Investor · Bella Vista, AR · Member since 2015 · 67 posts · 47 votes
With just a few weeks left in the year, it's likely that I'll end 2020 having made no purchases. I only began looking in earnest in late October, so I don't feel too bad about it, but I'd love to hear about what YOU purchased this year.
What was your goal for the year?
How many purchases did you make? What was the property type and the investment strategy (wholesale, flip, buy and hold, etc)? Where are they located?
Any details you can share about the deals? Purchase price, cash invested, sale price or ARV, rent, financing
Any finally, did any professionals help you with this deal that you would recommend to others? Realtor, lender, title company, contractor, PM, etc
I created this topic in the Fayetteville forum, but I'd love to hear about any deals in Northwest Arkansas: Rogers, Bentonville, Springdale, Centerton, etc
My goal for the year was to acquire my wife and I's first property - which we accomplished back in March!
Buy and hold bought for 160k in Fayetteville with 20% down via conventional financing. Ended up negotiating a few thousand in seller concessions and did some renovations for ~5k. Rents for >$1400 and meets our criteria for a B neighborhood, 3/2 with garage, and not exclusively catered to college students, but could be if needed.
Found it on the MLS, but had to be quick to snap it up. COVID probably worked in our favor to expedite the seller's decision to accept our offer without hearing any others. We plan on continuing with buy and holds until we get 2-3 under our belt after which we will likely switch to more of a BRRRR strategy seeing as most of NWA is teetering on that line of where it doesn't make sense anymore to acquire properties that only need a little love that still cash flow >10%
You are correct, assuming you are buying off the MLS. Off-market deals work in any market. I started on the MLS and transitioned to notes backed by real estate projects in PDX metro area. I don't have the time nor expertise to flip a thousand rocks a month to create a deal. That's just me though.
Hi Jennifer, this year my husband and I were able to acquire properties from 1 to 4 units. We bought a total of 4. Can't wait for next year to continue with the flow!
Purchased a 4 unit value add in a good location. I think I paid too much for it but it will be a good income producing property forever. Paid 70k, total renovations will be done over time guessing 25k. ARV around 115-140k. Once completed total rents will be around 2k a month with cashflow around 1k monthly.
Currently have a 4k sq ft mixed use under contract. 2k will be residential 2k commercial. Great location all brick. Purchase price of 45k. Renovations around 40k. ARV around 200-250k. Should gross about 3k a month with approx 2k monthly cashflow.
Hoping to get into something larger, 10+ unit, in 2021.
@Christian Buechel Wouldn't buy and holds be a bad idea in a seller's market (at least its a seller's market here in Oregon)? It seems like investors would want to wait for the market bubble to pop, then buy at the bottom for a buy and hold strategy, no?
Admittedly, I was hesitant at first. But if you're always waiting for the perfect storm of factors to buy, then you'll be passing up plenty of opportunity and learnings. Our acquisition cash flows >10% in Fayetteville, meets our criteria, and has given us experience to build on.
Can't say I regret buying in a seller's market. But I wouldn't have done it if it didn't meet our criteria.
I don't think it's that simple. Selling has a lot of transaction costs. And if you have a built up property management infrastructure, it's hard to just unwind that. Further, no one know when it will pop or how much it will. It might just soften like 2001 or dip a bit like 1991. Crashes like 2008 are rare. Remember, everyone thought the sky was falling in March and real estate kept going up. I know people who were waiting for real estate to go down before buying in 2015! And yup, they're still waiting.
So this year I actually planned to not buy anything. I purchased a large portfolio last year with a lot of vacancies and work needing to be done so I had just planned to stabalize and position myself for 2021.
Despite this I actually acquired 2 duplexes! One was at 213 E 28th st that had a pretty bad fire. The owner finance the whole deal as well as a rehab budget. Once we are finished we will refinance with a bank. 1 unit is done and the upstairs is about 2/3 there.
The other deal which I was pretty excited about was 822 E 25th st. I manage to pick that one up, and have the seller form a mortgage so the deed is in my name. They rolled all my closing costs into the mortgage, and gave me a $6k check at closing! We are doing some cosmetic stuff and should be rented out by Jan 1st
2020 Goal: purchase a buy and hold MF rental property (transitioning from flipping over last few years), but instead snapped up (off MLS) a super cheap flip opportunity across the country in the California desert. This gave us the opportunity to try out a long distance flip. Found a great GC, managed everything by text and email pretty much, COVID delayed the completion of the rehab for a number of weeks and a horrible plumber I had hired had to be fired and someone else brought in to fix his work. Then the property sat while I dropped the price weekly...I think it would have sold better if we weren't in a pandemic, so we only made about 15K off of it but it was a great long distance learning experience. Financed it with our own cash. By that time it was already October, looked in the midwest for a MF, decided on Cleveland area, we cashed out some retirement funds and would have used that as down payment on a larger property but I didn't think there was enough time left in the year to pursue a commercial loan and I was determined to close on something this year! On November 20 closed on one duplex and two triplexes (from a wholesaler) in a small city (65K pop'n) in Ohio, bought with our own cash (paid less than 27K/unit). Ten days later I was collecting rent checks--what an awesome feeling! All three have deferred maintenance and repairs from the slumlord who owned them so we are putting 1-2K into each property to start. But then they will cash flow 3K+ monthly. The 8 units came with 3 vacancies which we just filled this week. Next year's plan is to put a loan on them to use as the down payment on something bigger... Here's to everyone's 2021 goals!!
Purchase a 3/2 in Birmingham Alabama in February and currently section 8 leased! Going fine although covid did scare me a bit but purchase was already closed. 🤙
We purchased 15 properties this year. Mix of multi family and a few single families that we rent out per head to college students. A few are part of partnership deals that we did with other investors in town. The coolest thing for us was progressing at our forecasted pace for the year. Shows the power of goal setting and planning. And I agree with others on here; stick to the numbers and only buy what makes sense.
We purchase a SFR in April for $108k(MLS), put $16k into it, its currently rented for $1600 month and justed appraised for $207k for the refi. Then we just closed on a 4plex last Friday that was off market. We bought another property from same seller last year. Purchase price $285k. Seller holding $85k for 3 years. And got 30year fixed for the other $200k. We also have a signed contract to purchase a 10unit building that is scheduled to close in March. 2020 has been a good year.
@William Hollifield do you mind telling us what you're getting monthly out of Section 8 for a 3/2 now? I haven't done Section 8 in years, but I bought a 3/2 this year that will be going into it, when I get the repairs completed. Just curious on what they're paying now. I haven't checked their rates in several years. I assume you're going through HABD (Housing Authority Birmingham Division) for your Section 8.
@Chris Jones Birmingham is great for turnkey rentals and in a few part of the cities you can actually get appreciation as well as cash flow. BRRR works really well here. Huntsville is moving forward with young professionals and tech for sure but Birmingham is going to have larger marketing firms, banking, manufacturing and warehouse/storage facilities. We have a rental property here that has appreciated nearly double in four years.
One thing everyone seems to miss about Huntsville is that it is a town populated with tech and engineering people. Which is great if you’re looking for renters that can have good incomes and pay on time. however they live their lives off of spreadsheets and they are just naturally less inclined towards the arts. My wife grew up there, my mother and father-in-law grew up there, and my brother-in-law is still up there working as a recruiter for a large engineering firm up there. Restaurants and bars have a hard time surviving, and i think you’re going to Have to wait until all of these nerds’ kids grow up and start rebelling to see a real culture start develop there. You do have places like Lowe Mill, that is the largest privately owned art center in the south where I know of, but that is it. you have some spots like the voodoo lounge that are dingy dive bars that will always have a solid clientele but I can’t count the amount of places I’ve been to up there that disappear within a couple of years. That might not matter to you at all. It doesn’t to a lot of folks but from someone who bases their real estate investing off of more long-term outlook’s like myself it matters to me. Money follows culture in this case money is following infrastructure which is fine but I’m not sure that it’s ever going to be anything more than what it is. Birmingham on the other hand has a ton of cultural value that Huntsville is just never going to have. from the cultural history to the architecture to the restaurants and bars Birmingham is just above and beyond what Huntsville is. 
All that being said investing anywhere in Alabama is probably a safe bet because of the low cost of acquisition. You’re for sure seeing some speculation and areas of Huntsville and Birmingham both but you can still find cash flowing properties every day of the week. Especially if you’re willing to put in a little work to the properties. Neighborhoods like Eastlake Norwood Woodlawn Titusville in downtown Birmingham are killing it for some of us down here.
Matthew Gregory flips Like 10 homes a month in Birmingham no problems at all. Check out king flipper on YouTube. Or Gregory dream homes.
I was speaking into my iPad so if any of this has grammatical or spelling errors please excuse me!
@, hope you don’t mind that I don’t meet any of your requirements for the area you were asking to post from but I have purchased 4 possibly 5 properties in 2020 (?)
My goal for 2020 was to build my RE business and I hadn’t put a number on that (as far as how many properties I wanted to purchase this year).
I purchased a SFH with the intent of keeping it as a buy and hold. However, due to certain circumstances we will end up flipping this property instead. All of these properties are located in S.E. Washington State.
I also purchased a duplex and as soon as I am done with the rehab mentioned above, we will start the rehab on this duplex. We will definitely end up keeping this one as a buy and hold.
I purchased another duplex that is our first investment that we didn’t have to rehab after buying it. It had preexisting tenants so we were making money as soon as we closed! BONUS!!!!!!
I just put in two offers on another duplex and another SFH. The duplex is fairly turnkey, however I will need to replace the HVAC (which I took into consideration in my offer). It is currently vacant but I believe we can get it rented fairly quickly. Haven't heard if the duplex offer has been accepted yet but the SFH offer has! However, it will be a couple of months before we can take possession on that property as it unfortunately has a squatter in it. My realtor brought this deal directly to me as he knew I am a serious investor and would be able to close. That is the bonus of letting everyone know what you do! My realtor will also be taking care of the eviction of the squatter prior to me taking possession.
For those of us that said 2020 has been a rough year, it certainly has. However, it has also been the most productive year thus far in my RE biz! Thanks for allowing me to share and Merry Christmas to all of you and here is wishing you finish up 2020 in your REI biz in a big way!
None this year, because of the bidding war in the real estate market. Novice investors paying over the asking price and didn’t want to compete and pay too much. Still have some multi and single family portfolio. Looking forward to 2021.
@Pasha Malekniai is there any chance you could share your numbers on the property, such as purchase price and rental rates before and after converting to a triplex?
I didnt really have a goal for the year but bought 4 properties from another investor i have talking to for 3 years. Finally caught them ready to sell and got them for about 30k under value. I bought 3 more from my boss since he was moving after retirement. He financed 100% of the purchase. I turned around and sold one on a contract to the tenant for almost half the value of the 3 I just bought.
With just a few weeks left in the year, it's likely that I'll end 2020 having made no purchases. I only began looking in earnest in late October, so I don't feel too bad about it, but I'd love to hear about what YOU purchased this year.
What was your goal for the year?
How many purchases did you make? What was the property type and the investment strategy (wholesale, flip, buy and hold, etc)? Where are they located?
Any details you can share about the deals? Purchase price, cash invested, sale price or ARV, rent, financing
Any finally, did any professionals help you with this deal that you would recommend to others? Realtor, lender, title company, contractor, PM, etc
I created this topic in the Fayetteville forum, but I'd love to hear about any deals in Northwest Arkansas: Rogers, Bentonville, Springdale, Centerton, etc
Just bought a MHP in Mabelvale. Closed on it Wed before Thanksgiving.
Not buying SFRs. Selling what I have. But put more into some syndications. The SFR valuations are ridiculous. MF valuations are more manageable as buyers are professionals and institutions.
@Jennifer Schelkopf stay focused and know what to look for but take action rather than analysis paralysis...
It look us almost a year before purchasing our first multifamily. We scored too! But it comes with a bunch of learning points that I do not regret because it’s made me a smarter investor.
Bought a 2 family, with the entire attic remodeled making it a 3 unit but no permits so it’s “illegal” plus in the state of New Hampshire, if you add a unit to make it 3+, you have to install a sprinkler system throughout!!! $12,500 for that, which was accounted for.
And... around $23,000 to dig up and upgrade the water inlet for more pressure! Wasn’t expecting that!
Plus an extra $3,000 to pull all permits and get it inspected and signed off by different contractors.
However, the great news! It has storage units which can be made into and upstairs/downstairs unit, making this a 4 unit and we are cash flowing with the two units at the moment , $400. Sssoooo after everything is done and it’s a 4 unit, we are looking at $1500-$1600 per unit (times 4) with expenses around $2600!!! Ssooo I’ll take the hardship and learning pains now :)