All Forum Posts by: Shahriar Khan

@Marc Possoff suggest you all go to a local title company with a sales contract from from your cousin to you (or something like that) and let them tell you whats the gap in the title. You may not need to go through the contract but it will tell you the issues. Also if you do go through it then you will have an insurance on the title which is priceless. Please keep in mind, just because his mom owned it at some point in time, doesnt make him an owner of the property. There is a lot in between.  

@Adriel Hsu  my vote is with your partner intuition. BP is reduction 15% of work force and new organization goes into effect Sept 1. Same for conocophillips and Chevron and Shell. Service companies are already laying off. Houston is pretty insulated from broader economic recession given O&G gas jobs are highly paid. We expect this time Houston to loose high paying white color job (above 100K+) . It takes around 6-8 months to lay off to happen and local economy to get impacted since at that job category almost everyone has savings etc .  I would say keep at it but add extra time during soft development and that way project would be pacing the Houston local downturn. 

PS: Deck looks like .. 

@Danielle Scott reach out to @Tochi Ajiwe as he is going through the same fun process for looking for his first investment. 

Happy Friday :) 

@Jeremy Staggers Houston has plenty :) American Title Company of Houston/Patriot Title/Capital Title ... all of them have 10+ branches and they do all sorts of things for investors (e.g. expedite title search, loan doc prep, double close, blind HUD etc) ..PM me if when you have a contract and would be more then happy to introduce you to one of them. I work with all 3 of those for 90% of my projects unless other party drags me to another title.

@Bryan Charles   ...for clean up depending on amount of work + stuff + current contract in place with seller, we will first try to keep some money in Escrow for seller to haul off stuff . If we cant (which is ok as well ) then we after closing ,we will give notice seller/folks to remove cars with 1 week and after that we call "We Buy Junk Cars" people and they will tow the car away. For other stuff, rent a container and send all to trash .. We found its more headache to go through them compare to treating all stuff inside as 100% throwaway ... 

Seems like it will be a fun project. Best wishes 

@John Ho I would walk away with a BIG smile on my face and then celebrate cause i walked away from huge risk. 

1) Given Houston impact for O&G, we should not expect much of appreciation for next 1-2 yrs 

2) We save when we buy  and at market price that will not happen unless we believe appreciation will kick in immediately 

3) You are putting 20%+ down which should qualify for investment loan (typically 25%) from land from banks etc where rate is around 4.5% now . This is half of what seller is offer you. 

4) You are NOT ONLY paying high price aka market price BUT ALSO loosing money via financing. Net impact would be almost 20% more then market price. This will make the investment to cash flow very hard unless you get 30-35 year amortization on the term.

5) In general Negotiation has 2  buckets (Price and Term) and seems like you are loosing on both end.

Having said that, be active within wholesale community (at least for Houston) and hone into the area you want to be an expert on pricing  and hopefully you can pick up properties soon enough. 

Best wishes. 

@Tammie Spikes  price seems good BUT i would not demo the house and build another one. It will save you 6 months if headache and potentially some money .

Option 1: Demo the house--> pay architect to design a new house --> Pay civil for foundation -> Pay city for new permit --> Wait 6 months --> get builder to build it 

Option 2: Pull rehab permit --> Demo the house to studs of foundation (keep something) --> have architect to design addition (exactly like new build) --> Pay city for permit <cheaper>--> wait 1 month while continue to work --> Use existing utilities --> use any contractor ... Option 2 will be faster, cheaper and cost effective  (less risk) .

If you are looking for a house to buy and move, try https://www.cherryhousemoving.com/for-sale but they would be expensive. By the time you pay them to move + house , you will be at similar /higher cost of new build. 

Also, your lot size is narrow but its just fine. Best of luck and keep us posted. 

@E Stephens try this website for all flood maps. https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home Also, there may be some areas that were flooded and not in flood plain (by Barker Dam area) . Also have all sellers to fill out "Seller Disclosure" form where seller must disclose if the property was flooded before. 

Hope this helps. 

 

@Shiri Fein agree with comments from @Mark Sewell . AVOID: Flood zones as insurance will kill your gain . and second at that price range you are looking for cash flow areas aka areas with average earning of 40K or below or opportunity zones. 

You can go about it two ways :

1) GO to HAR/Zillow and pull rental less then 1100 and see which area seems to that that range 

2) Go to census website and start looking into zip codes with less then median earnings and then remove zip with flood areas. 

Best of luck 

@Mark Sewell almost all the new build in Acre Homes are using Land Bank aka free land and buyers have 20K govt down payment assist to buy thus price is lower. Sunny side is being built using retail priced land thus price is higher  . And they all are building less then 70-80/SQFT which isnt possible unless you have a team of your own. 

@Tyler D. your gut feel is correct that a ton of folks are on the sideline. This perfectly makes sense too many things are moving too fast. On the flip side, folks that I know ,including me, are actively buying. All we did is to change requirements, we are in a recession, we will be in this hole for around 8-12 months (till we have a vaccine), people lost jobs and more to come.  Its just the ugly reality. 

We are not buying lands, or in high end areas as we have postponed all new devs that have not broke ground yet. Key is have financing on hand.   And how are we calculating buying price, 2018 values as ARV as we have lost all gains from 2019 already and sellers have not yet calibrated so it may take 2-3 months.