All Forum Posts by: Michael Haynes

@Simona Balca, Hello from Tampa. You paid $180K Cash for a House here in Tampa to rehab and your Plan has a big hole in it, because you don't have the fix up money? Try calling Tony Torres at Olympian Mortgage on N. Armenia. He is helping me with a 1st loan to pay off the loan that my friend gave me. Tell Michael sent you and that you are a member of Bigger Pockets. If my loan works out I was going to tell him about joining BP.

@Dario Contreras, Hello from Tampa. You remind me of my choices when I was fifteen and what I did when I was seventeen years old. I said that I would start with learning Blue Collar Trades. The two best paying trades are Plumbing and Electrician. Plumbing is the easier as all you have to know is that "Crap flows downhill." In my day the first question with plumbing was if you could dig a ditch and carry heavy, cast iron pipe. I did not want to do that and now we use PVC pipes for most work, but, you still have to dig ditches if you do the sewer hookups. During my time I have tried to learn Electrical installations on my own and I did start a Trade School course, but, gave up to be a Welder in the Oil Field. The question would be if you have an aptitude for math and the Ohms Law and schematics to learn how to be an Electrician. In any case, you can take cheap, $150 a semester, Trade School courses at places like our Hillsborough Community College and learn all the trades, including Carpentry in a couple of years. You can take adult courses and study at night after your Day JOB. There are five Trade Schools near Daytona Beach if you Google a Search for them. In S. Miami I would take courses at night and one of the teachers was taking each trade course and getting certified to teach each one. He was finishing the Upholstery course just before Hurricane Andrew destroyed that school in Perine. When I was welding a jack up rig, on the night shift in Corpus Christi, Texas, we finished the JOB and got laid off at a time when JOB's were scarce. The Cuban refugee who was working on my shift, taught me the lesson that every young person in our USA needs to learn. In order to prepare for Life, all young girls and boys should be required to take Trade School courses instead of Social Studies crap. That way they can have gainful employment when they finish High School and at least know how to read and write and do a JOB that pays more than Minimum Wage. The Cuban refugee had is box of Mechanics tools in the trunk of his car and the day we got laid off, he already had been hired by the Chevrolet Dealership, with Benefits. He said that in Cuba, all the girls and boys are required to learn three trades as they study to read and write. So, the Blue Collar trades was my first concern. Then, I thought, I would learn White Collar JOB's as I go along in Life and end up sometime in an Office and stop working with my hands. That would be your Business Management and Real Estate courses. Those courses can also be done online, at home, in your spare time and at Community College and private Schools. You don't need a University Degree to Buy and Hold and Refinance and Flip Houses. You can get a Real Estate License and I have seen on BP blogs, that there is a good instructor with seminars in St. Petersburg. I never worked in an Office, but, I did own and sail my own Yacht for six years and sailed to almost all the islands in the Carribean and Brazil and Argentina before becoming a Welder. Then, I studied to get the biggest Captain's license possible with Celestial Navigation and run crew and supply vessels and joined the MM&P Union where I worked on Oil Tankers. I had learned Spanish and Portuguese on my travels and on my months off from the ships I was building cheap houses in Brazil to rent. On the ships I studied how to fulfill my Third Goal and make Money with Stocks and Mutual Funds and I made $100,000 US which I used to buy my Portfolio of Rental properties in S. Tampa. I am selling off the rest of my Rentals at the present time. Everything that you can think of is now on short, youtube videos, online if you do the right Search with Google and include "youtube." To get the big picture view of investing and fixing houses all you have to do is to go on TV and watch all the Home Improvement shows and the Flip this House shows and the Decorating shows and the Real Estate Sale shows. Take a look at 

http://www.hgtv.com/shows/flip-or-flop/flip-or-flo...

videos to see a couple of the "beautiful people" with smarts and money doing rehabs to expensive houses in LA. I really like Scott on

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcviVtB85dL...

Flipping Vegas. This guy buys Auction, almost sight unseen, completely destroyed houses to fix up like new gems. He is as nervous as I am and has a similar attitude, with life or death decision JOB's, like the Military, where it is "Lead or get out of my way!" Dario Cantreras, you may know how to Habla Espanol? Don't move to Detroit...stay in Florida and take advantage of your language skill. Look for the "short cuts" to get the education that you want and make sure you are not wasting Time and your GI Bill on useless courses in University that turn you into another "whining Millenial with no skills" and a humongous dumb ***, Student Loan. There are the three ways that I thought to make Money when I was fifteen years old. I am now in semi-retirement where I say that I will never stop working, because I will always keep one Residence and one Rental and when it comes along, one Flipper House. I also taught myself to trade Options and Futures online and I can make my Daily Cash each morning on my laptop. Pushing the buttons on my laptop to make Money is a lot easier than all the Blue and White Collar stuff. "Get 'er done."

@Will Schryver, Hello from Tampa. Anthony Dianaty at Sotheby's International Realty said his has 8% money.  Tony Torres at Olympian Mortgage on Armenia is meeting me on Friday to see if he can solve my problem.

I called Lima One Capital and Bridgewell Capital this week and they only lend to LLC's and companies, not individuals. Here is the page for BP

https://www.biggerpockets.com/hardmoneylenders/flo...

I own a commercial half acre, with a 3/1, just off Dale Mabry Hwy. before Interbay Blvd. that I need to get a loan on to pay off my friend. I am selling two rental houses to try and keep my Residence and those four CG lots. Depending on what your need is, you can try Moorhead Mortgage Services on N. Armenia just up from Kennedy Blvd. 

@William Tharp, Hello from Tampa. I looked into this for my CG half acre on Dale Mabry Hwy just before Interbay Blvd. and my lawyer told me to talk with John Lum at Century 21 Beggins office 1501 S. Dale Mabry Hwy. He is the Developer who has built many Town Homes near downtown Tampa and a project near Interbay and West Shore etc. He told me for my project that the Builders will ask for $120 per sq. foot for two story Town Homes and you can get someone for $80. One of the BP members who works in the same office is Darvon Garbus. If you want a full service Developer with tons of experience in building out Town Homes...John Lum is recommended. He is a retired airlines pilot from Canada. Very impressive guy. Another thing for all the other Investors and Newbies is that one meter to measure whether it is "time to Buy" in your area is if the Price of houses is below the cost of construction. Right now I think I can build new in S. Tampa almost for the price of some of these Flips that I see next to the house that I am Selling at 6804 S. Hesperides. I decided not to gut it and make it like new, but, just make it Rental Ready with all repairs and termite tent and ten year roof with Central AC, paint and clean and Sell it for $60K less than the one that they gutted next door. I can gut and upgrade to just get a higher price and pay for the RE Agents commission to sell it for me? What the ordinary people who work in S. Tampa at the Wal Mart and Target and all the Restaurants need is Affordable Housing. If you look at the Apartment complexes on Dale Mabry South, they are full of criminals. Rehab them and keep them full of the bad element? Can't get around Reality in this Rental Market. Another comment from last year the Arby's Restaurant in Wesley Chapel fired all their employee's in one day and were desperate for Help. They could not get any because there is no Affordable Housing out there in the middle of nowhere for Minimum Wage Workers. Another Reality to consider. Someone could maybe make out with a new Trailer Park out there for all the workers for that town. "Find a Hole and Fill It" was the slogan for Permanente Cement Company when I was a kid in California. That is really all an Investment has to be.

@Micah Weiss, Hello from Tampa. You asked why the War Zone houses rent for essentially the same thing as the small houses in better neighborhoods in Tampa. I have had Rentals in S. Tampa for 30 years and from the first days here, I have considered everything on the East side of I275 Hwy running North from Malfunction Junction, downtown, to be War Zone.  That means everything all the way out of town to Lutz. Your friend with 7 low income houses, may be on that side of town. Do you know what is available to Rent in Tampa? If you have no Credit and no permanent JOB and don't want a Background Check, you rent a Trailer. You can rent Trailers out in Riverview, from $450 to $1000, no Credit Check, First Month up front, Depost, move in tomorrow. If you have an RV or Trailer, a Trailer lot in a Park, starts at $450 a month and may include water. A Hotel room starts at $30 a day and the better ones at $60 with Weekly Rentals at $260 with hot plate, sink and cable TV. There is a difference between what the Hourly Workers and the ones on Commission or Salary can Rent, but, they all seem to break off at $1000 plus in Monthly Rent. If you have steady Employment and you like the area or have a family and you can afford to Rent at $1000 plus a month you begin to look to Buy a Home. One of the things that Clinton and Bush started to push on the Citizens is the idea that part of the American Dream to own a Home and that led to really bad Lending Rules that caused the 2008 Crash. One other thing that the General Public thinks is that Real Estate is a way to get Rich and that Property Values always go up...Dumb Money believes what the Government tells them and they get all their information from TV. So, your pool of people wanting to rent the basic 2/1, 3/1 or 3/2 house is limited to primarily Hourly Labor Workers. Do you know anyone who works for MacDonalds, or Wal Mart or 7Eleven etc? Do you know any Day Labor guys or Carpenters or Electricians or AC mechanic types? Do you know what it pays by the Hour to hire a Roofer? Managers in the Restaurants usually don't make enough wages to Buy a Home. None of these people has ever made enough to save two months rent and pay the Utilities. My girlfriend is an Account for the County and they predicted that the cost of Utilities would go up 20% a year. In the last few years the Light bill has doubled for most of my Tenants from $150 a month to up to $350 a month in the six month Summer Season. All my Tenants have complained about Light and Water bills this last two years and they do not know the Reality of what is coming in their Future. With Cable, Cellphone, Light and Water the Renter is or will be having to pay as much or more than the Rent. At that point, what do you think they will pay first? The Rent? Not! Wages have not gone up in 18 years. I was a Welder at $10 an hour, 35 years ago. If I wanted a JOB at Tampa Shipyard, they would pay me $13 an hour to start, today. If you raise the Minimum Wage for MacDonalds workers to $15 an hour in Tampa, they will be making more than a Union Electrician here, at $13 an hour. So, you sort of see that it is very difficult to Buy Rental Houses that even support themselves. The majority of Renters don't want anything to do with a House and a yard and mowing a lawn or taking care of any maintenance or taking out the garbage. It is my experience that Renters will rent a house or apartment and not lift a finger to clean anything until the place is so dirty that they can't stand living there any longer and then they move. They are lucky to have saved First and Last months rent with the Deposits on Light, Water and Cable and still have a JOB, in order to move on to the next Apartment or House. The range for Affordable in Tampa is $800 to $1000 a month in Rent. I live on the Hillsborough River, across from the Lowry Park Zoo on the side of the street with three story, $500K plus Homes. Across the street the lots are worth $30K plus and you can buy a 3/1 frame house for around $80K especially if you look on the West side of the River. After fix ups, run the numbers and see if you can really make enough Money from Rentals at $800 a month with the Pool of Renters that is normal in Hillsborough County. You know why Flippers are desperate to find the next run down house to Flip? Because they don't want to deal with Tenants and they don't want a JOB. Same thing with the Agents...Do you really want to try and make Money with Rental Property? 

@Adam Janko, Hello from Tampa Florida. One thing you are missing is that the Janet Yellen at the Fed is Raising Interest Rates. The 10 Year Bond is the benchmark for Mortgages. On its own the Market decided to raise that rate last year and the Fed is behind on their desires to combat supposed Inflation by raising their rate. The short term result of an increase in the cost of Mortgages is going to be a slow down in the Sale of Houses until the Buyers cannot afford to Buy and we go into another Downtrend. That's the Cycle that some of us are expecting. Some Mortgage Companies are advertising that it is the "time to Buy" before the Fed raises their interest rate again. You live in Budapest, so, of course you are looking to Invest in the safest of the World Currencies. The EU is going to fail as the Euro was drawing near parity with the Dollar in January after a long slide down from the High in May of 2014. Long term Wealth Creation has always been with Real Estate in the USA, but, great Investors like Warren Buffett have looked to Value Investing to accomplish that. Buffett says, "Buy when there is Blood in the Streets." If you look at the bigger picture, we are at a Top in the RE Market struggling to find Value in places like Tampa and Denver and California. Do you Buy at the Top and Sell at the Bottom like all the Dumb Money? As an Absentee Owner, do you start a Rental Business with an Investment that generates a very small Monthly Income with the Hopes that the property will Appreciate in Value over the long term? Do you Buy Rental Houses which usually do not support themselves because you need to Maintain and Manage them? Or do you look for Multi-family or Apartment Complexes or Trailer Parks or Shopping Malls etc? The Flippers are not able to Sell some houses here in S. Tampa. The Builders, especially the smaller ones, will always build until they can't build and then declare Bankruptcy, like Donald Trump. The Real Estate Business runs in a Cycle and even the Mortgage Lenders will make lots of Money until the rates go up too high and then they are in the business of Short Selling. When the rate is Low, everybody tries to Refinance. That time is over. Interest Rates are going up and there is never a Guarantee that property Values will always go up. 

@Jonathan Bell, Hello from Tampa. I give up...is this the blind leading the blind? You SELL Tax-Free with the Residental Tax Rule because you lived there for 2 years out of the last 5. You are allowed up to $250K Tax-Free on the Sale of your Residence, per person. Take your Profit and pay off All your Debts and Invest the rest in your new Home and just do it again. For the love of Money...Does no one know how to Work Smart and not Hard? I give up. Seen enough of BP and all the Pros.

Mark Stone. Hello from Tampa. The way you are describing your Investment idea, reminds me of beginner Stock Investors. Been there, done that. My understanding has always been that Rental Houses almost never give you positive Rents. That is why everyone wants to start with Multi-family Rentals. The short term solution is to do Flips. If you are a Money Guy and not a Handyman, Flips may not be something you can do. That's why the Flippers have to organize a Team and just like with Gold MIning, the more partners you have the smaller your percentage of profit will be. When you do have a Team, you have to use or lose them. Keeping them busy may be a problem. If you have the Cash to make Offers, you can find your own Deals to fix up. A Flip that does not Sell in a month or two, has to become a Rental. Are you ready for that? The idea that you will be able to "predict" the Path of Progress without having "insider information" is difficult. At that point you really are just like a beginning Stock Investor, who "Hopes" that his decision, usually based on Fundamentals and not the actual Price Movement on a chart, will work out to be a good one. Michael Hayworth outlined a Business Plan like we Traders have with Buying Penny Stocks. You never Risk the Farm on one big property. You have ten thousand Cash to Invest. You take ten percent of that or $1,000. Look for ten Penny Stocks and Invest $100 in each one, "Hoping" that one of them is going to be a Dell or Microsoft Computer Stock. Michael Hayworth is a Contractor with Cash that he can spread around the town and he actually knows the town. He's not just a guy who wants to make Money with RE because the Banks will only give him 1% for a Money Market Account. "Knowledge is Power." His examples of success also point out that "a Rising Tide Floats all Boats." The Market in Texas has a lot to do with rising values of property. Until a couple of years ago, all the JOB's were in Fracking and the Oil Field and in Texas. As far as Penny Stocks are concerned, I have a retired Miami Dade Fireman/EMT friend who bought up to 100,000 shares of a 2 Cent Penny Stock with the recommendation of his Broker. Not something I would do, because he does not even follow the charts of his picks. Just the Price Movement. It took ten years to unwind. He started selling at 7 Cents and buying when it went back down. 11 Cents and it went back down to his buy zone. When it went into the Dollar range, he was able to sell a lot more to pay off all Debts and his Principle Invested and stay in with just Profit as a Free Trade. He did this same thing with Silver, SLV, if you want to look at the chart. His Buy Zone was $13 and Sell on any pop. Buy back at $13 or below and just wait for a quick move up to Profit Zone. Nat Gas will work like this at $2. With a property, in the right area, if you have Cash, you can try to find the worst house in the best area and just make written offers until you get one. Michael Hayworth has a Portfolio of twenty houses. You only need two and my Plan is to keep three. My Residence to sell in two years Tax-Free to move into the Rental and one Flip. You can look at S. Tampa where I have been with Rentals for 30 years and anytime you can pick up one of those 3/1 houses for Land Value...and it still has some good Bones...figure what the fix up cost would be and Buy it. The progression to being a Contractor who Invests or a Builder is a life's work. It is always hard to get the Big Picture or Perspective of what really works with Investing in anything. That's where BP or a Mentor helps to accelerate the learning process.

@Chris Gravitt Hello from Tampa. In a past Blog I think you were talking about Trinity. I looked it up on the map and it reminded me of Carrollwood, 30 years ago.  The "hope" out there is if it turned into a Wesley Chapel story of development. A Path of Progress area for the Future. It is a developing area. Slim pickins for a Flipper. Expensive. What you are talking about is really a Lease Option contract. You can't List a property for a commission without a license. Correct? I want to Buy two houses on one lot, next to my Rental, next to I275 highway on the Nebraska side. Not a good neighborhood, but, lots of Flippers are making silk purses out of pigs ears on the East side of Tampa. I have managed those two houses and done lots of sweat equity on them. My friend will give me another Lease Option contract that gives me positive income with the rents and I will have to get my own financing in a year or two or three while he pays the mortgage. We have done this in the past and it has worked for us both. You have to convince the Owner to Buy Time to do something with their home that they won't do. You are right next to Port Richey and on the Zillow map, it looks like every other house is For Sale or in Foreclosure. My trading partner owns a small home on a sand dune off of 19, where I have done some repairs for his family. I don't like that area north of Dunedin. No high paying JOB's and lots of people like the ones I have had for Tenants. But, for a guy with Cash to make Written Offers on fixer upper houses, there is a life's work waiting for you. Trying to get Blood from the Trinity Stone may not be a good Business Plan.

@Robin Cornacchio, Hello from Tampa. It is one thing to invest in RE or anything else with your IRA money, but, it is Tax-Free if you convert that Simple IRA into a Roth IRA. You pay tax on what you have now to convert. You have to wait five years to access that money, after you are 59 1/2, but, in and out all your Roth IRA money is Tax-Free. I can eliminate all the mindboggling IRS record keeping when I trade Options, if I trade everything out of my Roth IRA. No one talks about this. I have been to Tax Planning Seminars for Stock Traders where they try and get you to jump through hoops to make your trading easy to keep track of and be declared a Trader. But, when I suggest that they just fund a Roth IRA and forget all the mumbo jumbo, they shut up. Same thing with RE Investing with a small amount of Funds. Everybody eventually runs out of Cash for Down Payments and you have to be Creative to continue to Invest or just do one Flip at a time with Hard Money. No one says anything about using the Residential Sale Rule to Buy a Home and live in it for two years out of five to Sell Tax-Free. You can Buy a second house as a Rental, that you would live in after you Sell you Home and do it again. Flips can be Rentals that you 1031 Exchange until you have accumulated enough Tax Deferred Profits to move in and make that one your Residence and Sell it Tax-Free. You are a Property Manager. Do you really want Tenants on your own? One Rental for me is a necessity for this Plan to work. But, nothing I desire after 30 years of being a Landlord. Mark Nolan suggested Tax Liens, which don't work in Florida. Metals would work just like the S&P if you learn to Trade online and use ETF's. But, you have to know how to go Long and Short and get ready for a big Downtrend this year. So, Buying now is with caution. Notes are maybe short term and the Fed wants to continue fighting Inflation by raising the Interest Rate, when we are really in a Deflationary Cycle. So, get ready for the 30 Year Bond to go to up a little more and hit the glass ceiling. Same with the Mortgage Rates and then, people will stop being able to afford a Mortgage. Or like one Blogger said this week, the Flippers will have to lower their Price by 10% in order to make it affordable for the Buyers and some or most of the Flippers will not be able to make a Profit below that. Same thing with Gold Miners. Below $1200 an ounce, most of them can't make any money. Same thing with Oil. It has to be $50 or above for Russia, Iran, Venezuela and some of the other troublemakers to make any profits. The Saudis can pump it down to $10 a barrel and put everybody out of business, if they want. Loaning Money to Invest in RE is the same thing the Banks did in 2008 with Mortgage Backed Securities. Everybody is looking for a safe place to make Yield on their Money. For now I plan to Sell and save in Dollars and wait to Buy, "When there is Blood in the Streets." I also trade Futures online for Daily Cash Flow. It's not the time to give up your Day JOB.