All Forum Posts by: Lindsay Brake

Thats awesome! My father-in-law is a GC and his guidance has been so helpful. It's great when you can get free advice in  your network.  Are you planning to build again or do you have other plans for your portfolio? 

 I agree with @Tchaka Owen, Quicken is a large lender with very strict criteria and their employees are not empowered to make their own calls on special situations. Find a local lender to work with and see what they say. 

@James Call Thanks! Managing our own home rebuild was another full time job! We sourced material from all over the country to save time and money because the shortages here insane.

I agree with everything @Shiloh Lundahl said in his post, thanks for taking the time! On the topic of great reading material and lifestyle creep I want to mention Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. This really highlighted for me how appearing rich and having a high net worth are not the same concept or the same people. It helps to have this foundational knowledge when you see a really cool car drive by. 

@Eric Fitzgerald congratulations on graduating! I have used mint.com for 10 years and really like it. You can track and itemize all your purchases, net worth, net income etc to help you identify how to optimize and set goals.

My biggest piece of advice is however poor you've been living in college... Roommates, cooking at home, driving a beater, keep doing that for as long as possible. At least until you get married.

And read Set For Life by Scott Trench

I worked as a controller for an industrial contractor and the 3 main ways to bill a job is Time and Materials (profit comes from mark-up and billable rate), Lump Sum (profit comes from estimate plus margin), and Unit Cost (labor and overhead built into the material markup, this is less common).

I have it worked out with my contractor that I buy all the materials and then pay for labor weekly. So T&M but without the material markup. We've done several houses this way and it works for us, it's a very transparent way of doing business. My contractor has a pretty small operation because he's mostly retired so I'm not sure if this is easy to get.

@Greg H.

Thanks and I agree with you there on the definition of damages, so far it hasn't come up but I will get another opinion if it does. This guy seemed really jaded so I think his goal was to get us to manage our expectations. At the time we were just chatting about leases and business structure before we had any tenants.

I'm a landlord in Texas and when drafting our lease our lawyer warned us that a security deposit was only for damages and not for back rent or unpaid fees.

I would consult a lawyer and probably just settle out of court i.e. just pay the $1500 back and move on. Lesson learned.

@Austen Carroll welcome to the community! Sounds like you've got a great plan and doing a military retirement you will have solved a major FIRE line item with healthcare.

Any plants growing on your brick and around your foundation can attract and disguise termites as well.