All Forum Posts by: Jeff Piscioniere

@Michael Caro first of all congrats on trying to take this plunge at age 20! They say hindsight is 20/20, boy do I wish I started then! I feel with persistence, you will be educating us in just a few years! Lol. Keep in mind that you are young and have so many years to get into it all. As others have said, I think you just need to save more money. Why not consider house hacking now though if you’re able to get into any property at all before looking to flip? The other thing that I believe could get you over the hump is try to find other like minded people and form a partnership! Sometimes it’s all about strength in numbers particularly when you’re green. You may indeed have to look out of state. I live in CT so empathize with how little your money gets you. Good luck!!!

@Scott Peters are you sure it’s dry rot and not termites? Without knowing if indeed there could be water in and around the home, it’s worth investigating. If the damage is already done then in a funny kind of way termites could be a better outcome particularly if it was done many years ago. You could have a perfectly drained home but just joists from a past termite issue. Either way, yes looking into fixing. Good luck!

@John Borromeo consider partnering with family, friends, or other professionals that might bring some value to the table with REI. It will help mitigate some of the fear. Good luck!

@Chris Slater do you have a time frame on the turnaround with the flip? Hard money would work for you but the longer your rehab takes it could add up. Also, $40K profit is outstanding! Don’t minimize that!!! Best of luck to you. I’m trying very hard to get my partners to focus on lightly distressed properties for our buy and holds that we can fix and refinance. It’s great motivation to hear others telling their stories of rehabs.

@Dave Foster well explained! I appreciated your post! So are you saying that a refi could be a touch and go situation if the bank interprets an intent of a flipping business?

@Thuy Pham-Satrappe I’m trying very hard to convince my 2 business partners to consider doing a flip for the short term purpose of funding our buy and hold strategy. We have cash enough to buy a flip candidate in full but they are both fearful on the carrying costs and who and how to rehab it. From what I hear it’s also not as clear cut on refinancing out either.

I’d love to hear more about your flip business particularly the capital gain tax implications. That seems to be one aspect of the flipping phenomenon that no one ever seems to talk about. Either way, good luck!

@Melissa Walker I think there are really good opportunities to market directly to owners through direct mail and calling, even knocking on doors. There are means to research through municipal records even online and just find the demographic and of geographic area you’re looking for. I’m also relatively new and this is really a foolproof affordable means to try first (cost of paper and stamps). You can also purchase customized lists that are also affordable in the grand scheme of things. Where I’ve had difficulty finding direction are the verbiage on direct mail letters. There’s no one size fits all of course but I’m looking for something basic to tweak and build off of. For instance, my partners and I have discussed marketing for owner financing to people who own out right who might be looking to down size and want a monthly income.

Where are you located or what is your market?

@Kathryn Hayhurst you will not make money if you use a property management company, in fact you might lose money. We live in Connecticut and we manage remotely with Airbnb, VRBO, and TripAdvisor. 90-95% Airbnb, mostly the rest is VRBO, and TripAdvisor has literally fell off the face of the Earth in the last 8-10 months (I actually am planning on calling them because we used to get nearly 50% from them; not sure the issue). We only visit once a year. There are cleaning companies in the area and that is all they do, clean and maintain vacation rentals. Since it is a 12 month rental area so this is easily a full time job for them. They will do the cleaning, change light bulbs, change air filters, etc. You will need a good network of HVAC, pest control, plumber, handyman. All the wonderful people you meet here can give you all the contacts you need, wink wink! Gatlinburg is definitely pretty close to 80% occupancy. You will be full for most of Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, March, June, July. Aug maybe 75% with people going back to work and school. Jan/Feb will have every weekend booked for skiing and anything additional is the cherry on top. April and May are weird months, lots of last min bookings and people in between end of school years and weather kind of in between. I honestly haven't paid a ton of attention to what we net because it is dependent on having to do anything major (had to buy new pool table last year). We gross well over $50,000 and have done so 3 years in a row. What I might suggest is to do some research on whether you want to get into a resort or more of a remote area or a less organized development. HOA fees in some of the resorts can eat quite a chunk out of your monthly income. Hope that helps!

Spoke with a mortgage broker today who explained that you could get a cash out refi in under 6 months if necessary and she said that actually when doing it under 6 months it would be at a lower interest rate vs after 6 months. It was some interesting insight.

@Mark DeLorenzo I’m confused. So are you saying even if this home appreciates in value with any significance via normal appreciation or a value add renovation appreciation that even if an appraised value is much higher than purchase price, we are only going to be able to pull out what we originally purchased the house for at the most???