All Forum Posts by: Richard Ball

@Josh B.

 I was an investor for 7 years before I got my license and I can tell you that it is mixed. You will have about 2,000 in yearly expenses so if you are not going to be active or be able to make that amount up with your license you may want to keep looking for a great Realtor. So far the biggest incentive for me to get my license is speed, a house came on the market last night, before anyone knew about it I scheduled a showing and if the house is in good shape I will have an offer in on it today. Even with a great Realtor you may not get that kind of speed, giving me the edge and great deals.

@Jivonna B. if you and @James Ross don't come to an agreement PM, I can list it on the MLS for you for a flat fee.

Welcome!

Welcome!

https://www.naca.com/naca/media/mediaVideo.aspx?vi...

https://www.naca.com/naca/index.aspx

@Alvin Neal Without writing pages everyone should know that real estate is local and that money is made when properties are bought. Detroit has properties worth 250K + (Indian Woods / Palmer Woods / Downtown) and Detroit has properties worth less then 10K and if you do not know where these borders are because you do not live or have not spent a significant amount of time in Detroit you are guaranteeing yourself a hardship. A 40K house may be cheap in NY, Cali, etc... but 40K in Detroit is probably full retail and I have never seen a successful investor buy full retail and be highly profitable. Unfortunately I am not seeing this with just 1 or 2 people in certain areas I have clients in England, Africa, Tennessee, Cali, NY....the list goes on. So at the risk of losing future business please please please save me the trouble of being the one that tells you that you have bought a bad investment and your 40K is now only worth 10K and invest local and do a lot of due diligence.

Since I know people still won't listen to my pleading I am going to try and put something together later on some steps an out of town investor could take to at least give yourself a better chance of breaking even on your Detroit investment.

Buy a house in Detroit. I am speaking from the many people that I am trying to help as a Realtor. Anybody that is stumbling on this from a Google search. If you have never bought or owned rental property and you do not live in or near the city of Detroit please please please for the love of your family do not buy a property in Detroit. If this post only reaches one person and stops them from buying a house then I will sleep better.

Hey what do you know #AskBP just did a video on this :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw3IWrudl80

Assuming you have a relationship with a local bank you could pool all that together in a HELOC. With your new 265K HELOC you can buy a property cash, fix it up and after a year since you have forced appreciation refinance it and pay off the entire HELOC. Then rinse and repeat or since I am pretty sure your market is much like MI have multiple purchasing going at once and rinse and repeat. This essentially gives you an infinite rate of return since you should be able to buy with no money into the deal now. Make sure you evaluate the ARV properly and don't overspend on the rehab cost.

Thank you @Scott Trench

 and I see why they don't have a filter for the search site what would be a way to get around becoming a PRO member.