All Forum Posts by: Aaron Montague

 Justin - My singular piece of advice:

When you are pricing your potential purchases.  Figure in 10% for Property Management.  EVEN IF YOU PLAN ON MANAGING IT YOURSELF.  If you do not, you can trap yourself behind a purchase price that does not provide you any income if you decide to hire on external Property Management in the future.

@Jonathan Smalls

Welcome to the game :)  Learning the lingo is a great start.  My recommended next step is to figure out what you actually like to do.  Some folks want to swing hammers all day and others' prime desire is to stalk the courthouse steps.

If you want to do this full time, find a passion.  It will help get you up in the morning.

My standard piece of advice for all newbies: Wholesaling is NOT a rookie profession.  If you can hustle like that, become an agent.

There is a meetup in Andover MA next Wednesday night.  @Justin Silverio has details.

@Sebastia H.

Build away!  Take your idea and see what becomes of it.  Chris makes some great points about the valuation methods but all is not universal.

Take your program and see what it brings you.  The simple process of filtering out garbage might make your morning search that much more fruitful :)

I do like the AI walk bot though...

@John Davis - What was the ROI and Cash on Cash return for this place?

That seems like a fun challenge :)

30k doesn't do it on Realtor.com:
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1...
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1...

Nothing on CraigsList at this point either :)

http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/reb/5434856021.ht...

But back to the 30k question. A 30k investment is fine as long as you have the repairs, ROI and minimum cash/month dealt with. The primary issue with most 30k investments is the lack of gross income.

I require my SFH investments to get $200/month cash. But I'm also only looking at them if that is at least 15% ROI. Obviously any 30k investment netting 200/month is going to exceed 15% by a ways. The final critical item is the repair budget. I'm also going to be putting away at least $150/month, or more depending on the age of the home, for future repairs.

The primary problem with roofs: A 800 sq foot roof on a 30k house is not significantly cheaper than an 800 sq foot roof on a 600k house.

@Evelina Neufeld

Practice away, but don't sign anything or put any money into this deal.  If you think he might be willing to take 3% and price it about $325k you'll have a deal putting ~$250/month into your pocket.

To @Sarah Ziehr's point, that interest rate is REALLY low.  But his ploy might be to get you to sign on the dotted line at the awesome interest rate with the high price.

@Evelina Neufeld

Run away from this deal immediately.  No romance here, just pain and financial loss.

The numbers on this duplex are awful.  I'm seeing -700+/month for this place:

Mortgage Rate 3.00%

Length of Mortgage in years 30

Monthly Mortgage payment $2,381.80

Taxes $425.00

Sewer and Water $100.00 (assumption.  I have no clue how much this bill would be in your area)

Trash $-

Heat/Utilities $-

HOA $-

Cap Ex and Ops $200.00 (This the fund that will replace common hallway lightbulbs and the roof eventually

Insurance $125.00 (assumption)

Mgmt Fee $300.00 (10% of total rents.  Put this in your calculations even if it is going to be paid to you.)

Vacancy $243.00 (1 vacancy/unit/year)

Total Expenses $3,774.80

Unit 1 $1,500.00

Unit 2 $1,500.00

Total Revenue $3,000.00

Cashflow/month $(774.80)

@Chip Chronister

I second both the opinion and the experience already written here.  I've never had any luck with auction.com except for a large amount of spam email about upcoming auctions.

Stick with local realtors and your own 4 wheels.

@Jack McCarthy

Welcome to the Boston area.  If you want to make a big splash in the RE market early, go get yourself a summer job with an electrician or plumber.  They will have you hauling stuff all summer but the experience will be well worth it from the knowledge they will impart.  Plus it might incentivize you to look at trade school after college :)

 I actually don't :)  I'm always a fan of tax free.  There are LOTS of people here on BP that can talk about 1031 at length.