All Forum Posts by: Kyle Shankin

Hi @Matt Fisher.  I don't have that kind of a setup yet, but I have a suggestion. You could configure your house posts to have an 'occupied' field. When the house is occupied, you can turn on that flag, and then have only minimal information (maybe a picture and general location) about the house displayed on your website. Then when the house isn't occupied, you could turn off the flag and display all of the precise info.

That way, you can always show your vast inventory and people can know in general where the occupied houses are located, but can know specifically where the unoccupied houses are located. You might also consider having a developer add some code (or find a plugin) that can show a form for people to fill out info if they're interested in renting an occupied house. That way you can have leads for renters and may even be able to place them in one of your other locations.

It'd be interesting to see what you end up doing, please do post more about your site.

I think that's a great question @Gus Muller and I'm commenting mostly to follow the conversation. There's a great section in the BP podcast episode 309 that talks about direct mail marketing; the sentiment is that you should scale up and be consistent. However, it doesn't mention anything about pre-qualifying your leads before talking to them. 

From a speculation standpoint, I'd suggest you do a cost analysis to put a dollar amount on how much time it took you to qualify those leads and compare that to if you had done a traditional direct mail marketing to see what the difference is. Is your plan to approach these leads in a different manner than you would a traditional direct mail campaign?

Either way, please post your updates, it'll be really interesting to see how finding a few precise leads compares to finding a slew of unqualified leads.

Sara, those are some awesome results! Congratulations on your first flip!

Hey Joshua!  Try talking to some local lenders to get the best strategy.

I suspect that a lender will require you to pay off your existing loans if you're going to cash out. I had a house with just a home equity loan against it, and when I did a cash out refinance,. I had to pay back the heloc.

Hey Derek, have you tried adding the foreclosure search parameter to Zillow? There's also auction.com and Craigslist. I don't know of any site that lists fixer-uppers only. Usually it's a matter of having the right search. Of course, there's a possibility that the market doesn't have many fixer uppers on the MLS right now. Thats the case in my area.

Hi Matt,

How many units are the buildings that you're looking into? Are you including then unit that you're going to live in when you run your calculations? Are all of the properties in need of repair? 

If you're using the bigger pockets calculators, make sure you're entering the costs as monthly/annual where appropriate and not vice versa.

Hey congratulations @Michael Mortensen, that's quite a feat! I'm looking into a house with extensive water damage right now. I'm a little apprehensive because I've not dealt with an abundance of damage just yet. What kind of water issues did this house have? Mold? Weakened structure? Do you have any tips? 

A CPA could offer professional insight @Horacio Gutierrez. In my experience, yes you can depreciate the property even when there's a loan on it, and you start taking the depreciation for the tax year that you purchased the property. For example, if you bought a property in 2018, then you would take depreciation on the tax returns that you're currently preparing.

Hi @Jason Mayers, personally, I would refinance after you rent out the property. I would imagine being able to show that a property has been cashflowing positive for a few months makes it easier to obtain a loan. Now, I've never refinanced a property without there being a tenant inside it but, when refinancing, the bank asked for a P&L on the property and a copy of the contract stating that the house was currently rented out. I don't know how heavily this factor weighs in on someone being able to obtain a loan.

To your other part, yes, an appraiser will need to see the property. You'd have to notify the tenant, but that shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks for the resource @Wali Oliphant, the idea of guaranteed money is definitely appealing. I would just hope that the amount of money doesn't change (as it does in the article from my initial post).

@Michinori Kaneko that's some good insight and brings up a good point. I was focusing on the capabilities of the tenant, but didn't consider the capabilities of the government. I could see where it'd be difficult to deal with them if they're shut down.