All Forum Posts by: Joey Hamaoui

Hey guys, 

has anyone purchased a home through the county auction here in Jacksonville? 

From what I could understand on the county site it seems to me that:

• You must give a deposit 5% of your anticipated highest bid prior to bidding to gain entry to the bidding.
• You are not given any inspection or financing contingencies.
• You must pay the remainder of your bid by 4PM the day of the sale.
• The sale is not complete until about 11 days later when you get the deed.

Please let me know if that is all correct and if there is something else I should know about the process. 

Also if you could advise me on the following:

• Do you perform your own title search prior to the auction?
• Do you pay the tenant to allow you access to the property prior to the auction? How do you perform inspections?
• Do you need to evict the current tenants?

Thanks,

Joseph

Thanks @Michael Anderson. I hope that the wholesalers don't get discouraged. You have to fail forward and I strongly recommend getting licensed or consulting with an attorney if someone is scared to move forward because of "Legal" reasons. There is a right way and a wrong way of doing everything. 

As an agent who works with investors, I love wholesalers because it gives me more inventory for my customers!

@David Dawkins I work with RE/MAX WaterMarke and our company is geared more towards career agents. I think the RE/MAX model would be difficult as an investor unless you are purchasing volume. 

From what I hear Keller Williams is very investor-friendly and has an interesting model for investors. 

If you just want access to the MLS I would consider going with one of those fee per transaction brokerages as well.

Hope that helps. 

Hi @Nick F., 

welcome to BP and to US Investing. I work with several foreign investors who are purchasing buy and hold properties for under $100K her in Jacksonville, FL. 

We are focusing on properties that need some work and rehabbing them to make good rental properties. Most of my investors are CASH buyers and we're seeing returns of 8-12% on average. Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions or if you're interested in investing in Jacksonville. 

Some issues that my foreign investors faced when starting out:

• They needed a good project manager (I stepped in).
• They have difficulty getting affordable financing (so they've paid cash).
• Very few (if any) banks will open a US account for a foreign national if they're not in the branch in person. 
• When you come to sell there are tax laws in place that can eat at your profit if you don't set things up from the start with the end in mind. When setting up an LLC you can work with the company to get the correct paperwork for the IRS so you don't have to deal with that when you need to dump properties to move on to your next venture.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

Thanks for the awesome responses guys. The takeaways I have so far is get multiple bids, use subs if you can handle the management, and emphasize the long term potential of the relationship. 

Hey Chad,

What was your experience with EverBank? Which Loan Officer did you work with?

Joseph

I don't know what the laws are for Louisiana but here in Florida you need to be licensed to market real estate for sale. The way to wholesale in Florida is to market the contract and not the house. This means you will have to do a bit of networking and possibly direct mail to get a big fat Cash Buyer's list. 

You might want to consider building your list as quickly as possible. Send emails or call all the property managers in your area and ask them if they have any landlords looking to build up their portfolio. Undoubtedly you will get a lot of "yes"s and "why"s. Tell them you are a local wholesaler and you get a lot of off-market deals and you want to let them know as soon as a hot deal hits your desk. Generally speaking they will give you permission to add them to your list. 

It sounds like your numbers are off for a good flip so I would target buy and hold investors. That's probably your best bet. 

If you really are pressed for time reach out to other wholesalers in your local market and tell them that you have a deal you can't move and you will split the deal with them 50-50 if they can move it. 

This will give you a chance to get your deal done and hopefully learn from an experienced wholesaler along the way. 

If nothing else works, cut your losses, lick your wounds and move on. 

In the future avoid marketing the house publicly and send your deals directly to your list. If you get no bites, hook up with other wholesalers for their lists and split or cut the cord. 

Good luck! 

Hey everyone,

My partner and I are looking at getting into flipping houses. We've done minor rehab projects for rental properties but now we're looking to get into flipping homes and I wanted to ask two questions to the BP community. 

First how can I keep costs down while still paying the contractor an honest wage? We're not looking to cut corners or get a rehab done for free but we are also aware that many contractors overcharge a lot. What advice to you guys have on getting contractors to do good work at an honest price when just starting out?

Second is do you recommend we bring GCs out to estimate the whole project and compare or should we bring out subs for each part of the project (e.g. flooring, roofing, kitchen, painting)? 

Thanks,

Joseph

We are crushing it here in Jacksonville. Lots of international investors. If anyone is interested in Jacksonville id love to connect.

I'm based in the Jacksonville Florida market and I have a lot of investors looking for rental properties here. We get great returns. If anyone is interested in buying or selling on or off market id love to connect. The biggest obstacle here in JAX is lack of MLS inventory for out of state / international buyers. We do a lot of wholesale and direct to seller deals.