All Forum Posts by: Nicholas Lohr

I live in San Francisco but I lived in NYC for 6 years so I'm familiar with the problem.  What I did was I found a market that was a reasonable drive away and had more attractive prices. For me it was Sacramento which is and hour and a half drive away.   

There are tons of more affordable options within an hour and a half drive from NYC. 

This assumes you have a car which may be a long shot since you live in NYC but that can be figured out these days. 

In my opinion it is not a good idea to invest in a non cash flowing deal in a high priced market. 

I have a partnership with a 4 way split. Ours is a BRRRR buy and hold strategy and I know you said you're flipping so it may not pertain to you but one that comes to mind that we had to decide on was...

What's going to happen if one partner wants to cash out and the other partners wants to keep going?

We came up with a system that I can explain if you're interested. 

If you can find something local that pencils out definitely go that route.  I'd say for the most part the only reason why most investors go out state is because their hometown has become too expensive to make the numbers work on any deals. 

My deals would have been so much harder if I couldn't be there in person.  

If it's your first deal I'd say look for something easier that doesn't involve anything structural.  For my 2nd deal I decided to go for a big construction project and I regretted it. 

Look for something that just needs new paint, floors, countertops, appliances, etc... 

I'd say the best thing you could do is select Education, (top left of this site) then go to Webinars, and then go through the Webinar Archive. There's a bunch of content in there about analyzing deals. 

Write down all the numbers that they mention, find them out for this property, and then go to Tools and Calculators and plug in the numbers. 

I was pretty enticed with Opportunity Zones until I read this part...

"The property must be either (a) new construction that is not put into use until after the purchase of the property; or (b) "substantially improved" after purchase of the property, which requires that the costs of constructing, renovating or expanding the property during any 30-month period beginning after the date of the acquisition of the property must exceed 100% of the adjusted basis of the property at the start of the 30-month period."

I just bought a deal that happens to be in a Opportunity Zone but there is no way I would ever put that much into renovations.  It wouldn't make financial sense.  Perhaps a few deals down the road if I get more into new construction or bigger redevelopment projects. 

I already used a pump and I was out there "ShopVac-ing" the remaining water today. I've never vacuumed a job site before so that was interesting. It worked pretty well to get the remaining water actually !

We are getting the backhoe in there next week and we'll see how it goes.

The ground under the stone would be compacted.  The whole thing has been compacted.   The main point of the stone is, if it rains again this winter they can still get in there to work and it wont matter because the water will just permeate through the stone.  If I just scrape off the top layer, leave it as is, and then it rains again, then I'm right back where I started. 

@Josue Vargas    

Thanks for the response. 

We have had a GeoTech involved from the beginning actually.  The pad was all set / certified, tested, and compacted.  It was AFTER all that that the rains came and made it into the mess I described. The soil is still compacted below. 

The only excavation that remains is digging of the 2 ft footings. We are doing a crawl space for this. 

Our plan is to bring it 6 inches lower which would remove all the mud and then bring it back up to where it was in the beginning using 3/4 inch stone rather than fill.  The stone will be better for drainage for sure anyway.  

I asked the GeoTech engineer about that today he he gave it the go ahead. 

that's right, listen to Sharon.