All Forum Posts by: Tim Johnson

I started off my real estate career with a shopping strip mall.  That thing blew my mind away how much time I spent at that property.  Always something going wrong, people hitting the building, doors not working.  Turnover was huge, always showing the spaces and I had the worst time of tenants paying on time.  I dumped it just before 08 and started buying free standing buildings.  I like them, alot less headaches.

Check with your local lenders, I'm in michigan and have access to plenty of options with no seasoning

Thats alot of work.  Without knowing sqft and materials used that price sames very fair to me

What state are you in?

Jay has great advice. I'm a custom home builder I have built sub divisons completed custom homes the entire ball of wax.   It takes time and lots of money.

I purchased pre built sub divisions in the crash for dirt cheap.  I got lucky. 

 I have always had the moto of to be lucky than good.  And its worked well for me..

Being a developer is tough, you will burn thru money like nothing else.  I have tired to find deals in this market and I can't make it work  I'm now focusing my attention on other sources.  

Best of luck

I honestly made more money than I do now in the crash.  I'm a contractor by trade and I got hooked up with a bank doing Hazard claims work for them.  We did all the really bad jobs and the pay was insane.  We did like the Dead body jobs, Meth lab, house burned down, and my favorite was code violations.  You could charge whatever you wanted and the bank didn't care they just wanted it fixed now and they where extremely gratefully for the job completed in a fast paced manner.  

I always tell my wife at least once a week, I hope the housing market tanks again, because we have the in still and the money will follow like water again.

Deal one, you could make that work, but if you rehab cost is off by just a little the deal is blown.

Deal Two, too skinny, pass on that one.  

Not every property is a deal,  I have been looking at hundreds of them in order to find one.

As a a contractor during the recession I did a ton of bank owned work, and it was a lot, thousand of properties we managed.

We have 8 meth labs that I remember and the company that came out charged over 50k for a meth lab clean up.  I was blown away at the first bill.

We had several dead bodies cleans up and even shootings and they where always in the 5-10k range.

Meth lab was no joke, and the bank I worked for took it super serious.  They would even fly a VP out on a corporate jet and I would pick them up and we would go to the property.  They didn't even do that for a dead body.

Find a lender that will do a no doc loan.  They are out there.  Happy hunting