All Forum Posts by: Derek W.

I'm buying 30-50k houses in California. And with our appreciation and lower taxes, I'll take it every time over the rentals I own in Texas. 

i've invested in both places. Really didn't enjoy my Texas experience. Property taxes were really high and sucked away my return. I guess I also really like the crazy up and down swings California has. You can make silly money timing the market right. My Texas stuff hasn't moved much at all. 

great advice, as usual,@Rick H. 

Jackson is certainly not a dead area for investing. My brother is a real estate investor in Jackson. He buys one or two per week. 

@Elizabeth Colegrove did make an important point. I wanted to tie her thought with some of the others. You said that you had reached motivated sellers, but couldn't do anything with them. The longer you work this business, the more tools you have in your tool bag, the more experience you aquire, the more you are going to be able to work these leads. If you have only one buying strategy and one exit strategy, you are very limited on what constitutes a "deal".

Example: if a seller calls you and says he has a house with a $125,000 mortgage he owes approximately $100,000 on a 5% 30 year mortgage that is 10 years old. Monthly PITI around $750.00. His wife has recently passed and he wants to move out of state to be closer to kids and grand kids. He will be moving in with his son. He needs at least $10,000 for his "equity" (his own stubborn sticking point). The house is in livable condition, but would need updating to sell at peak price. You know the neighborhood and know that houses here are worth between $100-135,000. This house would rent for around $1,000-1,250 month.

If you are a wholesaler who needs to buy at a deep enough discount to get a wholesale fee and pass on a house with flip numbers, this is a dead end lead. But there are many experience people here on BP that could create a deal and structure something sweet both for the seller and for themselves. 

Great thread. I'm glad his one got legs and took off with so many great replies. Bruce Norris is delivering another market timing event in January he has titled "proceed with caution." I doubt @Aaron Norris will give us many teasers until after the event. (Huh Aaron?)  I'm more than curious what his conclusion will be after months of studying charts, interviewing major economists etc. I've already purchased my tickets to be in attendance. 

I'm shocked there aren't more replies. This is possibly the MOST important topic we should be discussing. In my California market there are a lot of indicators we may near the peak already. It feels very uncertain and uncomfortable. Oil is falling like a dead swan, and we have the worst over fishing in real estate  than we've event experienced. 

Hi @Brian Woitte .  You've received some very friendly and positive suggestions from some awesome people on this site. Let me be the antithesis and speak truthfully and realistically about things. Here in Southern California we have the most over fished real estate investor market in the world. As you begin your journey into wholesaling, you will be competing some of my friends who have been investing for a decade or more and are putting over $10,000 a month into the mailbox with their various direct marketing campaigns. Even direct mail leads have turned into somewhat of a bidding war as the owners have received so many letters from investors they get to have us fight and compete. The margins are at an all time low, the market has stalled, and there is uncertainly heading forward about the stability of the market. Does this mean you can't get a "deal"? No. But I want to be the voice of reason in an otherwise unrealistically optimistic chorus. Local buy and hold opportunities are very few and far between. "D" areas in bad parts of Hemet, for example, are selling for 1% rule or less. Want to find a specialty niche? I was recently the PR on a probate and received no less than 3-5 letter PER WEEK from "probate experts" who could help me settle my "difficult time." This business is a lot of very hard work, sleepless nights, stressful, uncertain. I don't see a lot of posts here about waking up at 3am with panic attacks, but when I go out to lunch with my fellow investor friends, they all do. If this is truly your dream then you will find a way to be successful. I just wanted to be a voice of reasonable expectation as you set out on your journey.

Ah, that reminds me of another good one. 

I bought a property and did a full rehab. Got into escrow with a full price buyer when title discovered there was no legal easement to my property. Therefor since they couldn't issue title insurance, the buyer couldn't get their loan. It took me a year and a half to solve the easment problem. So with my rehab time included, I held that house over two years with a 12% interest loan. Got to love the auctions!

I'm not sure I'd agree that HUBZU is really an auction. But ill answer assuming we're talking about foreclosure auctions. 

I purchased a really nice house half a mile out of town. Turns out it was never hooked to the grid. The cost of hooking it to the grid was more than I paid for the house. 

Another time I bought a house at auction based on a walk around, but couldn't get in as it looked occupied. After I bought it and entered I found the deceased former owner decaying in bed.