All Forum Posts by: Steve Kim

@Daria B. I used them for my primary. You can see if they have 'defective' products. We purchased $6/sft hardwood for ~$2/sft when we installed new flooring @ our home.

@Mitch Smith Would you be willing to tell us who the whole saler is so we don't use them? I wouldn't want to give someone like that business and I definitely wouldn't want to get bamboozled by them in the future.

@Will Rodriguez I'm from the Chicago Burbs, so I won't have much weight to my input, but I would caution you to actually come take a look as Chicago's neighborhoods are really block by block on what's a D/C to a B/A neighborhood in some areas.

From what I can see, you don't want to just use Trulia / similiar macro statistics if you're looking at properties, because in some areas if you're literally on the wrong side of the street, you're in the 'bad' part of town.

Crime in general seems to be heavily gang related and most places that I've driven through you won't have to worry, but then again I don't live in the city and the parts of town that I travel to aren't sketchy. Though I do have a friend who got mugged/car jacked in broad daylight by gunpoint in the south loop in front of his house. Luckily the cops were near by and they caught 2/3 of the muggers and he didn't lose anything (they were going to steal his car as he got home).

Best of luck to you!

Hello,

I'm a bit confused and I want to confirm if what I should be doing. I found a REO that I would like to put an offer on, but the agent's remark was for me to follow a link that took me to a site that had a VA Contract. I'm not a veteran, so I have a pre-approval for a conventional loan ready. I'm confused why I am provided a VA contract to fill out instead of a normal offer document. Should I fill out the VA contract even though I'm not a VA and not using a VA loan? My understanding is that since this is a REO, the bank would accept normal offers as well as VA and I should be submitting a conventional offer.

Thanks for the help in advance,

Steve K.

How do you determine what is a "war zone"? When researching a neighborhood I've been using Trulia's crime heat map, but even if its green the types of crime in an area are violent. My guess is Trulia uses volume as a criteria and maybe not the types of crimes. So, how do you experts evaluate if it's a class D or class C neighborhood without living there? I've driven in some neighborhoods and they seem fine, but in Chicago it's really street by street where places are "safe". How do you experienced people choose the neighborhood classification without personally living there?

Hi @Kevin Mosier, in new to this but at 5+ units you're in commercial property space. Someone can correct me, but you'll be using NOI when getting appraisal of a property at this point. So if you can reduce expenses and increase your monthly rent that's what will drive you're future refi.

Good luck and keep us updated on your journey!

@William Newman, Please send me more information if this property is still available: [email protected].

Whoops I can't edit to add this, but you can also do that for lawn care or you can up the rent to cover it.

You can put it in the lease contract that the tenants are responsible for snow removal. If they agree then its their responsibility.

Hello BiggerPockets,

My name is Steve Kim. I’m a 32 year old working/living in the chicagoland area. I was born and raised in the north suburbs and currently residing in the west suburbs. I've always been interested in investing in real estate after reading "Rich dad, Poor Dad" and recently have been listening to the biggerpockets' podcasts. After listening to all the success stories, I have been re-invigorated to evaluate my life and where I want to be 10,20,30 years from now. 

My wife and I have a current home in the west burbs and currently in the process of researching real-estate to purchase our first piece of property. We've been utilizing biggerpockets' tools and have built our own excel spreadsheet to quickly analyze data-dump from mls reports. I am comfortable with research and analyzing the numbers, while she holds an IL real estate license. 

I want to thank the biggerpockets community for all the information that you guys are sharing and hope to gain experience so I may also contribute to this community. After listening to the 90 day challenge, I am preparing to get our first investment property by the end of this year and employ the BRRRR strategy.

Thanks,

Steve K.