All Forum Posts by: Will Barnard

First off, let’s start with your statement of getting your start in real estate investing by wholesaling. Wholesaling is not real estate investing, it is mostly a marketing business. 
second, your concerns of legalities are legit and there are numerous threads on here about this topic, I suggest reading them and paying attention to the veteran and experienced investors, keeping caution on some of the other comments as many are self serving in this space.

Here is the real meat and potatoes - wholesaling as a rookie is (in my opinion) even more difficult than doing a rehab flip. Why? You have to find a deal with enough meat to satisfy a flipper (which in these competitive sellers markets is no easy task) and then enough meat remaining for your profit/fee. Most rookies find it difficult to find a deal good enough to flip let alone one with more room for a middle man.

If you were attracted to the wholesaling world because you read it is easy and you can make great income without money or credit, it’s a lie. I recommend finding a strategy that fits your desires, goals, and abilities and then learn about that strategy, your target market, and how to build your team. This will place you in a great position for long term success. Remember real estate investing is a get rich slow process.

If you decide to keep and rehab it, I would suggest getting your permits for this and permit any existing unpermitted additions and get your C of O. If you rent out a room or home with unpermitted bedrooms/bathrooms, etc. and a fire happens and someone is badly hurt or killed, guess who is getting sued! 
As to the advice of trying to sneak in the rough electrical wiring while still getting permits for the other large items, I find this advice is not very practical in most circumstances, the inspector will be there to inspect your other permitted items and there is no way to hide rough electrical rewrite of a home. Plus, not getting permits for electrical is taking a big gamble on liability. Why add risk on top of your investment risk!

The only way I know is a camera system which would require internet/WiFi services. The best way to track is not not worry so much about what time they arrive/depart but how much work was complete for that day. Knowing how long each task should take is imperative to monitoring this. It is not a perfect science but you can certainly track progress this way. Don’t get into a situation where you feel the need to micro manage, it will eat up too much of your time and cost you more money in the end than some wasted time by workers.

Like I mentioned before, the contractor expects to have around a 20% spread so if he actually did the job for you at actual cost of labor and materials, then you are only saving that 20% number and as such, it’s only worth about that p,us the cost of the money. I don’t recommend partnering with a GC unless he/she is brining much more than just the labor/materials to the table at cost. 

Yes and no. You can get some data from Zillow however, you can’t always trust it’s accuracy and certainly can NEVER trust the “zest image”.

Best to get raw data from title or a licensed agent who can pull the stats for you.

Speaking for all those "others", I think many of them posting that are expressing their "desire" to quit their job and go full time and most of us experienced players suggest the advice of "keep investing and building cash flow or income to replace your 9-5 JOB BEFORE you quit and go 100% full time.

As for the $ issue, it takes money to invest but it does not have to be yours. OPM is real big in this industry. Getting a small piece of a RE pie then rinse and repeat can work wonders over time.

Thank you for your service!

To be 100% candid, how much can you rust what others "opinions" are of investing in Vegas on this site? If this thread gets exposure, you are likely going to get every opinion under the sun and then you are left with the same question again.

My advice: Learn the Vegas market utilizing actual hard data. Figure out if you want to be a landlord or a flipper, a passive investor or an active one (or anything in between those). Once you have selected your strategy, learn all you can about it and your market.

Additionally, what that market will be in 2022 is anybody's guess, so rather than guess (or have others guess for you), get some facts by studying the market now and then. Compare where it moved and how it moved. That history will give you a bird's eye view of the market AND a look into the future of where it is going based on previous recent history. 

Hope that helps more than just opinions.

Looking at this proposal from the side of the lender/partner, the debt service structure looks good (although I would ask for 10% on the no payments, balloon at end. For the equity deal, I would not put up 90% of your acquisition and 100% of the rehab for only a 20% profit share. Your financial example of a $200k exit value property will only have about $30k max in profit after resale costs and holding costs. 20% of $30k is only $6k. Would you lend $185k for what will likely be about 4-6 months for only a $6k profit and a HUGE downside risk if anything goes wrong? I know I wouldn't.

Congrats on your hustle at such an early age! That said, when anybody overloads themselves, they typically are going to spin their wheels and not go anywhere. Trying to do too much is often a recipe for getting nothing done correctly.

While it is true that the younger you start investing, the better off you will be down the road due to the power of compounding interest, right now, I would suggest that you keep up with your studies and get your degree. While in school, network with other like minded individuals and make great lifelong contacts. That is as powerful as your education!

Keep doing your RE sales deals (forget about going to work for a PM company as another suggested, that is time consuming and stressful work. You will have enough fires to put out with your own studies and RE sales deals. Save as much of your commissions as possible and get a nice nest egg for when you graduate. Live frugal during these years and reap the benefits when you graduate.

Then start looking at which specific strategy in RE investing you want to do and then study your rear off in that and make more connections (along with the ones you already made in college.

Good luck.

As Alan stated, some areas are better for specific strategies than others so knowing your market and figuring out if your best bet is to find buy and hold deals for those type of investors or for flip deals. Concentrating on a specific strategy will help speed you through.