All Forum Posts by: Dustin P.

Sure you can close it and then resell it

Look at what price points investors are buying properties and reverse engineer from there to find out what you should be offering

If you're trying to get pocket listings you'll need to be able to close. I would look into getting funding lined up. Most good brokers won't even look at a contract that says "and/or assigns"

Personally I would buy now and just be conservative. If you're living in one unit then you should have no problem covering your mortgage.

I feel like I've seen articles about timing the market and waiting to buy for the past 4-5 years now. If you try to time the mortgage you are going to be missing out on a lot of opportunities. Especially being young, starting earlier is going to be way more important then maybe potentially getting a partially better deal if you wait 3 years from now.

I would look into this, $3k sounds ridiculous for paint and carpet.

It sucks to hear about how this went about and I'm sorry that you got scammed into buying a property for way more than it's worth. However, I think it's a valuable lesson, and you may be ok if you can keep the turn costs down and still cash flow.

Why not just keep it rather than sell at a loss? If you can keep costs down like discussed above and still cash flow or at least break even with the balloon rate, then eventually you'll be able to sell and get your money back out of it. Now you know better and you can chalk it up to a paid education.

@John Thedford

Do you think that the majority of people on this site, who are encouraged to buy well below market value, are buying properties at 50% of market value from educated sellers? What's the difference between an educated seller and a non-educated seller? If I explain to them that I am purchasing their house at well below market value with the intent to make a profit, are they now educated? Where are you drawing the line?

It seems like you're getting hot and bothered over something that seems to be the backbone of real estate investing. Buying something at full market value doesn't really work very well as an investment.

@John Thedford

Whenever you buy a property for significantly under market value, do you feel like you are preying on that person because you are essentially "stealing" their equity?

@Kiara Harewood do you have any veteran investors in your area that you could take to lunch and pick their brain? Each market is different and it can be useful to figure out from them what they're typically paying for deals, realtors they would recommend to help you run comps, contractors they could refer to you for getting bids, etc. 

It's good advice to make sure you are running your numbers correctly but everything is market specific so you need to learn how to run them. For example in Phoenix (And most of the country I'm guessing) very few people are still finding properties for 70% ARV minus repairs.

Kill them with kindness. Ma'am I'm so sorry I didn't mean to disturb you, absolutely I will take you off my list right away. Thank you so much and have a great holiday season.

It's hard to say in that area, there aren't a whole lot of pools. Not as much as you'd get in nicer areas. I would probably start it at $1700 if I were listing for rent.