All Forum Posts by: Lee Haenschen

Every chance I get lately I've been driving back roads and writing down addresses of homes that appear vacant. Now that I have these addresses. What would you suggest as means for getting in touch with the owner or whomever might be in charge of the sale? These are off market homes

For instance one home I did a reverse white page search and found the previous owners name. She and her husband is dead.....I checked the county website and the daughter now has possession.  So should I send a letter to her directly? 

For the others that I can't find much info on....if they just up and left the home, how do you market to those homes? If you send to the actual home address, but it is unoccupied, you would be relying on them having their mail forwarded correct? Which would be highly unlikely. 

Where do you all keep the money? If you have 25 rentals do you have separate bank accounts for each? How do you track what money is set aside for each property? 

I'm assuming it would take a year or two to have saved enough with those % to have a safe cushion? If it's a new property and you've only had it rented for a couple of months and it needs let's say $400 for a plumbing repair that would put you in the negative for the repair fund. 

I'm new to this, where do you keep the funds for each house? If you have 20 houses. Do you have 20 different bank accounts? 

I was kinda testing/playing around with the Brrr calculator and fix/flip calculator. 

Is there some key numbers that need to be paid extra attention to? 

I filled in all the numbers that I could come up with and ran the calculator. I am looking over the numbers and don't see anything alarming or exciting about the deal.

Monthly income:700

NOI: 5,706

Monthly expense: 412/416

Total cash needed: 24,700

Monthly cashflow: 288/284

COC/ROI: 14%/18.5%

pro forma cap rate: 10.97%

purchase cap rate: 14.27%

Is this monthly cash flow after refinancing for the cashout? 

I feel like after 2 years of lurking on here I should know what the target rates should be.....but at times my interest/family will pull me away from REI learning for months at a time, I feel like I start over each time I come back !

Pavel that's awesome to hear! That's what I would like to be able to find one day! 

I guess part of my post is fueled by the amount of post I read on here where the people are 10 years younger then me and make a post about "I've hit financial freedom, I am now officially retired!"  They make it sound so easy. I guess I need to jump into the game and get started asap!  I've read all the books, listened to hundreds of hour of pod casts & audible books. I'm not getting any closer to financial freedom if I don't try. 

Thanks Taylor! We have searched many nights online for remote jobs. Only thing we found that you didn't need years of experience was amazon. Which was a pay cut and after she contacted them twice they never once replied back. 

We shall keep looking in that route as well for a backup plan. 

We aren't looking for success immediately. But we do need to get started on something that in the next 1-5 years will bring income that we can keep growing. Immediate income would be nice! but we need to grow our retirement as well since we have none at the moment. 

Thomas, we don't have deep pockets for deposits on homes. We have enough to get us into one homes! 

House hacking is out of the question as we are deeply rooted on a farm with a shop for my lawn maintenance business. 

Thanks guys! All to often you hear the " 1 year in and i'm officially retired"  I don't always believe that

What's considered a faster route to steady income? I have done 1 rehab with/for a old friend of mine. We gutted a house to the studs and built it back up. It was fun but I know in order to make money I would have to sub everything out. So I am somewhat aware of what it takes to rehab a house. I know there are many variables, but I am far from a HGTV couch flipper. 

If this takes years - so be it! I know that my future won't change if I don't make the change. Me and my wife keep running circles in this rat race and we know it's time to make a hard turn for a better future.  I am watching my kids grow up via photos while I work 6-7 days a week. 

Working through information overload, cold feet & finding time syndrome here.  An important question me and my wife have been wondering....

So once YOU started buying homes to hold and rent & houses to flip, how soon did you start using the income/cashflow to live off of? 

My wife desperately needs to quit her job to take care of our 2 kids. School has been an issue with my youngest (learning disabilities) She can't quit her job until we replace her yearly income + healthcare (roughly 24K bring home + health) 

That being said, when you started in real estate investing how soon did you start using the income to live off of? I know everyone's situations are different. If you have 5 homes and each cashflows $100 per month after all expenses...did you use that for income? Or did you set that aside in case what you've been allocating for expenses was not enough? Then waited until that account hit a certain $$ value then started taking income after that point? 

The houses I am looking at with the BP calculators look to only have $100-150 cashflow per month (buy & hold) at most. That would take 20+ homes to achieve this for my wife to stay home. Should we be looking into flipping instead for quicker cash? I just worry that we flip a few homes and think that everything is "ok" so she can quit her job, then our ink well dries up! and now she needs to get a job again! My nerves & anxiety has slowed our progress in the real estate market. 

Thanks in advance! 

I feel the same way.....but I tend to look at things from a negative stand point. Me and my wife are miserable at what we are doing for a living. Working from 7am to 10PM 7 days a week. We WANT so bad to get into real estate but can't stop working or else life will fall flat (financially) We are scared to get started because what happens if we need the money we've saved for our first house flip deal or rental deal. And low and behold....I got a large tax bill this year for my business that I couldn't pay and had to dip into that savings. Would have been up a creek if we had used the money for what it was intended for. 

The market moves SO fast around here. If a house looks vacant....it's under renovations the next time I pass it. I don't even have time to write down the address much less inquire about it and the deal has already been done. I can't get my foot in the door because of the pit vipers that do this 24/7