All Forum Posts by: Joshua Hively

I bet @Mindy Jensen would know! Or if you scroll to the bottom and click "contact us" you can send a message to the support team.

For some reason it wont let me tag him, but James Wise is pretty knowledgeable about that market. Try reaching out to him. 

@George Pineda Go into your settings and select keywords. It may be different on a pc vs a cell phone.

@George Pineda Welcome to the forums!! Couple quick tips that have been working well for me. @Brandon Turner's book on investing with no and low money down and @David Greene's Long Distance REI are gold! Setup keyword alerts for thing or areas you are interested in. Get out and Network and or get on the phone with folks. Its nice when a situation or opportunity comes up to "know a guy"!! Lastly, take a quick minute and fill out your profile and add a picture. Believe it or not people use that as an initial gauge of seriousness.

My partner and I are currently in contract on a duplex in Columbus Ohio. Initially listed at $285,000 in contract for $272,500 post inspection and prior to flood zone discovery. Each side has 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. We are planning on having long term tenants on one side and list the other 2 bedrooms on our side as short term rentals. During due diligence I discovered the house was in a flood zone. The seller owned the property for 25 years and was unaware. We have been in contract on this property for about 3 months. While it has been a great learning experience about flood zones, nearly $5,000 a year in flood insurance kind of hurt the cash flow. We request that the seller have a survey done and try and have the property removed from the flood zone. Today we received the results. One corner of the property and the basement floor are about 3 feet below the base flood elevation. I have sent the survey results to my two potential insurance agents for final quotes. The seller is wiling to negotiate the sales price knowing that this will be an issue with any buyer using bank financing and affects the value as an investment. My current plan is to assume the highest quote for flood insurance, use that number in my calculations and come up with an offer. If we end up purchasing the property I would probably lean towards a higher deductible plan to lower the annual payment. This is an A-/B+ neighborhood. My gut has been to stick with this property for the entire time and am still hoping that I am able to swing it. I guess what I am curious from you, BP, are the following things. Does anyone have experience in dealing with FEMA flood zones? Should I be worried about basing long term financials on a government organization that is roughly $20 billion dollars in debt? What much lower would you need to see the purcahse price considering the flood insurance(I am leaning towards an offer of $200,000)? Is there something that I am missing? If I left out any details just ask! I really just needed to put this out the community and discuss and I am very appreciative of any responses!

@Vincent Reid Welcome back to BP!! Nice flip. Are you currently working any deals?

A co worker of mine is interested in purchasing some property near Bend Oregon for a business venture. He is looking for roughly 30 acres and would love some sort of water feature. I thought I would reach out here and see if anyone has any connections or if the keyword Bend might turn up a fellow BP member. Feel free to reply with your info and I would be happy to forward it on to him. Thanks!

@Adrian Birchler I'll shoot you a message and we will set something up!!

@Justin Petrides Hous hacking yes. Rental no. Rent to own no. My guess is that if you thought it was a good idea you would not have reached out and asked here. However if you do go through with any of the options just make sure you treat it like a business and make sure everyone knows it is a business and all proper documentation is in place.

@Adrian Birchler I also am in Columbus. Let me start by saying I am just now in contract on my first property in Clintonville. The way that I am running the numbers is as if all units are occupied. I have heard of people running the number not accounting for the missing rents. If you can find a unit where you can live for free that is awesome. However in our market, with properties on the MLS, in decent neighborhoods, I don't see it. Personally we are planning on using the vacant rooms in our unit as short term rentals, so I believe that will cover the difference. The other things that I take into consideration is that I otherwise would need to pay to live somewhere else and as a long term buy and hold guy, the length of time that I will be living in the property is a small percentage. I currently am pretty heavily networking in the Columbus area, feel free to reach out if you or anyone reading this wants to get together and chat sometime. Happy Thanksgiving!