All Forum Posts by: Joe Sniadowski

Im an electrician, and highly reccomend rewire.  My company wont even touch it because so many connections are made behind the drywall thay may have failed and theres no way of finding it.  Or if we do work on a circuit and it fails later for a different reason, we are last ones to touch it, so are technically “responsible” for it.  

To do house rewires we charge $525 per “hole.” So for example, we’ll run a new circuit for your living room.  On that circuit you may have 5 outlets in the room, a light switch and a ceiling fan.  5 outlets, 1 switch, 1 light equals 7 holes.  So 525x7 would be the cost of that room.  To give yourself an idea of what a local electrician may charge for house rewire, id count all outlets, switchboxes and ceiling lights/fans and mulitply that by 500.  Thats a rough estimate and im sure you’ll find different deals everywhere, but that should give you a rough indication.

You may need a carpenter to come behind and patch any large holes, so keep that in mind.  My company will repair all smaller holes with one coat of patch, but homeowner is responsible for second coat, sanding and painting

Thanks for the input Michael.  I guess this is one of those instances in real estate where quality is valued more than return.  

What would you think about one of the cheaper ones as essentially my start up/learning curve house.  That way it would be a cheaper investment to give me started with and have more cash flow immediately that I could put in towards my next quality house. And if things were to go wrong, it would be easier to bail out or at least not completely lose my shirt over it

Im not looking to become the next real estate mogul or set the world on fire but would just like to own a handful of properties to easily maintain and have the passive income and obviously the long term investment itself.  I live in an area where median homes go for about 240.  But right down the road, is a city area where row homes go for about $60, but quality isnt best as you can imagine.   

How much quality do you consider in your properties?  I could go for a few $100-120k single family in my immediate area and not make as much monthly but long term would be potential for much more.  Or I invest in the $60k homes down the road but just having the integrity of the home and quality of tenant could be an issue, but the monthly passive would be better with less future potential on resell.  

Anything i havent considered or other advise is much appreciated

Spent the last year studying these boards and podcasts and BP books before i make the leap into investing, but just out of curiosity, im wondering how many units you guys have and what you collect monthly on average with those numbers?

I live in the philadelphia suburbs and realistically in next 5-10 years would like to own about 5 properties and collect about $300/month on each or more.  Thats $1500/month not to mention equity.  Then eventually houses paid off and collect possibly $1k/month per property.  

Some of you seem to have dozens if not 100s of units and i just cant fathom how much passive income you collect monthly.  Am i missing something or are a lot of you multi-millionares?  

Just wondering if im setting my realistic bar too low

Thank you guys.  Each of you have been helpful.    just the answer that there is no clear answer is really all i was looking to hear, or even an exact method.  It was just one of those bullet points that always seemed to have disregarded or vaguely brushed on.  Appreciate your help as always

when it comes to the financing part of brrrr, what is the origional financing set at?  30 year, 15 year?  I cant seem to find the initial purchasing method in any of the posts, blogs, guides etc.  it simply states “buy”, rehab, rent, refinance (assuminng from 30 year to 15 year?), but theres no clear formula that i can find that says buy at “30 years”.  And then the refinancing seems to be a bit vague as well as far as just getting appraised.  Is it better to keep at 30 years and then appraise and refinance again at 30 or bring down to 15?  

Sorry for the rookie question.  Any help or just more clear instruction is greatly appreciated as always

That also makes a huge amount of sense, thank you matt and mathew.  Simple things like that I havent considered yet as im a newb too

That makes sense, thank you michael.  That was sort of nagging at me because everytime i read or heard about it, they failed to elaborate on why they chose to sell.  

Ive heard on several podcasts and read several blogs/articles of people saying they sell their rental property after 5-7 years, while purchasing many more during that time.  

Besides getting the equity paid out to you, what is the benefit or reason to selling a property if you continue to make money on it each month while you continue to invest?  Is this simply to get a nice lump sum pay out from time to time? 

All good advice, thank you to all.  I trust your opinions because obviously we (on this forum) are more of a community and our intent is to help one another and we dont have any investmant with each other so id take that advice all day long over someone id be seeking to borrow from.  As always, I appreciate everyones experienced words of wisdom!