All Forum Posts by: Griffin Malcolm

Cool! I actually just bought the BP Long Distance Real Estate book and it arrived today, as this is something I'm interested in. I have my hands full at the moment (signed on two others this week that the proceeds of this BRRRR will fund) until I can figure out how to get more capital, but I will keep you in mind!

Question for the community - I've been reaching out to wholesalers via FB groups, and one guy wants me to Zelle him $20 for a list of 27 motivated sellers. His profile doesn't look particularly concerning, and his grammar is good, but he doesn't have a last name listed, and this doesn't seem like the way I should be paying.

What do we think? Sketchy? It was my understanding that the wholesaler brings an actual under-contract deal to a buyer and then the buyer pays a bit of a premium for the deal. 

Thank you! Definitely satisfied with how this one came out. I've done a lot of reading and research leading up to my house hack and now this first real investment property and it has all been proof of concept that this is the secret sauce so to speak. I felt so much pride after helping my first tenant move his stuff in.

I want to quit my job and do this full-time but I feel like my pipeline isn't strong enough yet to support the move. What would you recommend for that? Direct Mail?

Thank you! And absolutely. I also learned to just trust my numbers. We ran comps and I figured 170-175k would be a reasonable ARV, and we came in exactly in the middle. So if I buy at a great price and do a good analysis then it takes a lot of the stress away during the rehab.

Looking for wholesalers now to try and increase my pipeline. Do you send any direct mail out for yours? I want to be as active as I can here

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $75,000
Cash invested: $37,000
Sale price: $173,000

My first BRRRR. Off-market purchase. Used hard money 90% PP / 100% Construction Costs. Mostly paint and carpet plus all new kitchen and a little electrical work. Refi at 90% LTV new mortgage of 155k, payoff of 105k to hard money, so I was able to walk away with 50k in this one. I intend to roll the money into the next deal and then 1031 out of the property into something else next year

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

All the reading and listening I've done seemed to point at BRRRRs as the best way to recycle your money and start your journey in real estate

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

My agent presented me with this off-market property. It belonged to an elderly woman who passed away and the estate wanted the property sold quickly. There wasn't any negotiation really; we made an offer and they accepted

How did you finance this deal?

Hard money. 90% purchase price and 100% of the rehab. I put down $7500 and then after fees, commission, other holding costs, I had about 25k into the deal in the end.

How did you add value to the deal?

Trash removal, fresh interior and exterior paint, carpet and plank inside, brand new kitchen with cabinets and granite countertops, replaced the deck, and some updated electrical work w fixtures

What was the outcome?

Came out great! All-in for about 105k and we appraised for 173k. New mortgage of 155k after the refi left me with close to 50k to use for the next project

Lessons learned? Challenges?

- Don't bring appliances over without measuring the doorway first. I did this with a fridge that wouldn't fit so I ended up reselling on Facebook
- Don't be a hero and try to do parts of the job the GC can do. I said I would handle the dumpster company, and my GC said I overpaid on it. If i left it to him I would've saved money
- Make sure to start the energy bill before people start working on this. I didn't and we lost a couple days of time

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Spark Lending and Community Bank as lenders
Jamie Brayton is great to work with and found this property for me

You're in Albany? Check out Community Bank. They're doing a 90% LTV for me on a BRRRR now in Cohoes and you don't need to transfer out of your LLC. I am, but only because they give a better interest rate that way. The handle writing the new deed and transferring as well for like $400 or something. They're gonna be my go-to for the foreseeable future

Spark Lending does 10% down 100% rehab. Used them on my latest project and they were so easy to work with

2 and 3 kind of cancel each other out in my opinion. Like you're saying, it is difficult to cash-flow in expensive markets, but the way I look at house-hacking is a way to reduce your living expenses. If you can rent part of your house and only pay like $500 to live that's a massive win. 

Bigger thing to look at is if it'll cash flow after you move out. If it doesn't then yeah you may want to find something else

I've been reading through the Self-Managing Landlord book from BP and the chapter I've found the most useful is "Creating Your Tech Stack." I'm only at 2 properties as well, so it's a bit overkill for me, but I'd rather have the systems in place now than scramble once I acquire more units.

I pay for BP Pro, so I created accounts for the free sponsored platforms they have. RentRedi for property mgmt is nice since you can list the units directly from RentRedi and they do all the pre screening and applications there too. You have to pay extra for book keeping though, so I made a Baselane account for that which has been nice so far. That's really it for now. I feel more organized especially with the bookkeeping work

Doing my refinance now and the rate is 6.9 in Upstate NY, so seems pretty reasonable