All Forum Posts by: Toyin Dawodu

@Mike Margetts Your equity means nothing until you use it. The last recession should have taught us a lesson. If you are sitting on 4 properties free and clear, you need to refinance all of them and use the money to buy 10 more by spreading the money as down payments on 10 more houses. That's maximum leverage. If you let the equities sit there, you can lose the equities or have it all diminish if we have another downturn. If you plan to buy 10 more houses, just buy and flip them so that you always have cash. I learned that lesson when I accumulated 40 rentals and was always broke. The moment I began flipping, I had so much cash and I have not had another rental since, even though I have bought over 400 houses.

Don't even worry about trying to learn how to fix or install anything. That's not your job. Just focus on finding good deals. Let the experts do what they do best. Your job is to supervise them. If you try to cut corners by doing it yourself, it will cost you a lot in the end. Its always a good idea to move into the house while you are fixing it up. I did that when I first bought my first house, but I never even finished doing the painting because I found out I was not caught up to be a painter let alone a plumber. If you enjoy buying houses, you won't have time to fix them.

@Michael Algarin  This is a terrible deal. First of all, the most you should pay for this property is $279,000 before any repairs. If you subtract repairs of $40,000 your purchase price should be no more than $257,000 if you pay more than that, only a stupid investor will give you a dime more than $257K. There are a lot of noise out there about wholesaling, but I always tell my students that only losers wholesale properties. If you know what you are doing, why would you leave money on the table. for example, if you were to acquire this property for $257,000, you might be lucky to whole sell it for $5000 or even $10,000. But if you take the whole deal down yourself, you stand a chance to make, at least $60-$80,000. My question is why not learn the process of taking down deals instead of killing it half way. If lions only make half kills, they will never have the strength to get a full belly and they will always be hungry. I flipped only three houses in 2014 and made $248,000. If I whole ssale my deals I would have made less than $30,000. But it takes some skill. So learn the skill or get someone to hold your hand who has done it.

I think you are just complicating the whole process. Just focus of finding a property first. Find a mentor who is doing it and have them walk you through making money on the property from acquisition to exit.. Forget about all this complicated refinancing process. Just get in, fix it and get out... That's what I try to teach my student in the Magic of Real Estate system... you can email me if you are interested to know about my program.

Way to go @Glenn McCrorey , I went in the same position as you 12 years ago, when I started my full time real estate investment. 400 properties later, i am still going strong. I just finished detailing my exploits in my upcoming book "The Magic of Real Estate." My advice to anyone with a job, is keep your job, but learn the skills of real estate investing. Some day you are going to need it because you never know when the next recession is going to hit or the corporation decides to give you the boot...

@Chris Purvis You should be careful about buying hud homes. Make sure you do a proper inspection and if you are new, you may want to bring in an experienced partner. Cheap does not mean profitable. The process of no money down is not complicated. If the value is there, the hard money lender will finance the deal plus rehab money. You may even have cash back at close of escrow.

It depends on where you are, I would learn the process of doing no money down deals so you can preserve your funds for fix up when you need it. Also, you want to have the funds available to pay cash when the really good deals show up, like buying a property for 40 cents on the dollar. If you are operating with cash, you have an advantage over a lot of people.

Hi Brian, there's no better way to do it. Keep up the good work.

If you are new, you probably should get someone to hold your hand. When you assign contracts, make sure you have proper control of your deal. If you are just on contract, the deal can derail at any time. That is why i always want the property in my name before any assignment.

Hi @Belinda R.,

I think your first mistake is not taking into account both your rehab cost and closing costs for buying and selling, including holding costs. To begin with putting $34 rehab into any property is too much for a newbie unless you have a projected profit of at least equal amount or more. If I was buying the same property, knowing my rehab and other costs will be $34,000, the most I would have paid for the property would have been $20,000. $94,000 X 60% -$34,000 -1% contingency. So when I am done fixing, my total investment would have been $55,000. Based on the location you describe, I would have further discounted the purchase price to $10,000 because these are the red signs that keep a property on the market for too long regardless of how much you spent on rehab.. One of the first things I teach my students is how to make money buying properties. Most people buy and then think about how to make the money later. In real estate investment, you make your money the day you buy, and take your profit when you sell. If you want more on how you can master the process, you can go to my website (please check my profile for info).