All Forum Posts by: Brock Norton

Does anyone have recommendations for a bookkeeper and tax accountant here in Salt Lake City?  We've flipped two houses in the last year and plan to do more.  One of our houses was in the historic district and there are special tax advantages for doing one of those.  We have many questions and so any good recommendations would be appreciated!

Hey @Seth Ferguson thanks for the reply/thoughts.  Ya education is important.  I didn't put it in my original post, but I've listened to about a hundred BP podcasts, dozens and dozens of blog posts, been to meetups, am reading several of the bp books, etc etc.  You seem to have a strong opinion about this, which is good.  I am totally fine chasing cash flow to get out of the rat race.  I am not sure what other altruistic reasons there are for buying rental property if not to get out of the rat race or to create additional income streams for the owner.  I appreciate the suggestions though and just wanted to ping about that appreciation.  Have a good day!

I want to get out of the rat race.  I know there are many ways of doing so and to each their own.  I work a full time w2 job, own a painting business that runs on its own, and my wife and I run flips too.  We've owned one rental in the past as well, but don't have it anymore, but I want to get back into it.

I go back and forth over the approach and wanted to see what you guys thought. Basically my understanding is that SFH's cash flow much better on a per unit basis, but with MFH's you get more units under one roof for the benefits of economies of scale. It takes, at least I've heard a bunch of times, as much work or close to it to get a 12 unit as it does a 120 unit property.

My initial thought was to go with SFH to more "quickly" get out of the rat race, i.e. get my cash flow churning and burning via bigger cash flow per unit, but if it takes about the same or a little more work to get a 25, 50, or 120 unit then why not do it? Especially if I can come up with the funds through partnership etc? I can do BRRRR for both so I don't think it is a BRRRR issue for me. Then once I had a portfolio of properties that got me out of the rat race with sfh's then I would transition into apartment buildings.

Thoughts?  Advice?

Good morning BP community!

My real estate investing career is continuing its growth.  Next week we're closing on our first flip.  It will be a successful experience netting a good chunk of cash.  After we accepted the offer on the house and had some time to breath and talk to people about our experience we picked up another home in the downtown historic district of SLC just a few blocks from pretty much everything from the arena to the state capital to the university etc.  We've got a GC working with us on the more technical tasks like plumbing, electrical, etc, but he hasn't been the best at communicating, plus his rate was high (we negotiated him down to what we gathered was actually normal for a gc in our area so that is good).  

Why I'm posting here though is to see if anyone nearby has an awesome gc, that is experienced, fair on price/his/her rate, and excellent at communication.  We have funds and can pay fast, have no shortage of deals we could take and give to them, but I want to find someone that I can trust and build a long term relationship with to take our flipping to the next level.  Ideally once the relationship is there when a deal comes across my desk I want to send him/her over to look at it, tally up what needs to be done, recommend a budget, and then we can decide if we want to take it down or not.  Of course we've got criteria for what we look for in a flip, a pretty good idea of budget costs for things (thanks to jay scott's book and our own experience on our first flip and renovating our own homes over the years), and how long a project should take.  We even own our painting business and have experience knowing what it takes to be licensed, find good people, and what a good business looks like in terms of customer service and communication.

Any recommendations would be awesome!  I'll have to post pictures and numbers for our flips here soon so you can see it.  Its been fun, but we're ready to keep growing!

Thanks

@Mark Fries Is your $400-$500 a door for single family homes or multi family or both?  I ask because I'm still in the beginning phase or researching markets and whether to go single or MF.  I've heard that David Greene is $400 minimum target, but that is single family.  I've heard brandon turner is like $150/door for single family.  

I own my own painting business and am a licensed contractor and we do 50% up front for every project, big or small.  The only time it is different is if it is on certain commercial jobs and new construction.  We do it to book their project out in the schedule otherwise we can't promise when we'd paint for them.  Plus it does help us pay for materials and make payroll for our guys for projects that run longer than two weeks as well as cover workers comp and insurance.  It isn't a red flag in my book to have them ask for it.  And certainly we COULD wait to get paid after everything is done, but this is standard prudent safe practice at least for my industry and certainly there are bad contractors out there that stiff people and don't do good work, but trust me when I say there are homeowners and businesses that can be just as shady (and unfortunately have been at times to my company) in terms of being uber perfectionists and withholding payment for unreasonable expectations.  We adhere to the pdca standards of workmanship and have warranties on our work and we've got good guys that do our work.  And this isn't me being touchy in my opinion because I can see it both ways.  I also work a full time job in the tech industry as a product owner with a good amount of education behind me and so I'm not beholden to the ups and downs of my business.  What I would do if I was you though is make sure you have a signed contract, make sure they're licensed and insured, check reviews on them, ask for customer testimonials/references you can call, and pictures/video of past work and if they have a website.  We provide this to every customer we work with proactively and lay it out in a VERY professional way, one to make us look good, and two to leave a land mine for the guy that asks for 50%, but doesn't include all of this stuff.  If quality and price seem to be the same who would you go with if it was me vs them?  I don't ask that in a braggadocios type of way, but just in a contemplative type of way.  

@Alexander Felice and @Andrew Postell thank you so much for the education! Alexander I loved your podcast and website. After listening to your podcast episode with BP my goal is to do a small deal with BRRRR as the strategy and then just scale up from there to my end goal aspirations. I'm currently completing my first flip and will do those differently in the future, but see the real power in wealth creation will be doing BRRRR. So excited. Trying to narrow down markets to areas with good jobs, pop growth, friendly landlord laws, ideally 2% rule cashflow, but then with BRRRR. Excited. And honestly can't believe you Alexander answered my question. Just felt kinda surreal to see you as a responder to one of my questions haha. Enough blabbering on you guys are awesome!

@Jaysen Medhurst and @Andrew Postell you guys are friggin rockstars.  I love this help and this site and just the wealth of knowledge/experience found here.  This makes me super excited and I wasn't even expecting/thinking of knowing to ask these questions of the lenders.  And the explanation of the mortgage broker was something I definitely needed. So good seriously.  I love it.

This is exactly what I needed!

@Jaysen Medhurst thank you very much and same to @Andrew Postell