All Forum Posts by: Corin Prendiville

 That is more than any other store will do for you. In my experience home depot has the best return policy of any store on the planet. I think you are overreacting a bit to a pretty reasonable store policy, even if one employee did screw up and tell you that it was returnable. 

Ive even heard they'll take back stuff people steal off of others job sites! Credit of course.

Ive always heard that you can find the best deals in December. Maybe buy this one and see if you cant pick something else up then?

Im hoping to be able to find our first deal by the end of this year, but im also looking for a value add so it probably would need a few months to be rent ready.

After just selling our house in Seattle i can attest that some coastal markets are cooling, but its still a sellers market at the moment. We chose to list low and hope for bidding wars that were common earlier in the year, we ended up selling for list in a week and felt disappointed but after watching the market many other properties in our neighborhood listed higher are stagnating on the market or having price drops. 

Of course we are now exiting summer and things will hibernate for a bit until next Spring, i think that will be the first indication if we are heading for a buyers market or if this is just the markets stabilizing. 

As always i agree things are local. We are now in New York selling properties here so that will be an experience.

Back Story: We are a recently married couple, we are in the process of selling our house in Seattle with about 500k cash from the sale to begin investing once all expenses are paid (and another 200k-300k in other assets to back us up). We also have other properties that need work which we intend to use the money to get them repaired and sold. We did a lot of the work on this house ourselves to get it sale ready but it was brutal, took longer than we expected to do everything and the end product wasn't as good on half of what we did because of time constraints. I had really bad sticker shock with this property when we reached out to contractors for basic repairs and decided to take it all on myself, which was a big mistake in hindsight since I missed the Spring buying fever and we lost some of the value on the property. Had we known we were going to sell sooner and understood market fluctuations I would have planned better, but hindsight is 20/20.

Our Next Year: We have several other properties in our name that need to be rehabbed and sold all on the coast (west and east). I originally planned for us to work on these properties ourselves primarily and act as GC to get them sale ready as an introduction into being able to BRRRR and/or flip future properties and cut costs on the rehab process (though I'm sure someone will question that logic, I'd like to hear where I'm flawed on it). We then have our eyes set on buy and hold properties primarily and possibly flipping properties or being in the industry in other ways (agent/contracting). Part of getting into REI is so that we can spend more of our time together rather than spending more than half our day at other jobs and commuting, getting to work together is a big part of why we want to take this on (and the potential that RE Investing has for financial freedom).

My Concerns: I originally thought I would develop myself as a contractor and do most of the work myself at first, but when I consider the time constraints (holding a house way longer to do the work myself, and the quality of work suffering) I realize this isn't an optimal plan. I've debated just focusing on one or two areas of work like flooring and painting, and demo perhaps and then hiring out the rest of the work. I want feedback on this idea or how others have handled adding value through doing their own work or if I am better off just finding non-contracting work and leaving it to professionals more. 

I'd like to hear how others got started in the business and given my situation what they suggest I do. My problem is I don't have a high-paying job to back into like a lot of investors on BP and my only other passion is a career with low earning potential (film directing), so I feel like adding value through doing my own work is a great way to make this a full-time gig sooner than later while maybe supplementing our income with part-time work or start contracting for others once I get more experience. I don't want to keep working for the next 10 to 15 years in an industry where my earning potential is already capped while we build our investment portfolio, I'm just not sure contracting is the right direction given what we have already and of course it is back breaking work. 

If we rehab the properties right I'm projecting us to have a bit under 2 million to start our buy and hold strategy (assuming the market doesn't bottom out before we finish selling). Our contingency is to just rent out the remaining properties if the market drops off substantially during the rehab process, but I'd rather not get stuck holding properties in landlord unfriendly states (New York). Ideally we have these big properties cashed out by the end of 2019.

Looking for any guidance I can get, I know there are so many ways you can go with RE Investing and its dependent on what you want, what would you do in my situation? 

 I believe he means find a database for hard money lenders in the region that your deal is being put together. If you live in Cairo and the deal is in Cairo then find a hard money lender in Cairo. If the deal is in the midwest of the U.S. then find a hard money lender who is licensed in that state. Legally speaking i dont think they can lend just anywhere so you need to find a local lender for your deal or at least one who can lend for deals there.

If your deal is in another country make sure you consult a lawyer about the legal requirements of wherever you are investing as an out of country investor (and your home country). 

@Ryan Blake thanks for the tip. I will start looking for them in the cities we are visiting. Im also hoping we can look at some properties while we are down there  and check out various neighborhoods ivr been researching so itll be a busy 9 days.  

@Rob Lee I appreciate the warm welcome! We are hoping Texas will be a great home for us soon, we both prefer warmer weather and wont miss the rain. Very excited to enjoy the culture down there and start our investing journey as well.

Ill check out the blog for sure, we are hoping to get a duplex / quad as our live-in home so we can negate the primary mortgage, that will be our first step once we settle on an area is finding a good first property. Living in the same kitchen and bathroom was hard on the fiancee up here but if we have to we will definitely be renting out a room or two for the extra cash flow. Better to make the sacrifices sooner rather than later. 

@Sammy G thanks for the welcome :) we are actually still considering Houston as well. We will be visiting several cities in july. I originally was more keen on Houston but the flooding issues and oil industry dependence are currently worrying me, do you have any thoughts about those? 

Id definitely prefer the food diversity of Houston and i think the humidity there is similar to Seattle. I think our final decision wont come until we finish our trip. 

Hi Bigger Pockets!

My name is Corin Prendiville, I've been devouring all of the podcasts and books for the last month from Bigger Pockets while working with my fiancé to rehab our home here in Seattle, WA and prepare to sell. We are planning to take the equity to begin investing in real estate in Texas (we will be traveling to Texas in July to check out the different cities, but are currently favoring Dallas-Fort Worth and the surrounding area). 

I first learned about real estate as a teenager when I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad (collecting dust on my dads book shelf) - it definitely left an impression but I buried it in the back of my mind for nearly 2 decades (currently 28). Now that I'm getting married and planning to start a family, my fiancé and I are looking to build a strong financial foundation and after doing a bit of house hacking here in Seattle we realized if we really want to get out of working 9 to 5 the rest of our life we should move somewhere with better opportunities (not comfortable doing long distance investing just yet). 

Our interest is primarily in buy and hold on single & multifamily properties (BRRR strategy) where we can add value to a property and eventually replace our existing income. We are also considering transitioning into careers focused around real estate so that we can have our work life in sync with our investing strategy - currently looking for at least one of us (her most likely) becoming a real estate agent, I am considering getting into being a GC (my father was a contractor for decades) but also considering the real estate agent tract with a goal of starting a PM company once we have the experience.

I'm excited to keep learning as much as possible, and we are probably going to be buying our first property somewhere in Texas before the end of Summer - but its quite a load with the wedding planning happening at the same time!