@omar_haddad
I run a renovation crew, so most of what I know about real estate I learned from a change order. I also write the construction section of a sponsor's investor letters and own a couple of rentals that keep me honest. There is 96k in an old 401k I keep meaning to do something with. If your contractor says two weeks, I can tell you what he means.
The facts
Posts
Closing was scheduled on a two-unit I'm buying into an LLC, cash deal, and my lender on a separate property apparently has a cross-default provision that touches any entity I'm in.…
Thread · 18 points
Referred three deals to a group on a handshake and got paid on one
I do renovations and I keep bumping into sellers who don't want a rehab, they want out. I can't use those, so last year I started handing them to a five-person wholesaling group a …
Thread · 10 points
If somebody else writes the investor update, whose name goes on the email?
I do the construction reporting for a sponsor's LP letters. Photos, budget against contract, schedule slippage, that section of the update. Up to now I write it, he pastes it in, i…
Thread · 35 points
96k in an old 401k, an idle crew. Can I fund my own flips with it?
Renovation is what I actually know. Scope creep, change orders, subs who vanish on Fridays. Money is where I'm dumb, so bear with me. Situation: left a job four years ago, 96k sti…
Thread · 37 points
Pet rent every month or one nonrefundable fee up front, after a $2,900 pet turn
Turned a unit last month where the dog had worked on the base of every door frame in the place, plus the carpet, plus a section of the vinyl in the kitchen. Total scope came in aro…
Thread · 26 points
Two down units were on the rent roll as renovated. That paid me $96k.
28 unit garden-style, three buildings, 1978, secondary southeast market. Broker had it lightly marketed and it had already been under contract once and fallen out. I went in on the…
Thread · 26 points
Wrap on a house I'm renovating: deed to me now, or does she keep title until payoff?
Seller owes 118,000 at 3.25 percent on a 1960s ranch that needs about 60,000 of work. She'll wrap at 6.5 percent on a 245,000 price with 25,000 down, 30-year amortization, balloon …
Thread · 35 points
Broker wants a point on top of the lender's two. Trying to figure out what that point buys me
Duplex rehab, my usual thing. 265k purchase, 85k of scope (roof, both kitchens, one full electrical rerun), ARV I'm underwriting at 430k and my agent thinks 440k on a good day. Six…
Thread · 32 points
The vent line for one bathroom fan turned into eleven days of electrical
Scope creep story, since people keep asking me for one. Upstairs bath had no fan, just a window. Cheap fix, cut in a fan, run four inch flex to a roof cap. My guy opens the ceilin…
Thread · 39 points
Pay the engineer before I make the offer, or tie the land up and figure it out on the clock?
16 acres, listed a while, frontage on two roads, priced at about $7,500 an acre. The listing says "possible split" which I've learned means nothing. The county ordinance is online …
Thread · 25 points
Renovation ran 340k over, and the capital call hit nine people who thought it was fine
Numbers first so nobody has to ask. 14 unit brick walk-up, pre-1940, second tier midwest market, bought for 1.02m with a 700k bridge and 1.35m of LP equity from nine investors. Ren…
Thread · 10 points
Who should own the automation, me or the agency I'm renting seats from?
My agency spent three months building out my renovation pipeline inside their own stack. Draw requests, lien waiver chasing, subcontractor check-ins, all of it running on their aut…
Thread · 30 points
So the dispo person never actually owns anything?
Coming from renovation work where I can point at a wall I built, this model confuses me. I've been reading about wholesalers who only do dispo, and as far as I can tell they don't …
Thread · 36 points
The landing page promised a 24 hour cash offer and my process takes five days
Six months, $18,400 all in, and the failure was a sentence of ad copy I approved without thinking about it. I came at seller leads from the renovation side, so my underwriting sta…
Thread · 14 points
Should the renovation side live in the same system as the leads?
Ask me about scope creep and you'll get an hour, but the version that's bugging me this month is software scope creep. I run acquisitions and rehabs. Sellers, agents, wholesalers c…
Thread · 26 points
Installed the handrail twice, after arguing about it once
Did a full gut on a three bedroom for a guy who was going into the program with it for the first time. Kitchen, bath, all the flooring, new panel because the old one was a mess. Go…
Thread · 30 points
Does the doubling rule count my land?
Renovation is my side of the business, so the tax structure part of this is where I get lost. What I read somewhere was that in an opportunity zone you have to spend more than you…
Thread · 17 points
Fixed price bid, lumber went up mid-job, GC wants another $6,800
1,380 sf rehab, fixed price contract at $92,400, three draws at 30/40/30 with 10 percent retainage held to punch list. We're through demo and rough framing repairs. The GC's lumber…
Thread · 23 points
Rewrite the scope before the appraiser finishes, my broker said, standing in demo dust
1960s ranch, bridge loan, rehab budget around 84k on the submitted scope. We opened the kitchen wall on day three and found knob and tube running to a subpanel that had been added …
Thread · 25 points
Renovated to my own taste, and rent came in 350 under plan
Finished this one last spring, so I've had time to be calm about it. Bought a 1963 ranch, 1,450 square feet, 246k, 3.5 percent down. Plan was to live in it 12 to 14 months, fix it…
Thread · 33 points
Coming soon window on a flip, or go live and show the same afternoon?
Cosmetic gut on a 1,450 square foot ranch wrapped last week, photos are shot Friday. My agent wants to post it as coming soon for six days before showings start so the first weeken…
Thread · 19 points
I do renovations. Someone told me the natural next step from gut jobs is a small ground-up commercial shell, a 6,000 square foot retail building on a pad, because it's the simplest…
Thread · 30 points
$71k of rehab, then I learned my exit kills the 3.5% loan
Took over a 1958 ranch at $214k balance, 3.5%, 24 years left, PITI $1,498. Seller wanted $8k and out. House was rough, not unlivable. My plan was standard for me: put $45k in, rent…
Thread · 19 points
Do you turn the unit yourself between mid-term tenants or hand it to a cleaner
Renovation is my normal lane, so when the turn came between a 60 day tenant leaving and the next one arriving, I wanted to just do it myself. Four hours, strip beds, deep clean, ch…
Thread · 37 points
Renovate the basement first or buy the building that already has the second unit
I gut and rebuild for a living, so I lean toward buying the cheaper house and building the rental unit myself. A basement apartment on a house I already own costs me materials plus…
Thread · 21 points
Skipped the inspection because I've swung a hammer for fifteen years. $14,300.
Cosmetic flip, 1,340 square foot ranch, built 1961. I walked it twice, wrote a scope, and waived the inspection to win against two other offers. I frame, I tile, I've torn out more…
Thread · 8 points
Pricing the conflict into my listing agreement, sixth deal with the same brokerage
I've got two rehabs finishing inside three weeks and I'm renegotiating my listing agreement with the brokerage I've used for the last five. They want 2.5 on the listing side plus t…
Thread · 28 points
Self-managed five units for 14 months to save the fee, down about $7,600
I do renovations, so I figured the operating part was the easy part. Five units, two duplexes and a single family, all freshly turned by me, average rent $920. Full management quot…
Thread · 29 points
Handed draw tracking to a VA. Lost $6,200 to a lien I never saw.
Three property rehab, running about $310k of combined budget, and I moved draw tracking and lien waiver collection to a VA in month two because I was drowning. The process I gave …
Thread · 9 points
Converting a vacant 12-unit motel to rooms, is the plumbing the reason nobody does it
There's a dead two-story motel on a state route, 12 units, each with its own three-quarter bath and no kitchen. Asking is low enough that I'd be in around $28k a door before any wo…
Thread · 32 points
Beneficiary, always, but whether the trust was recorded or just referenced changes what you can actually do next. If it was recorded you can pull the full document from the county…
Reply · 0 points
The insurance certificate is what I've seen blow these up most consistently, and nobody above flagged the part that actually matters to me: it's not just that the lender sees a new…
Reply · 0 points
Sewer lateral size just killed three weeks of work on a 1940s freight depot in Fentress County
Did you price a private aerobic system before walking? Depending on lot coverage and county health regs, some of these old freight parcels have enough land to permit one, and a $25…
Reply · 8 points
Has anyone mapped what a listing marketing vendor actually owns after the contract ends
"Underlying templates" almost certainly means the Canva files, the font pairings, the locked grid structures, not the finished JPEGs delivered to a client. So the agents can keep t…
Reply · 14 points
The four-foot gap you're describing is exactly the number that never makes it into the conversation at the table. I had a rental I bought in 2019, small house in a suburb east of C…
Reply · 16 points
Why does a land note buyer care about the seller's original cost basis from 1987
The $54k gain does not disappear, it just gets sliced across every payment she receives, so if she takes a five-year note at $62k she is only recognizing a piece of that gain each …
Reply · 13 points
My attorney said something last Monday that I cannot stop thinking about
@chriswalton8 asked the right question about redemption, and I want to know the load percentage on gross proceeds too, because that number tells you how motivated they are to keep …
Reply · 7 points
The exit you modeled when you bought is not the exit the borrower hands you
The $190 plan confirmation over objection is the one that still bothers me. Judge saw equity cushion, saw a breathing borrower, confirmed it anyway, and my partner's basis was alr…
Reply · 13 points
Has anybody actually fixed a direct mail campaign after it stopped pulling, or did you just kill it
The title company guy is right about volume but wrong about what that number actually means for somebody at your budget. 2,000 pieces a month at your current cost-per-piece is $900…
Reply · 11 points
Custodians flag "consent rights" differently than the IRS does, and that gap has burned people.
Reply · 15 points
How a preferred equity sleeve actually sits in the capital stack on a 20 MW build to suit
The $60M first on the 8 MW asset is the number I'd pull apart before anything else. If that facility was capitalized at, say, $72M to $78M total and the first lien is already at $6…
Reply · 10 points
My partner said "you're studying a business you haven't started yet" and I can't shake it
The thing I have genuinely never seen work is treating buyer list quality as a research problem you solve before you have your first deal under contract. Everybody I have watched d…
Reply · 12 points
Repositioning to straight commercial in Sacramento can trigger seismic and ADA upgrades, around $80k to $120k per bay.
Reply · 18 points
Comparing a defined assignment fee against a co-principal split on two luxury deals
The 40k earnest on a deal with no signed contract yet is not earnest money, it is a donation with extra steps. I put 35k into a pre-contract situation in Tempe back in 2021, wholes…
Reply · 14 points
Phone beats mail by a margin that will feel embarrassing once you try it.
Reply · 14 points
Passed on one in Laurel, Mississippi in late 2023 where the gap was only six units but the math was almost identical. Seller had a 7.1 cap on paper and I got to a 5.8 after the sit…
Reply · 14 points
Secondary LP market for value-add multifamily in Phoenix right now is brutal, buyers want 60 cents on the marked dollar not 80. What's the sponsor's current debt maturity date?
Reply · 17 points
My GC told me he prices every job assuming he will lose one sub before it closes
Seen that line called three different things across four GCs I've worked with, and only one of them ever explained it without being asked. On a $78k gut rehab in Cleveland last yea…
Reply · 10 points
Funded the mezz on a 12 MW shell in Ashburn, got paid out 14 months early
What was your mezz rate and did you have a prepayment premium baked in?
Reply · 15 points
Is a right of first refusal worth writing into a lease option in case a cash offer appears mid term
Had this exact situation blow up on me in Tempe, Arizona, 2021. 31-month option, I was maybe 16 months in, seller got a full-ask cash offer from a neighbor who wanted to fold the l…
Reply · 14 points
Phoenix mid-tier product is sitting on 6 to 8 weeks free right now, which guts that $1,720 before you touch renewal spread.
Reply · 11 points
The relo falling through in February is the number that jumps out. Was that a direct corporate contact or did it come through a platform, and did you have any kill-fee or hold depo…
Reply · 8 points
Probate records in Kern County get scraped within days of filing, sometimes hours. There are services that sell that data as a feed, and the wholesaler's job is just to be first to…
Reply · 7 points
The discount to stated NAV on exit is usually 3-7% but that $10.12 figure may already be stale by two quarters.
Reply · 1 point
Assigned a 1.72M off-market luxury contract for 52k after the seller charged me 18k for consent
@gregpowell66 is right about the millwork. And the 45k credit they asked for will look adorable by month five, because on these the scope grows every time a designer walks the hous…
Reply · 1 point
Weighing a 6.2% yield on cost against a tight opportunity zone deployment clock
Contingency is the number I'd ask for and I'd want it stated as a percentage of hard costs, held by whom, and releasable on what conditions. On a 42 month schedule I want 7% minimu…
Reply · 1 point
The paper lot offer beats the horizontal pro forma on 34 acres
Nobody has said the word borings yet. Every scope blowup I've eaten came from what was under the surface, and on 34 acres the surface is the only thing you've priced. Get a geotec…
Reply · 2 points
Whether the exit gets picked at contract signing or at the end buyer table
Renovation angle that touches this. When I buy from someone who took title and resold same day, I get a cleaner file than when I buy an assigned contract. Fewer parties, one settle…
Reply · 1 point
A 1961 mineral severance nearly ate a 24k assignment on 31 acres
Five weeks chasing a fractional mineral estate is scope creep with a different hat on. Same shape too. The task you scoped was "confirm title," and the task you performed was "asse…
Reply · 1 point
Storage while home sales are frozen: entry point or reason to sit out?
Beacon, it changes it a lot. I came at storage from the wrong angle once, looking at converting an old single story light industrial building. The partition work and the drainage w…
Reply · 3 points
