All Forum Posts by: Peter Hanson

@ that's funny, you started in buy and hold and moved into rehabs, that's opposite of what I always see, but whatever works for you, that's great. keep in mind all the houses I buy, fix and flip have been under 1000 SF, it's pretty easy to make a tiny little house look pretty nice for approx. $15K-20K worth of fix up i.e. (granite, new fixtures, new cabinet doors, new wood/carpet, new paint, new toilets, landscaping, seal/spray the tub, new lighting, new doors, etc). The bigger homes I usually wholesale because the rehab gets costly, on one house I got 4 contractor estimates ($55K, $60K, $48K, and $65K!!!) and the house was only 1200 SF 3 bed/1 bath, and when you are in the 250-$400K loan range your holding costs can kill you real quick....

"I am assuming based on the number of offers you are writing you don't go out and look at the house until your offer is accepted? If so, do you just base your estimated rehab on pictures in MLS and then tweak your numbers and sometimes renegotiate once you see the property? " - I only make offers in areas I know like the back of my hand, or areas Ive done other flips in. I don't mess with major structural issues/foundation problems, just cosmetic stuff so the rehab budget stays low. I have a buddy who all he does is buy houses with foundation issues, he's a civil engineer and contractor, he can fix stuff that people thought would cost $70,000, he fixed it for $5500 because he knows what he's doing....figure out your strengths and use them to make deals work.

Forget "renegotiating" if it's a short sale or REO, I haven't had much luck there....standard sale ya, you have some wiggle room. I've gotten 3 deals accepted because I offered over asking all cash to get the offer accepted, then when I had the home inspector do his thing I found tons of repairs, seller was looking at me knowing I could write him a check for the house if he would come down to my price, he knew he had to do all the repairs if I walked away....so he came down. he was a little miffed/pissed, but he didn't have to take the offer, and the price I offered was fair. Now that he knows all the issues with his property he might be even more motivated to sell, who knows.

Good luck....

@ if you needed a true appraisal I would love to help, I have some ideas that might help you move this beautiful property. I spent some time reviewing that market and I've done appraisals over there in Agoura Hills, in fact I appraised a monster on Kanan 2 years ago, it was a Bank Owned property, I think it was 8,000 SF on 4 acres or something crazy. Let me know if there's anything I can help with

@ any update? how are things going with this flip? House looks incredible

Pete Hanson

@ thanks, it's a lot of hard work, lots of writing offers, lots of disappointment, but I love it, so I wouldn't have it any other way. I am hooked on Real Estate, and each day is a new challenge

@ - imagine if you had your real estate license and could post homes for sale on the MLS. If you find a seller who needs to sell you could buy the house, then once you close on it and fix it up, you can list it for sale on the MLS. Once it goes in the MLS it gets linked to trulia, Zillow, redfin, etc (about 50+ other websites) so your home listed on the MLS gets in front of MILLIONS of eyes.....think about that power and how much easier it would be to sell your house. And you save the 3% commission by selling it yourself. Good luck

@ thank you! good luck to you

@ without a doubt, it will change your life

@ thank you so much, I will check those out

@mehran I'm an agent so the amount of offers written were probably 50% me and 50% outside agents, it takes a lot of offers and networking to get deals, there is a lot of competition here in So. Cal

@ you are right, I need to factor in vacant, repairs, management, but they are SFRs so tenants are paying for water,power,trash,gas, etc. That being said, you are right the cashflow will probably be 1/2 of what I quoted, sorry about that

Thanks for the reply. can you give me an idea of what criteria I should look for in rentals, what makes sense to you to keep as a rental?