All Forum Posts by: Ben Sears

@Shane Welch I would set up a separate account if you have a business established. Separating your personal and business finances protects you from liability in a case of suit against your LLC. You can google "piercing the corporate veil" for more info if you want.

It depends on how organized you want to be. There are several "regular" electronic transfer options like PayPal, Venmo, etc. If you want to get them to go ahead and sign the lease you can use Cozy and send them a one time bill for them to pay online. All of the above are free depending on how they choose to pay. 

I have my first call with a private lender set up for tomorrow morning. I'm an experienced investor that knows my numbers and market. The lender is interested in pursuing funding in our area. Are there any specific questions that are good to ask besides the obvious discussion of lending terms? 

In my houses, everyone over the age of 18 goes on the lease. I would especially do this if they are unrelated and will be sharing expenses. You'll want to conduct your due diligence on the roommate before letting him into your property anyways. 

That's not exactly correct. You'll get back your original $10,500 investment that you made. Are you paying CoreVest interest on their loan? It sounds like your margins are pretty tight to me. What was your decision process on choosing this property?

A few updates on our little rental from the past two weeks. We dug into the sub-floor to replace 16 floor joists. Fortunately this was not a surprise as our contractor had already provided the material list and everything was on site for the repair. We removed the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry area in order to rebuild from the crawlspace up. Our contractor came back today to finish installing the subfloor and all of the windows. The weather is turning a little here in Virginia and it's time to start getting this project buttoned up!

On tap for next week is:

Exterior power wash (Friday)

Final construction debris removal

Exterior door install

Exterior paint and siding repairs

Interior wall framing getting started

@Dustin Awtrey how did you build up to residential developments like this? I've always been interested in buying a piece of land and putting up 3-4 duplexes. Obviously nothing to the Cale of what you and @Jay Hinrichs are doing. We have a great price on a piece of land that's already set up for a subdivision but I wouldn't begin to know where to start with it. Any advice for someone that wants to grow towards subdivision development?

Very interested in this. I'll be following. 

I'm interested in integrating some automation into my flip houses. I would love to talk to people that have automated any step of their flip process. This could be property scouting, purchasing, contractor management, etc. I would love to talk to you about what steps you automated and how it is working out for your business. 

@Jon Rusnak pushing through on the first deal is always the hardest. I think everybody has different goals in real estate. Personally, I started flipping and renovating kitchens and bathrooms for other people. We've continued to grow our company and focus more on rentals with some flips in between. I think my "why" is my two daughters who are going to need college and wedding money one day. Our rentals are going to provide long term income to help offset those costs. I also would like to give my wife the ability to stay at home if she wants to. We don't spend as much family time together as we should and I believe that real estate is the means to an end to help with that. 

Why don't you tell us a little bit more about the deals that you're looking at and I'm sure that we could help you out!