All Forum Posts by: Mindy Jensen

I knew the Cheyenne market was priced lower than the Denver market, but I had no idea it was like this!!! What a great deal. $8500 is a nice profit. Congratulations!

There really isn't a standard house flip. Every house is different and has different needs. Before you even start looking for a house to flip, you need to know how you are going to fix it - are you doing the work, or are you hiring out? If you are hiring out, do you already have someone who is going to do the work? Finding a contractor is extremely difficult. Most don't call you back. Craigslist is NOT a good way to find someone. I have had more bad results than success that way. NARI is a good way to find someone, but they can be expensive. The last thing you want is a house purchased with hard money, and no one to do the work for you.

J. Scott wrote a book called The Book on Flipping Houses. Here is a link: http://get.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook/

I haven't read it yet (sorry, J. Scott!) but everyone who has raves about how all-encompassing it is. I have yet to read a negative review of this book.

In a class C rental, you want it as bulletproof as possible. Ceramic tile on the floor, ceramic tile backsplash. Spend the extra dollars and use epoxy grout. Epoxy grout never needs sealing, won't stain, and is bulletproof. If epoxy is too much for you to spend, get the darkest grout they make - it will turn dark anyway in a class C rental.

Home Depot and Lowe's regularly run sales on ceramic tile for less than $.99 sq ft. Habitat for Humanity by my house has a ton as well, but it varies. Installing tile is easy, but takes time to do a good job. Get a wet saw if you are doing it yourself. Those score and snap things that look like complicated pliers are a waste of money. 

You could use the same tile on the floor as on the backsplash. Good luck!

Hi Elizabeth.

Welcome to Bigger Pockets. You should be able to find the answers to almost any real estate question you have here, the people on the forum are a wealth of knowledge and they love to share, so you are in the right place.

One thing I see time and again on the forums is a recommendation to have multiple exit strategies. You may purchase the house intending to flip it, and then can't sell it. Make sure you have other ways to get rid of it or use it.

Also, make sure you run your numbers and add a sizeable cushion for unforseen problems. There are ALWAYS unforseen problems...

You mention borrowing against your own home or private lending. If you have a job right now, you might be able to qualify for a mortgage. Not sure of the rate difference between an investment-property mortgage and a home equity loan, but I would go with the one that has the lower rate. Private lenders typically have much higher rates, and for your first flip, I can almost guarantee it will take a lot longer than you think it will.

One last bit of advice, make sure you stick with your plan. It is so easy to spend "just a little more" than you planned, on everything, and your profit goes up in smoke. Remember, this isn't your house, you are fixing it up for someone else. You don't have to love it, it just has to look nice.

What this boils down to is that you won't really know what kind of tenant she is until you give her an answer. She may be like @Marcia Maynard said, and want to nest. She may also turn into @Michele Fischer 's awful tenant and you celebrate her leaving. Maybe she is the worst combination of both, a pain in the backside PLUS a long-term tenant.

My first thought was that she will never be happy with anything. I live in a house I bought out of foreclosure, and there is ultra-dark purple paint all over the trim. You could tell the people painted it themselves, and did a very poor job of it. 

My advice would be to say no. The house was rented as-is. Good luck!

We just painted our house that started as a flip, and is now our residence. The lighter grey on the bottom is Sherwin Williams Dovetail. The darker grey above is Sherwin Williams Thunder. The white is Behr's Popped Corn, which exactly matched the new off-the-shelf Jeld-Wen windows we got from Home Depot.

I have received so many compliments on the paint scheme, and have had two people ask the color names, and then painted their house the same colors.

@Chris Farrugia We live in our flips while we are working on them. Since it is our primary residence, we live there for two years, not rushing the work, and then sell and pay zero in capital gains. 

Or at least we did until we had kids. Having children, especially small children, really hinders the work you can do on a flip. 

YouTube, the do-it-yourself classes at the big box home improvement stores, and the DIY section of the library is where we learned how to do almost everything. 

I am with you, I don't know how people make money off their flips when they hire everything out. I have a couple of really great carpenters I have used, and a whole bunch of people I will never call again... It is such a crapshoot finding a skilled laborer to do the work. 

J. Scott had a great recommendation for finding a good contractor - go to the home improvement store at 6 or 7 in the morning. The guys there are preparing for the day, and picking up supplies before they start the day. The guys at 10 or 11 generally are there because they slept in or forgot something.

My office brought in a mold specialist to talk to us during a monthly meeting. The stories she told would curl your toes. Just because you can see a little mold on the front, doesn't mean there isn't massive mold growing behind the wall, where you cannot see. 

Mold grows where it has food. Drywall, wood, wallpaper paste are all food for mold. If the water was flowing for a while, you could have significant mold damage where you would not expect it to be. 

I walked away from a house I was really interested in, because the second showing revealed a leak I should have noticed the first time, along with mold you could just tell was a huge mess. It could work as a first-time flip, but be very careful with mold. Good luck!

Someone above mentioned adverse possession. This is similar to squatter's rights. (Google it for more information, and I am not an attorney, blah blah blah.) If you have a driveway on the lot that is being used by the homeowners, it fits one of the main components of proving adverse possession, which is proof of non-permissive use that is open, actual and notorious. It must be used for 20 years in CO, so check with your local statutes. There is a rather famous case in Boulder, CO where a lawyer/judge couple used a portion of a neighbor's property for years. The neighbor thought he was just being nice, and when he asked them to stop, they threw an adverse possession deal at him and he was legally bound to title that portion of the property to the lawyer/judge couple. 

Back to your original question, I agree with whomever asked about the end user. If you are flipping the house to sell to an owner/occupant, having the extra yard in an area that typically doesn't not have yard is only a bonus. If your end buyer will rent it out, it may or may not be a feature they are looking at. You could always acquire the lot and offer it as part of the sale if they want?

As for purchasing the lot from its current owners, I would dig into how much they paid for it. Offer at least that much. Tell them what you are doing and why, but I wouldn't purchase it until you own the flip next door. Good luck!

I lived in a house at the bottom of a hill. It had plenty of water issues when we moved in, but we fixed them, using landscaping, grading and a french drain at the bottom of the driveway. And this was in Wisconsin where we did have a lot of rain. Our biggest problem was a too-small gutter draining the wrong direction. Once we fixed that, all our water problems were solved. 

If it isn't bank-owned, get the seller to put in writing that they have no water problems. If it is bank owned, roll the dice... Good luck!