All Forum Posts by: Matthew B.

I use credit cards for everything. There's no point in paying cash when I can get at least 1% cash back or earn airline miles for free travel. The rewards can really start to add up when you start using credit cards for you real estate business. Put a couple of new A/C units on your credit card and you've earned enough airline miles for a free roundtrip ticket. This only works if you pay the cards off at the end of the month. If you start carrying a balance it will completely undermine any rewards you earned.

@Dan G. 

I definitely agree. The Realtors listing our properties weren't bringing enough value to the table to justify the thousands of dollars they were getting paid. If you know the business, it's a no brainer to handle the listing side of the transaction yourself. The buyer's agents show the property and handle mostly everything. You just have to deal with some paperwork.

@Payam Dastmalchi 

I'm definitely gonna try to document everything. I've been working on another project this week so I haven't turned my attention to this property yet except to file the tree removal permits. That will be the first work done.

@Brian Larson 

Rehab cost should be around $25,000 - $30,000. It'll probably take 2-3 months to complete. The good subcontractors around here are always busy, so it takes a little longer to get them in. We also do some of the work ourselves, which slows things a bit. I'm currently in the process of gutting the house. I've loaded the dump trailer and been to the landfill 3 times so far. Should've gotten a dumpster but I didn't realize it would be so much debris. I'll post some pictures when it's completely gutted.

@Vincent Lewis 

That's the kitchen wall I'm gonna take out. In the picture, I'm standing in the living room looking towards the kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen is the family room. So taking out the wall will open the space all the way across and connect all three rooms. The picture of the kitchen is looking back towards the living room where I'm taking the picture in #5.

@Account Closed 

Nice! I think it will work out great because it will turn the living room, family room, and kitchen into one big living area. Gotta give the people what they want!

I'm posting on here because I want to get into a habit of taking pictures and documenting my projects. Hopefully this will keep me accountable.

We paid $101,000 for this house last week and just began the demo work today. It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with a pool and 2 car garage. It's in a pretty desirable area with access to Lake Eustis. It should sell for around $165,000 when we're done, hopefully a little more.

Today we cleaned the trash and personal belongings out and removed the wood, wire, and plastic that was covering the pool. We also demoed and removed the "4th bedroom" that the previous owner had built in the garage. The 2 car garage is more valuable than the extra bedroom in this case. Not to mention it was not permitted and probably not built to code. Luckily it came out fairly easily.

Next we have to get a tree guy in there to remove some dead trees and trim the keepers. We're also thinking about taking down the wall that separates the kitchen and the living room and making it a breakfast bar instead. What do you think?

@Sheldon B. 

Multi-family properties are very hard to find around here. And when you do find them, they tend to be expensive. I definitely got lucky with these. I know plenty of other investors in my area would have paid much more for them.

@Andrew Davis 

I'm a broker so I have access to the MLS.

The calls I hate the most are the ones asking where the property is located. I post the full property address on the ad for a reason. If you can use Craigslist, you can use Google Maps! 

I'm in Central Florida, and I sometimes get calls asking if the house is near Jacksonville or Tampa. The stupidity amazes me.