All Forum Posts by: James Masotti

Great call outs @Rick Beno

@Andrew Berkowitz - You've found the right place to learn about real estate investing for sure. There are a ton of folks from the Philly area on the site, so I'm sure they'll chime in. The bit I know about that area of the market is that it's very high priced. Unless you've got significant cash to put down, you'll probably be better served looking at some other areas of the city for rentals. Again...I'm not an expert on the area so if I'm totally off base than someone will chime in and say so.

A) @Brandon Turner should definitely write @Dan Mackin's book idea.

B) BPTV should be a thing @Mindy Jensen and @Mike H. need to work on a proposal to give to @Joshua Dorkin

@Mark Ferguson - Thanks for the questions! Here are my thoughts and responses...

Many of the houses around here are sold with a washer and dryer, so I do believe I would be at a disadvantage if any of the houses I flipped did not include them...but I will double check this with my realtor.

A $1,200 range may end up being on the upper end of what I would consider...probably get away with something more in the $900 range...but hopefully that $300 isn't going to bankrupt the deal :) Appliances are intentionally a bit higher as this area does "require" stainless appliances.

The front porch and deck are already there, so the cost for the deck is to make repairs to the front porch and the back deck. If I didn't redo the back deck than I would definitely end up needing to build stairs out the back door and redo the landscaping and/or build a patio (also typical for this neighborhood)

So it sounds like there might be a few thousand dollars on the last one I could "do without" which would allow me to make a stronger offer if I needed to.

@Steve Vaughan - You are totally right. My goal is to use the flips in order to fund my rental acquisitions and principal payoff at a more rapid rate. Hopefully either my wife or I will get a real estate license sometime this year and then maybe we can save on some commissions if we are able to find buyers ourselves, or at least offset some of the sale price on the purchase side. 

I'm going to go ahead and bump this to the top and see if anyone has any thoughts they'd like to share :)

@Jessi Hill - Awesome job! Very inspiring to see! Can't wait to get mine started!

Congrats @Cody Barrett! It sounds like an awesome first rental! Keep up the great work!

@Glen Beringer you actually also connected me with your realtor and I was very happy with his knowledge of the city.  I will be using him when I start to acquire more properties.

@William Thomas - I have one rental in the city, and am looking to buy more. So I definitely wont be the one to tell you to avoid the city, but I will advise you to be very careful where you buy. The streets go from good to okay to really bad pretty quickly in certain areas. Check the crime maps for any of the properties you've found.