All Forum Posts by: David Featherstone

@Robert Geiser

Hey Robert! I recently bought a house in Whittier and would love to connect about building ADUs. Do you have any contacts (Lenders, contractors, architects) that work in the local area?

Hey Joe, what does a mathematical super perfect number have to do with investing? I am really intrigued!

I would say that it is very common to be good at one or two aspects of REI. No one has all the talent and time to grow a REI business and still do everything themselves. It's also very common for investors to have periods of growth followed by periods of recovery where you catch up. I can think of two things that might help reduce the recovery time needed.
1) Find a business partner, someone who’s skills/likes compliment your own.
2) systematize and outsource more tasks. Sounds like you like getting the deal, so maybe handoff the renovation, finances, and management to someone else. If you effectively systematize then you can even reduce the amount of time it takes to manage your VAs. Have a checklist of steps for every major task. Even if you don’t have someone to take this over, creating a systematic way to do each task will help you do these tasks quicker.

3) time blocking. Set aside time during the morning, day or week to do each of these tasks starting by scheduling the most important. If you can keep up with all these demands for your time and prioritize the most important you can reduce this recovery phase.(“What's the one thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else is easier or unnecessary?”)

It sounds like you are crushing it and that you have grown quickly so congratulations on that. Most don't get that far in their REI journey.

@Mario Casarez I sent you the contact info in a message. Good luck!

Hey @Mario Casarez Welcome! It’s great to hear from someone who also lives in Whittier! The great thing about real estate is that there are so many different ways to go about it. Here are some steps you can take to get some more info:

1) Financing - talk to a morgage broker to about your situation and goals and they could give you an idea on what kind of rate you can get on a HELOC (a way for your to borrow against your equity). Search BiggerPockets for a recommendation or let me know and I can send you the one I use. They could give you an idea of what it would cost per month to borrow money to use it as a down payment.
2) Rental Potential of Current townhome - Have your looked into what your current townhome could rent for? This might affect what your next move is. Check you homes rental potential by using sites like rentometer.com (for a standard rental), airdna.com (for an Air BnB rental) and other marketplaces like Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. Use a rental calculator (like the ones on BP or others online) to see if it can be profitable for you. Knowing this will help you narrow down future possibilities. 
3) Look into “Live in flips” - this strategy is something you should consider because it can help you get into your single family home with the big yard quicker. It works the same way as a flip except you live in the home as you fix it up. All the same rules and steps of a regular flip apply. You still need to find a home that is under market value and that you can add value to somehow.  Pros: if you plan to live in it for at least 1 yr before selling, you can get cheaper loans / better financing options. If you live in it for 2 years then you don’t have to pay capital gains tax when you sell it if the profit from the sell is less than $500k(the capital gains tax can be around 20%!). It also gives you time to do the renovation and maybe save by doing  some of the work yourself. Con: you don’t get paid until you sell, but real estate is a long term play. Also, you can only have one “live in flip” at a time as you can’t have multiple primary residences.

My thought is that if your townhome makes sense as a rental (+the cost of the HELOC) you look into using your HELOC as a down payment for a live-in-flip property.

3) Find a property - I would work on trying to find a property off market here in LA county as it is still very competitive and expensive on the market. There are many strategies to do this (BiggerPockets has tons of info about this) One possibility that not too many people talk about is working with an agent who actively seeks off market deals. I know an agent who does this (more in Orange County though) and she will send out letters to homeowners in areas that I’m interested in buying to find off market deals. 

Hope this helps! And remember this is only one of many possible strategies and there are sure to be flaws/cons with this that I missed but I thought like it sounded like it might help you reach you goal a little quicker then other methods. 

@Shiva Bhaskar Sure send me his contact info! Thanks!

Hey everyone! My wife and I are looking to buy a live-in flip property (off-market) from her deceased grandfather's trust. While I was speaking with a mortgage broker about rates, he mentioned that since we were related we could have home deeded to us to keep grandpa's tax basis. Does anyone know if we can keep the original tax basis if the family/trust were to deed us the house? Does this work if the house is in a trust?  Would we be able to cash out refinance the property once it was deeded to us to pay the trust? What are the general tax implications to this if we were to go through with it? 

Thanks for all of your help! I love this BP community!

@Rory Coyle. Congrats on the duplex! My wife and I were also looking in San Pedro. We were having a hard time finding anything though. Where did you find your duplex? Was on the MLS?

@Jaron Walling, you would think right! Hahah. This house has been through a few earthquakes and has cracking on the stucco, some of the drywall, and foundation.also some of the plumbing is old. While I do have a good idea of the condition of the interior, I would like to make sure that there is nothing wrong structurally or with any of the systems. Just for my own peace of mind and to use any major issue in determining my offer price.