All Forum Posts by: Jamiel Strickland

Hey @Erik R.,

I own (house hack) a duplex in Dearborn, MI which I am loving so far! 

The best way to know what rents are in your neighborhood would be to call a property manager and ask them. They know what people are willing to pay especially in the area of your property.

I would not worry about finding qualified renters, the community is such a tight knit community   that people are looking and wanting to live in Dearborn. When I first bought the home, I had many people ask me to rent out the home to them, I had no problem finding someone. (I went to UofM Dearborn so I have basketball players rent out the bottom unit)

The only thing that made it hard in Dearborn was how high insurance and property taxes are. I would make sure that is correct in your expense column and check with a PM for what kind of rents in your area because East Dearborn vs West Dearborn will give you different rent amounts.

Hey @Aaron Johnson, 

The BRRR strategy is such a key strategy and many people use it to build wealth through real estate. I do think in Detroit, the BRRR strategy is not the best one used to capitalize the wealth in Detroit. Detroit is a hard market to get values needed to refinance and pull the cash out of it. Banks have a hard time lending because of the home values are not high enough and a lot of homes do not meet the minimum requirement for at least being worth 30k. Some banks want min. $75k to do a conventional loan to take cash out for a refinance.

Some goals but not all of them still want to work on them more.

1. Grow my skinny legs, want to go to Miami with some tree trunks!!

2. Build cash buyers list to 1000

3. Teach myself SEO for wholesaling leads 

Yes, that is in order of importance lol 

Hey @Linda Weiner,

I just left Denver,Colorado where its legal there and I was talking with people that has been living in Denver for a while and every single one of them credits "weed" to their expansion I think they have a valid argument. The hot spot to be is Denver, its booming! Now I come back home to Detroit and now its legal in Michigan now. I am not saying I am for it or against it BUT it is hard to argue that it will not cause an increase in population to Detroit where expansion has already been taking place. Detroit has been on the rebound for a few years already and the introduction of this substance will bring in more businesses, attractive for millennial growth, and cause media to take away the "bankrupt city" annotation Detroit has and spin the new name for Detroit of this like "land of opportunity for businesses and millennials." History repeats itself as some people say, so now its time for a big city like Detroit to be a powerhouse of a city like is use to be!                (Maybe that last sentence was a little of a bias hometown love hopeful quote lol) 

@Joseph Abbott 

You have to start first, you start off by yourself renovation properties, helping homeowners, making new friends, meeting powerful people in the city.

A year goes by, your adding people to your business to do work, now you have a team, saving money up, paying off debt, your business name is known a little in the area, you bought a few homes for cash flow, you met investors that can fund your ideas, your taking people out for dinner, your at the the REI groups branding your company

3 years in, Now people know you around the city, showing them you do good work, you paid off your debt, saved up some money for starting  a Real Estate Development Company, you met city officials and political people within the city, you get in the news papers, your active the in community, you have a full team that takes care of your contracting company, your making money from houses and the construction company, now you are working on developing blocks, doing big projects in the city and a real estate investor.

Now this can take less than 3 years but may take 5 years or more I don't know but what I am saying is with a plan to start, and starting TODAY as a carpenter gets you closer to your goals of being a developer and rebuilding neighborhoods. 

Hey, glad your coming to Detroit to meet some new people and start investing. I have a realtor that is very good, I will send you a message with her information. 

Hey everyone,

Are you all using investor carrot or using just a godaddy.com website and making it yourself?

@Tim G. @Jerryll Noorden @Sam Craven@David Friedman@Adrien C.

@Joseph Abbott hey Detroiter nice to see you on BP! 

I think to answer your question I would do a deep look at my personality and long term goals to decide. If you a person who likes to be in sales, a talker, negotiator, like marketing, branding, then wholesaling would be a good option. If you enjoy using your hands, making things pretty from being ugly, like to have a schedule, and can see yourself flipping homes down the line or buying homes and making them rent ready be a contractor. Whichever one you like make sure you stick with it until you can automate it and dominate that side of the business. 

@Eva Brock Chance Reynold is a LLC attorney he has helped me with LLC work. His business name is LLC Freedom, you can find on there. I recommend him. If you message me, I can send you his information if you can't find it on google or Facebook.

Each one of the neighborhoods you given are very different price points when buying, those areas may have some potential appreciation but you would need a very connected realtor or wholesaler that can find you deals in those areas. Those numbers are something you can achieve. I like to see more flips in those areas instead rentals just harder to see returns because some of the houses can be priced higher than what I think their actual value is.