All Forum Posts by: Joshua Wilson

Welcome to BP @Michaela Senechal. While you may get lenders responding here, it may be more beneficial to hit the lenders page here on BP and start making calls.  You'll be able to explain your situation more directly, and you'll get on the spot direction on ways to accomplish this.

Bigger Pockets Companies

Unfortunately for me, right now my wife and I are carrying an escrow and car payment. The reality is that those, plus our bills only totals about $2400 of the $5000 monthly we make. So the reality is that our DTI is only about 48%. I left a cautionary buffer of $600 to account for other expenses and money to enjoy life. I've buckled that down in the past to make moves and I'm definitely not afraid to do it now.

I'd love to find a way to work together. The more friends in the industry I get to work with, the better off I'll be in the long run! Maybe we can get a very basic relationship started? We can get some e-mail going and setup an MLS profile so we can hunt for that perfect rehab deal together.

Willie,  that depends on the arrangement. The approach behind these three offer's is that I intend to bring value and assist someone else in making money for themselves with their own capital for a very small percentage.  This get's me a hands on education while doing my best to work hand in hand with an active investor to make sure I'm bringing value to their time they're investing in me.

However, I've aligned a couple lender's so I'm prepared to bring in up to $60k with a remaining $10k buffer for carrying and unexpected expenses on a rehab and flip.  $20k of which is on a credit card and would be used for the rehab work.  I've come to terms with the fact that my situation dictates I run a few flips to build starting capital using hard money.  Proud of this bit though.  I have an 805-809 credit score and I'm looking at 10% over 4 years.  That's an incredibly high percentage to carry for that long though, so it must be used for a flip.  However, I put out the 40% profit share to an equity investor as I intended to do all the work of managing the flip.  If this is considered an unfair split, please let me know what is.  I'm new at this so I had to start the conversation somehow and am not opposed to changing the terms.

Afternoon BP!

In my life I've always found that I learn best by doing.  Now the difficulty is that it's difficult to do anything in the beginning.  I recognize this, so I'm trying to resolve it.  I would love to find an investor in the area that I could work with on a couple projects.  Let me tell you about myself, my history, and my offer to you.

I'm an IT guy by trade. Currently I'm working as a server administrator on MacDill AFB. My wife and I have been able to situation ourselves into a very comfortable 60% DTI ratio. I'll be happy to disclose actually income/expense numbers with interested investors. I love what I do, but I've realized that it's not going to be the vehicle to build the future that I want. I'm currently working full time bankers hours, and this is slowing my education and starting the business. My primary goal is to build an income stream that will allow me the relative freedom to be a stay at home dad for my future kids.(2 years away hopefully!) This should be roughly $5000 monthly. That's step #1. Step #2 is $10,000, Step #3 is $20,000... etc... The sky is really the limit once I get my systems, team, and education in line. I've also decided that after I get situated, I am going to focus on finding deals that will help people avoid foreclosure. If I can help someone else, help a bank, and help myself at the same time, that seems like a major win.

I bought a property for myself at a point which accidentally turned into a 14 month buy, rehab, rent, resell.  After all was said and done I netted $40k off that property and I'm super proud of that.  Since then I've never gotten rid of the "bug" on how much sense this industry makes to me.  Regardless to all it's nuances...

So here is my offer to you.  I want to get involved with 3 rehabs.  Ideally I'd love to be there for every bit of the process, but I know this is unreasonable.  I want to work for you.  I want to help make calls, follow up with the GC, swing by to photograph work, or whatever else I can do to help that I'm simply not aware of from experience.  In this capacity I would work for 5% of the total net profit.  Neither of us expect our time to be free, but I understand the cost of apprenticeship.  Subsequently I'm going to continue to evaluate and search for properties to get my own foot in the door.  If I find a property and bring it to you, I'd expect a higher level of involvement, and I would bump it up to 20% of net profit.

While it isn't the focus, I also have an offer to remote investors.  If you have a property you're interested in, I'd love to manage a rehab in exchange for 60% of the net.  In that time, I intend to be as self-sufficient as possible and report the progress to you.  However, I intend to use you as a mentor to the industry, to help guide and refine my approach and expectations.

Even if you aren't interested in partnering, I'd love feedback to the approach to maybe tweak it into something that is more the "norm" for real estate investing.

Thanks!

Thanks for the replies everyone!  

Kind of sounds like the general gist of the expectation is to be educated and prepared.  Fortunately I have already started sorting out lending options through folks on this site and outside AND I've given a pretty tight profile on what I'm after too him.  I suppose I need to get a couple pre-approval letters in and then hit the pavement hard with him!

Hey BP! 

I'm tearing my way into the industry, and at the recommendation of the community and my gut, I'm working with a great real estate agent.  I'm realizing however that leading up to purchasing a rental or flip I'm going to be asking for a lot of my RE agent's time.  At face value I understand this is how they make their money, but I have to ask the community some questions.

As a real estate agent, where do you draw the line on "too much time" and how do you handle it? 

What can I do as a buyer to limit wasted time on your part?

Thanks!

I'm actually going to have to rewrite a big portion of this.  After talking to a couple lenders I've learned that the properties I'm looking at, the breakdown of my personal finances, my credit score, my past experience with real estate, and my timeline is very agreeable to lenders and I've gotten some great initials for pm loans.  This is forcing me to re-evaluate because I'm finding myself with more starting capital which opens the doors for more lucrative deals!

My mission is to build a foundation that will let me be a stay at home dad. What I get stuck on is that I have to target an income level to achieve that.  I do hope to be in a position to help people.  Maybe help some folks get out of a tough financial spot.  Maybe some inspiration might do me well here.  What would be your mission statement @RobertWilson ?

You're right about having nothing without a deal.  But I am just starting out so I'm still structuring and planning everything.   This is different than any business I've started before.

Has anyone ever used an investor to cover a down payment? Or is generally considered to low of an amount for an investor to bother with?

I feel much better after writing everything down.  Very liberating to flesh out the plan in writing.  Something it makes me realize is that I have all of the pieces I need to truly move on something, save the financing piece.  Arguably the most important piece, but I have a couple of properties that meet my requirements already... Faster than anticipated.  so now I'm stuck without having lined up enough of my own capital to fund it.

Loving this game so far!