiles can be an affordable and reasonable upgrade from a standard laminate countertop. You get the perfomance of granite at the fraction of the cost. I'd imagine you'd be working with 12"x12" tiles which should cut down on the amount of grout lines you have to deal with (clean). Also I hear from a lot of owners that have tile countertops they can be annoying because of all of the bumps from the tile-grout-tile edges. Again working with 12"x12" tiles should cut down on that aggrevation some I would think. If doing it yourself make sure you keep your grout lines as thin as possible.

I personally don't care tiled countertops because of the grout lines. But hey thats just me.

I was writing down some questions that I'm going to ask to prospective real estate agents. I'm going to make sure that the agent is totally aware of my buying requirements and the fact that when I submit an offer through him/her that it will normally be low but eventually one or two offers will be accepted. I was going to posture that I would allow the agent I purchase through also do the listing after it is rehabbed and ready to sell.

Then I got to thinking just because the agent is capable of providing me with a list of prospective properties that meet my requirements on a regular basis and submitting my offers doesn't mean he/she will be an equally capble selling agent. Some of the top selling agents I'm sure aren't going to be as easily accessible because they are busy selling and not pulling distressed property lists and submitting offers to purchase. But on the other hand it seems that by going to one agent to buy and another agent to sell it will catch up with me in the end and probably have less than lackluster relationships with the agents.

Does anyone use two different agents? I would think that practice would be frowned upon.

Hello,

I've been considering using hard money loans to get me started in REI here in my area. On the other hand I do have enough personal funds to acquire the properties that I will be focusing on (acquisition includes purchase costs, rehab costs, holding costs, appraisals, etc). I'm just a little uneasy about sinking the vast majority of my funds into my first deal. There is that little voice in the back of my head that says, "If this doesn't work your fu-bar'd!". I have and will continue to do my due diligence on prospective properties to make sure there is a profit even if the unexpected (which I'm sure will happen) comes around. The hard money loans that I've been looking at require a sizeable amount of down payment as well as charging several points and other fees. I'm beginning to think that if I can just go in and offer all cash I could possibly negotiate a lower asking price due to speed of close. Also the fees and points that I would have lost from getting the hard money loan are then turned to profit or even allow me a to increase m contigency factor for the unexpected during rehab. Another expense I can eliminate is the interest payments I would be making while rehabbing and listing the property for retail sale.

Am I missing something here? Is there a reason why I shouldn't use my funds to purchase my first rehab property? It seems like there are so many fewer hoops to jump through and the profit margin is also a bit higher.

Thanks.

Hello,

I'm also very new to REI and in North Carolina. I live in Eastern NC and real estate prices have been going up considerably here. If your interested in getting involved in REI possibly as a rehabber I would seriously recommend you pick up a book titled, "Buy It, Fix It, Sell It: Profit!", by Kevin Myers (2nd edition). It should run about $20 bucks from your local bookstore. Or you can snag it from amazon.com for probably a little less. It is a cheap and very helpful way to jump start your REI education. You won't be disappointed. Good luck.