All Forum Posts by: Tarl Yarber

Good question Vincent.  We have a few templates we have created over time, this is just one of them, gets cookie cutter after a little while.  We typically only do three styles for our houses.  The only thing we might do on some of the unique houses or higher end homes is add some better finishes and hire a Interior designer for better tile and color schemes.  Other than that we keep recycling what works.  It started by us stealing other ideas from better investors at the time and then slowly morphed into our own thing with input along the way from realtors, investors, distributors, online, designers, etc.  I hate picking out finishes to be honest, im partially color blind.

@Keith Ellis

Hey Keith, I am a active investor here in the Seattle market.  I see that you are up in Snohomish county.  What you are going to find in our market is that it is unlike many of the other markets in the US.  This is a street by street, house by house, block by block market, so pulling comps can get tricky here if you don't know your area.  I have LITERALLY bought a house for 300k in seattle, and the neighbors house is worth 900k, and even after I fully fixed up my house, it was only worth 700k.  This is confusing to many investors that are not use to our area.

My advice if you don't have MLS access is to go to realquest.com and pay for your county to pull comps. You can get pending and sold comps directly from the MLS there. Then, make friends with a couple real estate agents to help you eval the houses too on top of that, let them know they can get the list back if you buy the house or something.

Hey David! I have some bad news, its not hardwood.  Everyone always thinks they are in person too.  They are 1/2 inch laminate planks with a 2mm pad on the bottom.  The brand is Savanah Floors and type is Mission Brown.  You'll have to find a distributor somewhere where you live that sells Savanah flooring, but there are alternative types with same quality.

Hey Ray, I like that you noticed that.  I have attached a pic below to show where it got moved.  It is directly on the other side of the wall where it was originally.  There was a Utility king of room directly off the kitchen which shared the wall with the .5 bath.  This was the only place that made sense for the washer/dryer and the Water heater.  I was very happy to have that room or else the house would have been a bit more challenging.

Hey Bill!  Sorry for not replying sooner, ive been out of the country.  I did consider building a deck or something along those lines.  However, this is where knowing your market helps the most.  In this part of Tacoma, standards are not held high enough to where people expect something like that and it was not needed.  I would have spent the money but still only sold for what I sold it for, thus throwing that money away.  If this house was in Seattle, I would have had to definitely put a lot more into the backyard to get top dollar.

Hi Jimmy, it is in Tacoma WA

Hey Bigger Pockets!

Its getting busy here in Seattle for me and I would like to post more than I do.  In the mean time, I thought I'd write up this property that we just sold because of the challenges involved and describe the missed opportunities of others, my hopes are for you to learn more so that you can seize a great deal that everyone else is passing on and have the confidence to act on it.

1908 year built, 3/1.5 1373 sqft home.  After rehab 3/1.75 (made half bath into .75 bath).

Before Pics:

After Pictures:

(We had a heat wave here at this time...poor plants died...but it still SOLD in 2 days!)

I purchased this property March 27th 2015 and officially closed Escrow for the resale just now.  SO approximate acquisition to disposition was about 130 days, give or take, not too bad considering the initial issues involved. 

This house was brought to me via the MLS of all places, been on market for a while, no one wanted it, REASON? The House was SLANTED throughout and most people thought the price would cost too much to fix in order to make a profit.  Depending on where you are from, you may have a slab foundation or you may have a stem wall on the perimeter for the house with beams and posts running throughout the center holding up the house (creating a crawl space). 

This house had only ONE (1) Beam running down the center of the house, and it was beginning to look like a U as well.  Consider the problems there.  You cannot tell by the pics at all, but that house was sinking between 2inces to 5 inches in the center and throughout prior to us working on it.

Believe it or not, MOST investors wont go into a crawl space to check out whats in there.  I am 50/50 on that...well more like 20/80. Ill always stick my head in, but almost never crawl around (that's what other people are for).  HOWEVER, this house was pretty easy to see the problems in if you crawled in about 3 feet, I did this, and with the help of my carpenter, we figured out that the solution would set us back about $3500.  DONE!

We kept the old beam in place, replaced all the pier blocks and supported all the posts, jacked the center of the house up with multiple 3ton jacks, ADDED a brand new 2nd beam to help support the span of the Joists, AND get this, had to strap down one side of the old U beam and crank it down to help keep it from staying a U shape. Finished!

What most saw as a serious problem had a pretty simple solution if you have the right team and people in place.  Keep in mind, I do ZERO of the hands on work for all my properties, I network with GOOD honest people who give fair prices and when I find the right people I keep them BUSY and loyal and I PAY ON TIME ALL THE TIME.

Property NUMBERS:

Purchase: $158,000 (CASH)

Rehab: $52,000 ish (planned on 47,000 but added more to finishes later and had some electrical we were not planning on, welcome to rehabs)

Closing/holding/listing fees/misc: $29,000

Concessions to new buyer: $5000

SOLD: $280,000 (when purchased we planned on $260,000. Stay conservative)

SOLD IN 2 DAYS!! Their original offer was $270k, and they asked for us to cancel the open house we had planned, we countered at 275k and would cancel open house, they agreed if we gave 5k in concessions and increased sale to $280k.  SOLD! Appraisal was a worry of mine, but no issue there surprisingly.

TOTAL PROFIT 130 days: $41,958

Remember to do your research on properties fast and effectively, know your stuff OR do what I do, make strong relationships with people who know their stuff. A while back I use to stay away from all slanted and sloped houses here in WA (there are a lot of 100plus year old homes here), but then I started asking more questions on how to fix them, met the right people, and now I have complete confidence on what these things take. Hope this information helps you in your business!

The last hoarder house I just bought earlier this month had a BRAND NEW, never been opened, still in the packing cardboard PROFORM Elliptical.  I have it on craigslist, but for some reason no one wants to buy it, probably because they have to put it together...or no one wants to work out.

Thanks for the post Mary!  Good luck on all you do as well!

If only I was doing investing somewhere else, in my city all the deals get snatched up too fast because there is way too many other investors, and there is NOTHING on the MLS, and no one is answering my letter I sent them...it would be easier somewhere else...