All Forum Posts by: Lee Haenschen

Brian, VERY good question as to why I would want a second job. My wife has been at her dead end job for the last 12+ years. She absolutely hates it and has been looking for another job for a while but can't find anything that compares to the benefits she has now. 

We want passive income for sure. Any boost in income is what we are looking for, like you mentioned enough money to buy my time back and get me out of the field and into the crows nest so I can look down on my business from another perspective. 

Our goals going forward are:

-Get me out of the field I have lingering stress & work related illnesses that have put a damper on our family.

-Replace my wife's $2,000 per month bring home income with investment properties so she can QUIT her current job and manage our real estate properties & manage my landscape maintenance business so I have LESS work on my end as well and I can spend more time with family.

-Have several rental properties for the passive income but we need several flip properties for additional boost income. 

The sky is the limit, but for the immediate future I have a short period of time to bring in $2,000+ per month in income to replace my wifes wages so she can quit her job. Realistically I need beyond 2K per month to be comfortable. 

We want an even mixture of rentals and flips. We want to use money that we make off flips to live off of and to re-invest into more rentals. 

Service industries in general are starving for good help. Most everyone worth their salt already has a job.

My company does not gross enough to afford someone to do what I do at the moment. My goal is to get to that point in the next 24 months. 

My companies main focus is landscape maintenance. Which is just about the lowest profit margin in the green industry! 

I've got 3 local wholesalers that e-mail their deals on a regular basis. 2 of the 3 have in the e-mail MUST BE ABLE TO CLOSE IN 7 DAYS.

Why the rush? Is that so you don't have enough time to find issues with the property? 

I understand if they tell the home owner that they can close quickly.....but why would a distressed homeowner want to be pushed out of their house that fast? Generally people need time to find another home! or even just time to compute what is going on. 

What would you consider some of the more important parts of the market to study?  Watching the current sale trends for each area? 

And Kevin, we have many employees, I mainly stay busy meeting with clients, sales calls, proposals, picking up parts & repairing equipment. Don't get me wrong I am out in the field plenty of hours each week. I just wear many hats at this point (growing pains of the company) 

Thanks josh! I'm in Charlotte NC market....fairly close. We have some equity in the house, but possible just enough to buy the home but not enough to cover repairs.

I paid around the same fee I think it was less then $200 to setup an LLC for my landscaping company years ago. But I accidentally set up myself as the registered agent. I was under the assumption that you needed to have someone else as the registered agent. This was an extra layer of protection that makes it more difficult for someone to get at your assets?

This is more of a rant....just want to get this frustration off my shoulders! Me and my wife have been TRYING to get into fix and flips and a couple rentals for several years now. Have literally gone to see 1 house in 3-4 years of looking.

Back story: We both work full time ++ have two boys under 10 yrs old. I own a landscape business and work from 7AM-5PM

Once home I make dinner do kids homework and off to the office to do paper work for a couple hours until shower & bed time. This is the norm for us 6 days a week. Sunday I eat breakfast with my wife and kids then off to repair/service equipment and get ready for the next weeks work. Me and my wife need a BIG change in our work life.

So time has been VERY hard to come by for looking at homes. We've tried to work with wholesalers and 70% of their homes are either in the ghetto, needs complete gut job (over our heads for first project) and to boot most all of their leads don't look like that good of a price. Not to mention you must be able to close on all of their deals in 7-10 days!!! I haven't applied for a hard money loan so im not about to put a non refundable deposit down from a wholesaler just to find out I can't get financing in time from a hard money lender. 

I've tried to go to the county court house to bid on tax lien foreclosures in my county. I went to the court house to ask the tax office lady about how the process works. I can see online what the minimum starting bid is. Which im assuming is back taxes + legal fees. But their website says that the homes may be subject to back taxes, liens, county penalties etc... So I asked for her to clarify how I can find out what will be owed on top of my bid if I were to win. She asked me " do you know how to use google " So I left there frustrated. 

Everything on the MLS moves way to fast!! House that looks good hits the market and by day 3 they have 20+ offers and already under contract! I can't compete with the people who do this solely for a living! I can't blame them but dang I can't get my foot in the door.

Heck I don't even know how to initiate a real estate deal!!! I have called on several homes to go look at them, like an idiot I call the listing agent just to see if it's still available. They ask who is by agent.... ummm I don't have one! Do I need one ? apparently....but what kind of agent is going to want to drive around with me on a day off and look at 10-12 homes for the hopes of peanuts at the end? I'm looking at homes that are in the 40-100K range. I feel like im going to be a waste of a realtors time. I called the realtor that sold me and my wife our house and she referred me to another realtor. The second realtor that I was referred to was so new she didn't feel comfortable helping us!  

I do realize that I am going to have to find flip deals on my own with off-market deals from some of my own marketing. 

How do these people get offers on houses so quick? I do not 100% know the process, I've been reading on here for a few years. These people must be skipping all the steps and just offering money blindly? 

I'm under the assumption that you would want to have an inspector or contractor come out and do a report to find out all the damage and needed repairs. Then you have to find out how much that's going to cost and make an offer based on those figures right? What if the inspector can't come out for a week because he's booked? In my area the house would be sold by then.  Then you need to do a title search right? It could take me weeks to find the time to take off work to go do a title search. 

Very sorry for the rant!!! 

I am ready to start an LLC for me and my wife's investment company. What would you consider a fair price to setup an LLC properly?

We looked into having Garret Sutton's company from the Robert Kiyosaki books do it. His company wanted around $1,950 to set up a Wyoming LLC with our NC LLC parked inside of it for extra protection. And his company would be the registered agent (and file all associated paper work each year for $200 per state)

Also do I need to have one house in our portfolio per LLC?

I don't have any other #'s to compare their companies offerings to. 

This particular one I have not put eyes on. I do plan to make a visit before any offers are made.

I have stayed in the same neighborhood as this one so I'm well aware of the community. 

Is it within my rights to ask for 1-2 years rental history? Most everything in this community stays booked solid during active season. 

Me and my wife are interested in buying a beach rental property. This particular modular/trailer is in a community of rentals. The unit is a 2/1.5

$77,500 asking price and stays booked 6-7 months a year solid and do have pre-bookings for off season as of right now. They charge $1250 week during peak season and $750 wk/ during off season. From what I can gather they are bringing in an income of over $30k+ per year before expenses.

What kind of red flags should I look for with a beach rental? I'm aware of HOA cost and renters insurance but haven't figured in and flood/disaster insurance yet. This would be our first investment property.