All Forum Posts by: Corey Chonsky

@Cindy Murphy, I'm a new investor in the Hampton roads area as well. I just got here in August and I'm just trying to figure things out. I've really enjoyed the BiggerPockets website and I highly recommend the podcasts. I've listened to 80 since August 1st.

Hey everyone,

So I've been in the Hampton Roads area a little over 3 months now, and I'm in the process of closing on my second rental property in which I was the highest bidder on auction.com. This is a little risky obviously since I've only be able to drive past the property, but I'm familiar with the area and I know what I can get in rent. So based on what I'm getting the property for, if i can keep the rehab cost around $15,000-20,000 the property should work well for me. I was wondering if other people have had experiences buying houses from online auction sites and if they would do it again. Thanks.

Welcome Frank, hope to see you around the site.

@Zohn Burden, welcome to BiggerPockets and hope to see you around the site.

@Robert Rein, I'm also a new investor dealing with the struggles that come with being on active duty. I got me start when my wife and I purchased a house at an old duty station with our VA loan. We lived in it a few years before we transferred and rented the house out in 2012. The house has done well as a rental despite not meeting any of the thumb rules that you will read about here on BiggerPockets. It probably helped that it was a new contraction when we moved in and we haven't had any major maintenance items. However, we haven't had a chance to buy a pure rental property due to duty station locations and short tours until this month. Being in the military, can add some additional hurdles that other investors may not have to deal with but in the end it comes down to having a purpose and being determined. Make sure to take advantage of the resources here and see you around the site.

@Darren Parzych, welcome to investing in the Hampton Roads area. Sorry, I haven't posted sooner but I'm new to Norfolk and investing as well and I've been busy completing the rehab on my first buy and hold property. Definitely, listen to the podcast. I started listening from the beginning about a month ago and Josh and Brandon do a great job. Also, every show they recommend real estate and business books that you should read. So that can help focus your reading efforts until you start looking for your first deal. Hope to see you out there. 

@LaShelle S., I would definitely get a home inspection to go along with the VA appraisal but make sure that the lender arranges it early because the appraiser has like 10 or 14 days to complete it. This can potentially hold up the deal if it's arranged too late or if problems pop up during the appraisal that the seller has to fix.

Hey Troy,

I'm a new investor in the Norfolk area as well and I'm also in the navy. I found myself in a similar situation when I was stationed out in Washington state. We had a house built in the Bremerton area when we first got there and in good navy fashion I did not stay very long. Our property manager recommended what I thought was an aggressive rent and the house sat vacant for about two months before it was rented. I started to get pretty nervous even though we had saved some money but in the end it worked out because we got what we were asking, it cash flows, and since it was a new construction there has not been to many maintenance items. This house doesn't look great on paper as a rental but it has worked out for us. However, I'm not going to make a habit of buying rental properties like this. Hope it works out for you.

@Bryan C., we are using a local lender who's going to allow us to roll the rehab cost into the loan. 

Hey everyone,

I wrote my introduction post a little over a month ago about my goal of really starting to invest in real estate after I transferred from Rhode Island to Norfolk, VA. Unfortunately, my arrival to the Hampton Roads area was less than perfect and had me pretty discouraged.

After my lender (NFCU) blew past my original closing date of July 29th due to not scheduling the VA appraisal in an appropriate amount of time, I thought that we were going to be able to recover and still be able to close on our primary residence and conduct a door to door delivery of our house hold goods.

We were set to close on our house (second attempt) on the morning of August 3rd and then our household goods were set to arrive in the afternoon of the same day. For those of you in the military, you may have delt with the struggles of living in an empty house for several days just waiting for your stuff to arrive. Needlessly to say, it's pretty terrible. 

Anyway, as you could probably guess we were not able to close on the 3rd because the appraisal was not complete. So I had to call the storage company and reschedule for the next available time which was August 13th. By the way, no hotels were available in the area because of the AAU junior Olympics going on in the area. So we were facing over a week in a completely empty house with a one year old. 

However, that's when our luck started to change. The next day we were told that the VA appraisal came in with no deficiencies and above what we were paying for our house. The following day (closing day) we received a phone call from the moving company to tell us that they had a cancellation and would be able to deliver our goods on August 6th. Everything went pretty smooth with our closing and moving our stuff in.

We were feeling pretty good, so we went and looked at some SFR's in good rental areas near by. We found two properties that we like and put in offers. We just got word today that one of our offers were accepted.

We are getting a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath SFR that's about 1000 sq ft. We got it for $75500 looking to do about $8000-10000 worth of rehab and rent it for about $1050. We are hoping to turn the property around in about two weeks after closing. Still waiting on the second offer.

Overall, we are in a way better state of mind then we were last week and hopefully things keep going our way.