All Forum Posts by: Kyle B.

No state is going to be the same in terms of accessing these files. You have to do investigating of your own. I would start be doing a basic google search or checking out your county's website. After that, try getting in touch with someone willing to share their knowledge with you at your courthouse. In my experience, a lot of people were not very helpful but it just took one person who was willing to explain things to me to show me how the system worked for my particular county.

I ran across my county's online file system and discovered they list mortgage foreclosures for properties in the county. My question is how do I best act upon these leads. If I contact the homeowners, would my negotiating points be that they can try to work out a shortsale between myself and the bank before heading to foreclosure or will the foreclosure process have already started and I'll just be to late to the party. Interested in hearing the best way to utilize this information. 

Thanks!

Kyle

@Moshe Eisenberg, it essentially is a risk/reward tradeoff. Yes, if all goes according to plan, you will make more money taking out a loan and retaining 100 equity stake. However, you are taking on more risk. If the deal goes south, then your lender is going to recoup his/her money before you see any of your investment back. If a deal goes south in a 50/50 equity partnership, you both take equal hits on your investment. If you have both options available to you, then you are going to have to weigh these pros/cons.

With that being said, I prefer to use a private loan on my rehabs (I have never used official "hard money") if I have both options available to me. If you're confident the deal is going to make money, no reason to give equity away if you have other options.

@Michael Huey, it may be a matter of you finding the correct person to speak with. I visited my county's court house multiple times and was told by the probate office that I was not able to obtain that information. After multiple tries I finally was directed to someone who was willing to show me how I could access all that information. 

So if you get turned away initially, don't let that stop you. From their perspective, it can seem a little weird someone "off the streets" wanted access to that type of information even if it is public info.

@Steven Myers, agree with sentiment above, I use MDF for my flips as it is easier to install (more flexible) and most people can't tell the difference (especially 1st time home buyers if that is your market). Interested in hearing what the other posters pay for their baseboard. I purchase from Menards and the mdf and pine are typically the same price - about $1 per linear ft and both come primed. Again, I buy mdf because it's easier to work with.

Also, paint spray guns are awesome. However, don't purchase the cheap $100 ones for sale at the big box stores. I tried using one of those and ended up returning it because it did not work at all... not even sure why this item was for sale as it just spit the paint out in clumps. The sprayers that work well are very expensive, over $1,000. My painter uses them on my flips. Ironically though, he hand brushed the trim on the most recent flip I did.

@Nicholas Moffett, good job on keeping a positive attitude... I'd be beside myself if I broke even on a flip, haha. I will reiterate what everyone here has said. You received great education for free. Think of it this way. You could have just stuck with reading books to "educate" yourself on flipping, but instead you learned hands on for the exact same price. As I'm sure you know now, you learn so much more going through the process than you ever could researching. And as for your next flip, I'm sure you'll have a much better idea of how to estimate repairs, looks like that was what you were the most off on.

@Kevin Samuels  bringing a contractor with you to help estimate repairs is ideal, but you mentioned the difficulty of it already... it tends to be a poor use of their time, particularly with re investors who only purchase a very small percentage of properties they see. From my experience, any legitimate contractor I've come across would not want to spend their time looking at a potential house I'm interested in buying, since the probability I will actually hire them to do work on that particular home is very small. I always bring them in after I have the property under contract/before I have closed.

What may be a good approach is to talk with a contractor, explain your business plan/model, and that you are looking for someone you can trust to build a long term relationship with and give a lot of business to you in the future. Then suggest you guys walk through a couple of properties you are considering as a purchase. That way, you can get a sense of what his pricing is on various projects. After seeing a few houses with him, you may start to get a good sense of what it would cost for the rehab and you can then apply it to future houses you see without your contractor their. Just a suggestion to get started. If the contractor really believes you could be a potential repeat customer, then I'd assume he'd take a couple hours of time to help you out in this regard.

Hope this helps,

Kyle

@John Blackman, thanks for the great advice. I definitely plan on changing my approach for the next property I flip.

@Jerry Lucker, thanks for the feedback. Yes, definitely need to step away from all the work and focus more on lead generation and finding the right people to work with. In your experience, do you find the best balance of efficiency and profits from getting a general contract to sub out the work or do you do that yourself? I'd love to have a general contractor for a project but I haven't found one that is cost effective enough to handle an entire rehab start to finish.

@Bill Jacobsen

Thanks for the feedback. Interesting to hear your business model. I'm around your projected profit margin - I usually budget for 25% of the money I invest. Seems like you have a fairly quick rehab schedule. Just curious, what do the other 3 months or so consist of - seems like a lot of time from purchase to sale given just a 4 week rehab time.

Also curious what your profit split looks like between you and your gc partner. Are you both contributing money or are you mainly financing and he is handling the day to day work?

Thanks.

Kyle