Commercial BRRRR in Galveston Texas

Commercial BRRRR in Galveston Texas

Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes

I decided that I would like to keep a chronological record of my current project and share it with everyone. So here it is!

This is my new building on the corner of 27th and Market St in Galveston, Tx. It was originally built in 1957 for the ILA (International Longshoremen's Association) to be used as a lodge for their #1453 chapter. It is a mid-century modern building consisting of metal-framed structure which is enclosed in terra cotta hollow tile bricks. It had the lodge upstairs with 2 offices, a kitchen, and bathrooms. The downstairs consisted of an apartment and 3 commercial spaces.

The previous owner purchased the building from the ILA and transformed the upstairs into a massive model railroad museum! It was an impressive sight! Here is a virtual tour of the upstairs showing all the work he had done.

Here is the plan!

This project is going to be a commercial house hack/BRRRR project. The upstairs will be divided into a personal residence as well as 2 apartments. Downstairs will be made ready for the 3 commercial tenants and I will be using the downstairs apartment as an office/hang out space. I purchased the building on October 10th for $310k. At that point, the appraiser said the as-is value was $510k!! He also said after build-out but before performance (ie tenants) the building would be worth $850k. My current renovations budget places the rehab at around $315k. I am going to try to get the value up to the level of being able to refi and pull out all my cash.

While this is happening, I will also be renting out spaces to tenants. I will have the 3 commercial spaces available first. These spaces range from 845 to 1040 sq ft and will be rented for between $1,000 to $1,200/month. There will also be two Airbnb apartments upstairs which will be catering to tourists coming in for event downtown as well as cruise traffic. They conservatively should bring in $1,500/month each after expenses. Between these spaces, I should be able to bring in roughly $6,300/month. Currently my burn rate for this property $5,000/month before utilities for my spaces! 

I'll be posting regular updates to this thread with photos of what is happening and the plans! I will be posting quite a bit now to catch up on the last month. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts!

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  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    @Bruce C. That is one of the harder things to do. Currently, Freddie and Fannie don't like Airbnb as income due to its fluctuation over the course of the year. Now they are okay if there is a long term agreement with someone doing Airbnb arbitrage as they see that there is someone to hold accountable for the fixed rent. It gets to be a grey area if you set up a company to do the arbitrage as it is borderline mortgage fraud by charging yourself rent and counting it as income.

    Your best bet will be talking with local credit unions or other lenders that are portfolio lenders. They typically are able to work with you on things like this. They might want a solid year's performance to count it though. For most lenders, what is on the tax returns is what matters the most. It puts you in that wonderful catch of every tax season. Do you focus on write-offs and limiting your tax liability or do you show a higher income to help with loans!

  • Rental Property Investor · Houston TX / Tacoma WA. · Member since 2019 · 166 posts · 89 votes
    6y

    @Timothy Church

    Just a quick thought: you invested $310k and the paper profit is already $200k.

    You can try and just flip the place as is and go find the next great deal.

    You are planning on putting another $300k to bring the value up only about $350k.

    I know that you will have the value of years to come of cash flow appreciation and more, and it will not be easy to sell it as is because it's a special kind of property.

  • Rental Property Investor · Houston TX / Tacoma WA. · Member since 2019 · 166 posts · 89 votes
    6y

    @Bruce C.

    I know visio lending is officially doing Airbnb loans and will underwrite the projected income.

    But it's a hard money lender so it's not cheap money but they will do I think 30 year loans.

    (I have not used them yet so please don't take this as a recommendation of their service. )

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    @Meir Greenblatt

    It was a thought briefly when I got the appraisal. I even thought about making it a pure investment property with 5 apartments upstairs and increase the value even higher. I decided to do this project this way solely for the betterment of life. It wasn't just about the money. When this project is completed, I will have cut my cost of living down to half of what it was and currently have the investments to cover those costs if need be. I'll finally have hit my financial independence mark and can enjoy the freedom that comes with it. With my son turning one next month, I wanted to make sure I am as involved in his life as I can be. Going this route allows me to work as I choose instead of needing to find the next deal.

    Plus I've let real estate kind of consume me over the last 4 years. I went from having one $88k rental in College Station to owning roughly $3M in properties. I'm ready for a slow down. Don't get me wrong, I'll still always be looking and working in real estate but that anxiety of needing it will be gone. I'm considering working on a bit of a debt snowball with my properties and deleveraging them a bit. 

    Overall, it is a lifestyle choice. I'll be reading, brewing, and playing with my kid more than I could have if I'd just flipped the property. 

  • Investor · Milwaukee, WI · Member since 2019 · 68 posts · 12 votes
    6y

    @Timothy Church WOW how did you acquire that type of property portfolio in such little time? BRRR or other methods? I'm mesmerized and jealous!

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    @Tato Corcoran

    Most of my properties were originally obtained through a bit of over leveraging. I borrowed funds from private money lenders to cover downpayment and upfront cost and either rehabbed and refinanced to pay them off or simply paid them down over time using the property cashflow and personal funds. It isn't the easiest way to do things and can be extremely stressful. You end up sinking a lot of time and effort into the property with no cash coming out of it. Now that I've paid off some investors and am wrapping up paying the others, they are finally cash flowing properly but it was three years of a lot of work with no return.

    It is the same premise for this project. I took on capital and even still need to raise another $60k (yay for sprinklers!) but will refinance it this summer to pay back the debts. Till that time, I have to use my personal capital in order to cover things and keep the project moving but in the end it will pay off!

  • Investor · Milwaukee, WI · Member since 2019 · 68 posts · 12 votes
    6y

    @Timothy Church thanks so much for the detail. Wow. Please know that I really admire you! Thanks for paving the way for others! 

  • Seabrook/Galveston · Member since 2018 · 274 posts · 178 votes
    6y

    @Timothy Church how do you go about taking a HM loan out for a down payment.  Didn’t the banks ask, or did you hold it for 2-3 months?  Also, what HM lender do you use?  The 2 I’ve talked 2 only lend to purchase the property plus rehab   


    Ive got to sit down and go over the D part of my DTI with my ReFi lender tomorrow. Either they're double counting something or I completely missed something - they need me to show $1100/m more. At this point, I may end up finding a long term tenant just so I can get that income and just put off the AirBnB thing off.

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    @Bruce C.

    It depends on the situation. On my commercial loans, I don't have to worry about seasoning the money. As long as everything else is in order, I can just use the money for the transaction. On residential, you have two options. You can season the money for a couple of months but you will be borrowing it and paying interest on it before you need it. The other option is having the funds personally ready and using the private money funds to reimburse after the fact.

    I typically use private money lenders instead of hard money lenders. Hard money cost me too much!

    Once you file your taxes, they should count the income. Obviously, if your Airbnb wasn't up this full year, it might not be a high enough income to make things work. Typically they will count Airbnb income that has been reported and taxed but will count future long term income with a lease in place.

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    With the downstairs complete, we've turned our attention to upstairs. By pulling up the wood in the foyer, bathrooms, laundry room, & closets, we actually will have enough of the old maple to do all the floors in our house. We have started to transplant that wood and begin the sanding process. It is amazing the difference between 63-year-old stained wood and freshly sanded! We've decided to do the first round of staining before we build the walls. It will make the process of refinishing much easier. Hopefully will have the building permit for the upstairs soon so we can start putting up some walls!

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    After lots of sanding, 6 gallons of watered down wood filler, 3 gallons of stain, & 5 gallons of poly, we have the first coat on our maple hardwood floors. They turned out great! We will be papering them tomorrow for safety and will put two more coats of poly on them after the rest of the house is complete.

    The permitting process has been a bit like volleyball. Seems each time we submit they find another thing they'd like addressed. Back and forth it goes. We should finally be at the final submittal and hopefully have a beautiful piece of blue paper in the window soon! Once it is up the project should really get moving!

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    After 4 months of back and forth, having to add fire sprinklers to the budget, and adjusting things down to the finest detail, I have my final building permit! It is the prettiest piece of blue paper I've ever seen! We will finally be able to get the ball rolling on the upstairs build-out. Hopefully, a lot more photos coming over the next couple of months!

  • Seabrook/Galveston · Member since 2018 · 274 posts · 178 votes
    6y

    I thought I had this thread followed but somehow missed the floor pictures a few weeks ago. Those look great!  And congrats on getting your permit. What does your timetable (That you’ll laugh at in hindsight in a year) look like now?

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    The contractor says 2 months so I'm picturing 3 months. If you ask my wife, she'll say 2021... She's going a bit stir crazy living among boxes in the downstairs apartment. I just really want things wrapped up for this summer so I can get the two airbnbs up and running.

  • Seabrook/Galveston · Member since 2018 · 274 posts · 178 votes
    6y

    I was a bit optimistic on mine as well.  I thought we’d be renting by the end off December 😃

    My March bookings for the new house have taken a plunge with the virus concern. The first house was mostly booked, and no one has backed out yet. We are up ~50% On our prices from last March and mostly booked. Was expecting growth, but I’ve been sitting around since last year paranoid it wouldn’t actually happen. 

    I will say I’ve noticed a big difference in the interest in the 2 properties. The 2bdrm we’ve had for a year is 99% AirBnB, and most bookings are made less than 4 weeks out (8 ppl max). The new 4bdrm (18 ppl max) actually already has a VrBO booking this summer, and we were getting bookings for April before the virus (one has now cancelled since the Ironman race was cancelled).

    All that to say, the more beds and rooms you can build out and not feel like a sardine can, go for it. At 8 ppl Occupancy, your one of hundreds (over a thousand?). If you can get to 16+ ppl, you’re one of about 40-50 in our area of Galveston. 

  • Flipper/Rehabber · League City, TX · Member since 2017 · 22 posts · 3 votes
    6y

    Looks good Timothy, we def need to connect soon. I’ve got the triplex on 51st and looking for some more stuff and trying to do a commercial refi my self now. Best of wishes to you on this journey 

  • Investor · USA · Member since 2017 · 94 posts · 71 votes
    6y

    Any updates? I was following along and its like a cliff hanger for a series that got cancelled.

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y
  • Flipper/Rehabber · League City, TX · Member since 2017 · 22 posts · 3 votes
    6y

    looking good Timothy

  • Real Estate Agent · Galveston, TX · Member since 2015 · 255 posts · 219 votes
    6y

    @Nathaniel Walker

    Honestly with Covid, missed dates, and other issues, it has been more of that really bad season that every show has!! Things are still moving forward but have been rather slow going. Thankfully we are to the tail end of things. All the painting, flooring, and electrical work has been done. We just need to install all the cabinetry, countertops, and final plumbing to get everything wrapped up. The goal is to try to finish up this month barring any other issues arising. 

    It has been a long road and while I know it will be worth it, I'm so ready for it to be done!

  • Rental Property Investor · Cambridge, UK · Member since 2020 · 203 posts · 95 votes
    6y

    @Timothy Church this is great, thanks for sharing! Looking forward to seeing the final product!

  • Specialist · Houston, TX · Member since 2020 · 1 post · 0 votes
    6y

    Dang I loved looking through this thread. Hope to see how it turns out!

  • Seabrook/Galveston · Member since 2018 · 274 posts · 178 votes
    5y

    @Timothy Church

    How’s it going over there?  I’ve stalked your rehab a bit and driven by when I’ve been in the area looking at other houses or doing something for one of ours. Our larger AirBnB has been limping along since September. I will say at least the traffic was nice getting down to the island pre/post June and July. 

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