All Forum Posts by: Bruce C.

@Andrew Flanagan

How do you flip raw land?  Are you doing any work to the land, or (and?) are you buying cheap in areas you expect to appreciate and holding until the right buyer comes along?

@Fabian Alvarado

I’m in the Seabrook area. Always looking for sfr I can turn in to cash flowing rentals. Let me know if you have something to look at

I haven't seen anyone willing to take only %15 down on a SFR purchase. All are %25. Is that something that changes from state to state?

What maintenance does the association take care of in your condos? Do they come fix a clogged toilet or broken fan?  If so, do they charge you for it?  

Can someone explain what is covered by the monthly HOA fees? Is it the same always? For instance, is the roof always covered by HOA? Plumbing? AC?

How does that impact insurance?  Can you get less expensive insurance since some things aren’t covered?

Are prices much lower for repairs than...everywhere?  If my math is right you would have spent about $10k to do the repairs listed below.  Maybe I’m misinterpreting the extent of plumbing, electrical, and roof work done.  New floor and paint on 2100 sqft I’d expect to be in at $7-8k if it was the entire house  

“Fixed roof, re-ran electrical, new electrical panel, new flooring throughout (ceramic tile and laminate), new plumbing in bathroom and kitchen, everything in kitchen new, painted.”

Well I should have updated this sooner but just been busy.  

H1 Duplex - new tenants actually pay a day or two early!  I haven’t had to deal with a crazy smell or animals or broken things in a few weeks. It’s amazing! Only negative right now is the downstairs tenant on housing assistance. Housing pays so much of her share, and total is above market that if she pays almost anything a month we’re ahead. But the rate she’s going she’s going to end up evicted. Housing may pick up even more (1370), so we are waiting to see where that goes. Currently $2150 a month without her paying, so we’re still cash flowing well. 

H2 AirBnB -  May was on track to be 87% occupied and provide $1720 in rent, exceeding our targets of 1660. Unfortunately, we had an issue with the cleaning service. I had notified them on the Sunday before Memorial Day that we had a last minute booking and we would have guest checking out Thursday before the next guest checked in Friday. I texted them this info as that is how they have been communicating with me other than to send invoices. Well, 8 pm Friday I got a call from a very pissed off guest because the house hasn’t been cleaned. I called the cleaning company, and the best they could do was run sheets over. Fortunately, I was able to get the contractor that I used in the area to run over and do a quick clean. To make matters worse, the couple saw a dead cockroach. This is SE Texas and it had been raining, roaches happen. Well they called AirBnB and used the word infestation. I think they were just still pissed.  I agreed to the AirBnB resolution centers proposal to knock about $350 off the charge.  So our rent was only about 1370 this month plus extra pest control costs  

I went and inspected the property after they left, and there were no roaches. I know what an infestation looks like, see the pictures up thread! :/. The regular cleaning crew plus my emergency cleaning crew also confirmed they didn’t see anything. We still put out about $70 worth of bait and traps while we were down there inspecting after they left. The cleaning crew tried to charge me the normal $130 fee but I told them no way. They said in the future email them. I’ve got no problem with that, but that isn’t how they’d been running things. 

June was full except for 4 days before May was over, and 2 of those booked today. The other 2 are random Wednesday’s.  Assuming no more “infestations” we'll end up with $2960 rent, exceeding our target of 2891. The first half of July is also already booked and on target. 

H3 - still looking. Cash is starting to build up after the eviction and all the repairs caused by it, but our reserves aren't where'd id like, so anything we get will have to be a slam dunk no cash out of pocket because purchase plus rehab is less than 70% ARV. While not as rare as unicorns, they aren't all over the place that I've found. I am going to look at a 4plex tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

@Sam B.

AirBnB is going well, but we had our first hiccup. Cleaning crew messed up and didn’t add our cleaning to their calendar, so tenant showed up to a messy house and went downhill from there. Ended up costing me $350-400. I’ll update my thread so as to not bog yours down  

It is nice when the passive income is actually passive.  One turnover does sound pretty easy enough.  Your renovations looked thorough enough that you probably don’t need to expect too many big items in the near future   

You itching yet to buy another house?

@Sam B.

Well, we did put that offer in. Looks like it ended up getting quite a bit of attention and quite a few bidders. We weren’t the winners unfortunately. 

Any maintenance or tenant nightmares so far with this group of rentals?  

@Sam B.  thanks for the info. I haven’t even really looked much outside of my Galveston to Baytown to downtown Houston triangle yet, other than one trip up to Dayton. At this point, I want to be close enough to drive up quickly in case of emergency.  

I have her convinced to put in an offer, but not quite as aggressive as I’d like. Probably won’t get it, but at least if we do it will be an even better deal!

@Sam B.

Granted it has only been about a year on your first property in this thread, but how would you rate Ohio rentals vs Texas as far as profitability?  What’d you learn from your first go-round that you applied to this one?