All Forum Posts by: Greg Gaudet

Wow sounds great, love what you're doing! Thanks for sharing those details. Sounds like you did a great job of finding good deals too. I hope to be right behind you... I'm closing on #3 on Friday. They each produce between 500-600 a month in cash flow and are section 8 tenants that I self manage.

That is a good point. Earlier @Patrick Franta chimes in with a BPO in the 375-425 range and I’d say the same. That does leave a fair amount of spread and cushion for rehab in my opinion. Especially if you can get it for 225k with all the liens cleared. You can do a prelim first to check the title status for peace of mind. 

But I actually drove by this one when the auction was first announced and... well it’s a rough one! My personal opinion is the older the home, the more potential headaches could come up. This one was built in 1917, and it really shows from driving by! Which makes me think you could easily surpass 100k on the rehab, depending on what you do with it. 

Personally if I wanted to pursue this home I would go knock on the door, give the occupants malasadas and see if they’ll talk story with me so I can gauge how much trouble they’ll be and possibly even get them to invite me in (Gotta be careful with this, but Its worked for me in the past). 

I agree with @Loren Clive, the only way to get a deal at the auctions is to go to all the auctions, have the cash sitting around, and be ready to pull the trigger when one of the properties goes for the right price (except when it's a good enough deal to justify paying 5% more at confirmation). And like she said, there's not many deals left at the court house - but there are still some here and there. I like to think that if you're willing to be patient and do the work, there is money to be made.

That being said, my experience doesn't even come close to Loren's. In fact Loren guided me through my first court auction acquisition. If it weren't for her input, I might not have gone through with that home run of a deal! Mahalo Loren!

I wouldn’t call that slow! 

John can you tell us more about the type of properties you buy? It sounds like you’re averaging 550-600/month per door? What’s your strategy? Are you buying below market value, are you investing in D class neighborhoods and just doing the added work in exchange for the added profit? 

I’ll share my own deal structure in exchange:

Personally I buy D class condos here on Maui and rent them to section 8 tenants and make a similar return to yours. Market values about 125k so I like to get them for 90-100k, rent for about $1,650, and produce about 500-600/month I’m cash flow (although that number is going down as prices have gone up) 

Great work John! I hope to follow closely behind you! I’ll be stoked to have $3500/month in 1-2 years from now! 

Love it! I'm about to turn 35. I started working in RE when I was 18 and decided I wanted to invest then. But being super conservative and risk adverse, it wasn't until I found BP and "the Best REI advice ever" podcast that I became confident enough to take the plunge.

I've acquired two rentals in the last year and my third is scheduled to close next Friday. With that one I'll be bringing in around 18k a year in cash flow, which makes me hopeful that if I keep up this pace I should easily be able to retire from working full time for someone else by age 38. Although I don't plan to remain at this pace, I place to scale much larger in the next year. After I acquire 2-3 more of the same type of properties I've been buying I plan to buy small MF properties. I should be able to be earning 100k in positive cash flow within 3 years. Then hopefully 250k within 5 years...  

If I can do it, anyone can! 

Ended up buying*** 

And the reason I say I'd stay local if I were in Georgia is because everything I've seen in Georgia is affordable. The main reason I see to go OOS is when you live in a market that homes start around 300-500k and up. If my area had homes worth 100-150k I would find homes in that class that needed work and try to acquire them for 70-80k, or whatever I needed to make it work. 

How much do B-C- class properties cost in Albany? And how much do they rent for? 

Also, I'm assuming you're referring to buy and hold investing for cash flow just based on your post.. 

If I lived in Georgia I'd probably stay local.. I considered investing OOS at first too bc of the prices on Maui but ended up being D class rentals here instead and so far that has worked well for me.

But I may go OOS in the future, and when I do I will read Long Distance Real Estate Investing by David Greene. Everyone I've heard seems to agree that's the book to follow.

Flipping could help you create more capital but it may also be riskier. Personally if I were in your position I would prefer to wholesale some deals so I have less risk and can make profits quicker. 

Then I would probably try to find a cheap home that I could get an FHA 3.5% down payment on and do a live in flip. Or live in it while you fix it up, then refinance and get your money back out of it, rent it out, and find your next house. The key to this strategy (if I had limited funds and wanted to scale) would be to bust my butt to find deals well below market value so that you can get all of your money, or even more, back out once you fix it up a little. Maybe you can find some really good deals from local wholesalers and that can help you learn how to do some wholesaling yourself?

Note - I haven't done any of these strategies personally, I just buy and hold rentals, but I've heard a million stories of people doing strategies similar to this and it leading them to great success.