All Forum Posts by: Kevin Siedlecki

@Jeremy Kleier: Did you have an inspection contingency in the contract?  You shouldn't have to lose your earnest money if you found out that the house had problems you were unaware of when you made the offer.  If you have the inspection contingency, you can either make the seller fix anything that came up or get your deposit money back when you walk.

How are you planning to access the equity?  Sell or refi?  Two years is a very dangerous amount of time to plan for building equity, which is something I discussed in my first blog post this morning.  Here is the link if you are interested: http://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/6815/blog_posts.... 

House-hacking is a great way to get started, but you should still analyze the property as if you are not going to live in it. Taxes in Fairfield County are a lot higher than a lot of the country, so that could hurt your cash flow.  Find the actual tax and insurance numbers, then run the numbers assuming both units are rented at market value.  Do you make a good ROI after putting away enough to cover management, vacancy, and unexpected expenses?  If so, go for it.  If not, find something else.  

Never say never, but I can't imagine a seller would let you bring in multiple contractors before you make an offer.  And, as @Ben Leybovich (BP royalty, btw) mentioned, with your construction experience you should be able to at least ball-park the rehab costs.  

You'll probably have to make an offer, then bring in an inspector.  Just make sure you have an inspection contingency in your offer.  That way, if there is something you didn't see on your walkthrough that you don't want to deal with, you'll only be out a few hundred dollars for the inspection, instead of the thousands you could lose when you discover a problem after the purchase.

It depends on what you are trying to do.  Are you trying to flip?  Buy and hold?  House-hack? 

Without that information, the only advice I have is this: 

If you can't get into the property, it's probably not a great idea for a first investment. Every purchase is going to have its surprises, so you should make sure you know as much as possible about the place before you buy your first one.  As you grow, you can absorb surprises with the cash from other investments, so you can afford to take more risks.  

Hope that helps a little!

@Sasha Friedman

 I love the ambition!  You might consider changing your approach.  Instead of presenting your needs to people, present what you can offer them.  I think Brandon said on then AskBP Podcast the other day, as an investor, we should never be asking for money.  We should be offering opportunities that other people want to put money into.  Why should investors use you to get this deal if you need someone else to guarantee the loan and someone else to put the money down?  What do you offer?  Once you have the answers to those questions, lead with that.  Of course, there are still regulations to consider, as other posters have mentioned.  It's going to be hard to raise $900k from friends and family!    

I think this sounds like a great idea.  If you're buying the right deals, you'll be able to move back to your suburb (if you choose to) in a few short years!

I would need a lot more information before I'd be comfortable saying what you should do (or what I would do), but have you considered hiring a property manager and keeping it a vacation rental?  As long as you have a good, honest manager (I know: easier said than done), you should be able to get the best of both worlds: passivity and $100k+ gross income.    

Another benefit of flipping to investors is that the turnkey company keeps the property in their management portfolio.  They are still making a money off the property once it's sold.  If they sold to owner-occupants, that stream of income would be cut off.

Get active on BP, develop some relationships here, and go to your local investor meet-ups.  I don't think you can buy a list of local investors the way you can buy a list of foreclosures.   

@Gary F.

 There are a lot of ways to look at this, and other posters have done a good job bringing different perspectives to it.  Since many the details have been discussed by others, I'll skip them here.  In the end, in my opinion, it sounds like you are counting on appreciation to bail you out of a bad deal.