All Forum Posts by: Tom R.

I'm about to place an offer on a house  when my realtor tells me that the seller is concerned that the electrical may not be up to code and they do not want to pay to fix it. It is a single level 800 sq ft house 2 bed 1 bath built in 1960. How much of a nightmare is this? What might be required to bring it to code? What is the estimated cost?

When I did my moms kitchen she bought the cheap home depot cabinets. To extend their lifespan I sealed every surface with polyurethane. That was about 10 years ago and they still look brand new.

Im working on 2 deals right now and it looks like i will be short on the closing costs on one of them. Can I roll the closing costs into the mortgage?

Is it possible to do a short term flip / house hack with a FHA loan? One of the houses I'm looking at is a potential flip opportunity. If I do most of the work myself with the help of some friends and some beer and pizza I could see me making approximately $10-20k. Which I could then roll into another house. It doesn't need a lot of work mostly paint, windows, updated appliances and a couple of rooms of flooring and some landscaping. All of this I could do with help in 3 or 4 months. Unfortunately this would tie up all of my investment money until I could sell the house. I didn't get into real estate to flip houses my goal is passive income but $20k in a 4 months could really speed up my investing. That's most of the down payment for a buy and hold. If I could buy with an FHA loan and quickly flip it not only would my money still be available to purchase my next buy and hold and when it sells I could buy another buy and hold. Two buy and holds in the same year would be awesome at this stage in my investment career.

On the other hand the cash on cash return on this house would be around 20% if I decided not to flip even with a conventional loan.

Sorry about the rambling I really am of two minds about this. I hope you could follow my train of thought. What do you think?  Is an FHA flip even legal? Should I flip or buy and hold?

I use cozy to handle my rent payments Its free and if the tenant chooses can be automatic. To keep track of my expenses I made my own Excel document that keeps a running tab on all incoming and outgoing money. All the math is done automatically all I have to do is type in the information in the correct box. It will even tell me when I have earned my initial money back. 

I will definitely take a look at those apps though. 

@Bryan O.

I actually don't care if she set up auto pay or not but I did recommend it. My confusion occurred because I thought I remembered her telling me that she had signed up when we first set up the account and because I have not received any communications from Cozy in over a month. The previous month I had received an email telling me that the rent was due soon and later that day that the payment was being processed. That was more than a month ago I haven't received any communication from the since except yesterday when I emailed them about why I haven't been receiving updates.

The payment is now in progress and she has signed up for auto pay but I still haven't received the email from cozy.  I would be nice if they updated me in real time and even CC'd me when they send my tenant their monthly invoice.

I checked she hadn't set up auto pay with Cozy so I sent her a link to instructions on how to set it up.

Mine doesnt say scheduled it just says due on and under type it says recurring.

 Pretty much. I rented it in late December. First month rent was paid to the realtor I hired to market the house from which she took her fees and paid the rest to me. February's rent was paid early. I will feel a whole lot better once I see that payment is pending.