The Herculean Project of Rehabbing a House

Rehabbing a house can be daunting to someone doing it for the first time. To eliminate the feeling of intimidation, let’s tear down this massive piece of work into several smaller and manageable tasks.

Steps in Rehabbing a House

1. Assess the project and establish the specific jobs that needs to be done with your contractor. Ask your contractor for his ideas, then from there, set your final action plan on how to undertake the renovation project, particularly how to go about specific repairs. It is also in this stage when you decide whether or not to modify the basic layout of the house. To simplify things, have your contractor gather his own rehab team and discuss with them what has been agreed upon. It would be great to work with a… Read the rest

House Fixing at its best in this series of unbelievable home repair projects.

I should have known better when the contractor from Good Ole’ Boy Engineering said, “We can Fix House to meet anyone’s budget! He wasn’t kidding.

Alternate ceiling fan connections.  Eliminates the need for for those expensive electricians.

Here’s what you can do with a little PVC pipe and a lot of couplings!

The ultimate in supply and return air efficiency!

Roof flashing not needed.  It must not rain in this part of the country.  Wait till you see the roof leak catch system installed in the attic.

Save money.  Just use use nail gun nails; they… Read the rest

The buy-fix-sell or rent out real estate investing strategy often fetches heftier returns than flipping because it entails a lot more work. This includes dealing with contractors who will be renovating your property. The profitability of your investment property partly depends on how the contractors execute their job since you will be spending a considerable sum of money for the project and because the quality of their work will dictate how much asking price or rental you can command from buyers or renters. That is why if you are new in this strategy, it is essential that you establish a good working relationship with some of them so that in your next rehab projects you know who to turn to. Of course, you would want to choose the competent and professional ones, those who are reliable and would not… Read the rest

How To Make Money In Real Estate – Mind Map

Mind Map of how to buy, fix and profit by investing in real estate. The mind map shows various methods of how to buy foreclosures, rehab properties, and make money by investing in real estate.  There are many links included in the map to various REI resources on the web.  Please send me a message if you have more links you would like to add by contributing to the map.  I would like to expand this mind map to double this size with full descriptions in each category. Thanks!

Expand the Mind Map and it will open in it’s own window. It contains various ideas and categories of how to make money in real estate including useful websites and information.

REI Doors Open To All

The relative ease of entry is luring more and more people to turn their hands to real estate investing, or REI, not to mention that information about running the lucrative housing business is all over the Internet; you just have to discern which tips and advice to follow. It requires little, some would even say zero, capitalization that is why it is welcoming to beginners. Less capitalization also means lesser risk for losses for the newbies. However, the most enticing lure why people get into REI is the substantial profits that could be raked in in a relatively short time if you get things right.

ROI in REI

One of the most common measures of the quality of an investment is the Return on Investment or ROI. It… Read the rest

Rental Property Tips From the Squirrels

Brrr…. Right now, squirrels are cozying up to one another’s company, sleeping and eating the days of winter away. As a landlord, you should be doing that too, instead of heading down your rental property in the cold just to address some issues that may have been prevented had you emulated the foresight of the rodents. Next time, to keep you snuggled down in your sofa reading a page-turner, remember to follow these rental property tips before the next winter arrives.

Arrange a maintenance check just before the cold bites so that unnecessary inconveniences can be prevented. Maintenance checks may sound bothersome for some tenants, but if you explain to them how they can benefit from such, it will warm their hearts.

Rental Property Tips To Keep the Electric Bill Down

Fireplaces and the… Read the rest

House Fixing – Riskier But Richer
The higher the risk, the higher the yield. This is one of the general rules in investing, and it applies very well even in real estate investing.
Retailing in the housing industry presents to the real estate investors substantial profits that are far heftier than wholesaling. This is because you can increase the value of the property by rehabbing. However, conforming to the investing precept just mentioned, rehabbing also brings greater risk because it requires more capital to fund the house fixing. It is thus, vital that the project be carried out properly. You need to buy the right property with the right repairs, hire the right contractors and fix the right contract for a headache-free house fixing project.
Buying The Right Property for House Fixing
While a property selling below 60 percent of

… Read the rest

As the upsurge of great deals rush into your real estate business, you may now be accumulating rental properties with number and locations that may be too much for you to handle. Instead of devoting you time deciding on which next handyman special to acquire, marketing your newly acquired properties or spending your weekend playing baseball with your son, your day may be encumbered with fixing leaky roofs or tackling delinquent tenants. This may be the cue for you to consider turning over the reins of property management to a property manager or a property management company.

Property Management – A Wide Range of Responsibilities
As you may already know from experience, the breadth of property management could be overwhelming, more so that your little realty empire has grown in territory. One of the important things that this

… Read the rest

These days, getting funding for your handyman specials from hard money lenders are getting harder as their requirements become more rigid. Traditionally, getting funding from these private lenders was almost as swift as their speed of driving by the property involved in the deal for inspection.  At the present real estate climate, however, many of these lenders may check on the tax returns, bank statements and current pay slips of borrowers. For this reason, some REI’s may be seeking for other financial fountainheads to fund their deals. Usually in their search for alternative source, they give Federal Housing Administration’s 203K loans the brush-off.

Giving 203K Loans A Second Thought

Ever since the Department of Housing and Urban Development set down the moratorium on investor involvement in the 203k Rehabilitation Program, ethical REI’s avoid this loan program lest they be… Read the rest

Property Flipping – The Good

These days, the term “property flipping” or “house flipping” carries illegal or fraudulent undertones. It used to just innocently mean buying a property or house below market value or at a discounted price from a motivated seller and selling it quickly with little to no renovations done on the property, thus, quickly generating profit. This real estate game plan includes wholesaling, contract assignment and fix and flip schemes. Property flipping is a good starting point for real estate investors as they can generate quick cash using this strategy with little to no money required.

Property Flipping – The Bad and the Ugly

Then unscrupulous and greedy individuals enter into the already topsy-turvy realm of the real estate market and sullied the innocence of the term through their twisted schemes. They buy a… Read the rest