All Forum Posts by: Adam McCarty
Adam McCarty has started 7 posts and replied 50 times.
Post: Which career option would help most with REI?

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
I am a licensed electrician but really any type of construction could help you. Just knowing how to do some of this stuff really helps.
Post: Which career option would help most with REI?

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
my own experience is in construction which I have found very useful. I am looking more at flipping but these skills can be useful in buy and hold properties as well.
Post: Combo introduction and success story

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
@ Linval T
Thanks for taking the time to read. I am glad you liked the info. I definitely had no idea how big of chunk I was biting of when I started but now I am not afraid of any kind of rehabb
Post: Combo introduction and success story

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
I just wanted to share my story as I think it can help people looking to start flipping house. In August of 2013 I closed on a foreclosure that I was going to be doing a live in flip. I think most newbies would have and should have run in the other direction on this house as it had a lot of problems(I have a construction back ground so I was less scared). Starting with the fact that you could not see the property until you had an accepted offer on the house (this was an mls listing). This house had been empty and tied up in court for over 6 years because of the issue of it being land locked with no egress means. It was a family deal where the neighbor had sold a portion of his land to his brother but no egress had ever been filed or provided. The neighbor had been forced to allow egress on his land by the courts but there was no driveway to the house yet. So I walked onto the property and looked through windows and decided it was worth making an offer in it. The bank countered and so on. So then after getting an accepted offer we have an inspection done and find more problems inside such as mold and mechanicals that are shot. At this point we go back to negotiations and get another 30k off our offer.
Now we get to start dealing with the neighbor as he has a fence in the middle of the egress however we made part of our offer contingent on it being removed before we would close on the house. The neighbor did remove the fence however he also removed all the fence that was along the front of our property. At this point for about the hundredth time I am thinking are we making a huge mistake. So we went back to the bank to see how they want to deal with this. They basically took the cost to replace the fence off the price. We now close and move onto rehab before we can move in.
I start by tearing out the basement myself to get rid of the mold. I have a friend who runs a company doing this so I borrowed his equipment for the cost of filters and chemicals (about $1000). I also had about 2k in dumpster cost. My estimates to the bank for this were 20-30k which is one of the items that helped me get the additional money off purchase price. The other major repairs were putting in geothermal heating and cooling, a new kitchen, the driveway, and a new master bath.
So the numbers on this deal go like this
Purchase price. 166500
Rehab. 90k
Appraised price when we refinanced the construction loan. 425k
So if we decide to sell we should make a profit of about 100k after realtor fees and closing cost. We may not move for a while because we love the house and 2 acres of land it is on. No matter what I now have the ability to use the equity in future deals if need be. Also this was A LOT of work and stress on both my self and wife who by the way was 4 1/2 month pregnant when we closed on the house. Don't ever start your first flip with a pregnant wife it will be hell.
So lessons I learned is you can make very good money but it was way more work and took a lot more time than I was thinking before I started. Also it was very rewarding seeing the projects as I finished them. Sorry for the long post but thanks for reading
Post: HWPG is going undercover at a Guru seminar

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
@james wise
I really liked your post. I went to one of these things about a month or more ago. I almost got sucked in by it but after I had signed up for the 3 day I went online and googled it. I found all the negative reports so I canceled the contract the next day and stopped payment. The good thing is that I still got to listen to the tapes which did get me excited about learning more and to take my next step in investing which lead me to finding bp. I have now attended a get together with other bp members and am looking for my first real flip. I had already bought and am doing a live in flip before attending the seminar. So even though the seminar is a scam it still motivated me to take the next steps that I had been wanting to do for years but was letting my wife hold me back.
Post: Wiring question

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
also if they have a circuit for each room besides the kitchen you should be fine for load. Box full depends on how many wires they have in each box and how big the box is. If the cover goes on the box without really forcing it in you are probably fine on that too
Post: Wiring question

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
I would agree about how the retired it. They however did it the cheapest way they could. It would have been nice if they had still daisy chained the outlets but the way they did it probably saved wire.
Post: Wiring question

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
from what you are describing I don't think anything is illegal with the way it is wired. That being said if anybody wanted to finish the basement with a drywall ceiling you would have to leave those boxes accessible according to code. If you had pictures I could tell you for sure. I am an electrician outside of investing just so you know
I am not sure on a home path but when I put in an offer on my house the bank came back saying that they had other offers on the property and that they wanted everyone's best offer. I later found out their other offers were ones that they had already rejected but they wanted us to up ours which I did end up doing. Not sure if this helps you but just wanted to put it out there.
Post: Des Moines, Iowa Roundtable

- Investor
- Indianola, IA
- Posts 51
- Votes 10
hey I am new to the site and looking to get into investing. I would love to meet up with you guys.