the good, the bad, and the Ugly
# Entrepreneur of the Week Lilach Regev # Post4
The good, the bad and the ugly?, beyond the fact that it's a cool name for the post, it's also the truth of this world,
I could tell here about the returns and successes but I decided to tell about the way I went and had a bit of everything.
My first property:
As part of the course in Project X you are taught to look for a motivated seller, in order to find a property below the market price.
What to do The market is boiling, Corona and the one we started looking for had a feeling it was not working.
We were looking for a relatively "cheap" property for the area and for a duplex period of $ 70-80, we talked to realtors and everyone told us that we should start raising the price range we are looking for.
We looked at a lot of properties, we submitted a lot of offers and simply nothing, at some point I really thought that there are no motivated sellers in this universe??.
One of these properties was a duplex (2 units) that was on the market for a period at a asking price of $ 80, an empty upper unit and according to the seller was rented until recently for $ 675 a second unit is populated and according to the seller is rented for $ 800.
We offered 65 thousand, we received a counter offer of 70 and we said come on, okay? We were already sure that we were on a contract, before we could get the signed one from the other side we learned that the seller decided to change his mind and offered 75 thousand? And 7 days of inspection (instead of 10 in our original proposal), the most annoying? But we said come on, fine, the numbers are still working.
Start inspecting, of course the feedback from the inspection report emerges and there is a slight renovation that needs to be done (about $ 10),
And the seller is not willing to hand over the rent roll (which is a kind of card for the tenants' payments in the property) - did a red light come on here?
We put all the numbers into a business plan including security margins: having to bid on a tenant who is not paying (because we did not get enough information about tenants), a deviation in renovation and a lower rent than expected.
They come to negotiate with the seller on the last day of the inspection and offer 70, the seller for his part is not ready to move a millimeter claiming that he has additional offers and is also not ready to give an extension to the inspection period or provide a rent roll?.
We decided to cancel the contract and move on with our lives.
3 days later our realtor informs us that the seller wants to close at 70, at the same time he also provided a contract of the tenant downstairs who pays $ 775 instead of $ 800 as said at the beginning (annoying I already said?) - we decided to go for it!
So what a beauty! We bought a property and now our lives are strawberries? - Definately not!
Right after the purchase, we planned to put in the property manager we closed with on the property management who would renovate it for us, the quote he gave after the purchase was suddenly significantly higher than it was before.
We started bringing in a few more renovation offers when in the meantime we have one empty unit that is not rented (and winter is coming?), we received significantly different offers when in the end we decided to go for someone we received recommendations for who would do a good job and whose price was fair.
At the same time, we suddenly receive an email from our property manager that we need to replace all the electricity in the duplex at a cost of 8 thousand dollars - this was really not part of our business plan that we took into account in the renovation, were we really surprised? Because we did an inspection report for the property and it didn't go up there.
We started clear, we invited people from electrical contractors to check the issue and wonder and wonder we found that the electricity is just fine - needless to say we did not touch!
When the renovation was finally finished we wanted to put a tenant in the upper unit, our property manager said we needed to do some more minor repairs and priced in a few hundred dollars, in addition he said we needed to buy electrical appliances for the unit (fridge and oven) - at this point we just wanted to populate as soon as possible and agreed .
Then - the property manager claimed that he could find a tenant who would pay only $550 - when we know the rental prices in the area and we knew that we could get at least $650 - at this point we felt that - we had enough? From this property manager and it's time to move and fast! We checked our waists and agreed with a new management company while firing our current management company, the upper unit was rented in a short time for $675 with no appliances and no additional repairs.
What did I learn from this deal?
Even in a hot market you can find deals, if you search good enough, even in MLS.
Always be conservative in my calculations, rents can turn out to be lower than we expected, renovations cost more than we estimated.
There is no perfect deal, it is true that in this case it really worked for me and the other side folded but it is not guaranteed to happen, it is not that in 75 the deal was bad and in 70 it became good.
Not to be afraid to cancel a deal, although there is no perfect deal, but I also will not enter into a deal that I do not feel complete with.
Listen to my instincts, if I feel like I'm working with someone who is not right for me - cut.
In the picture is the property in question that after hardships and many more small crises along the way yields us a great return?
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