Thread: Looking for a mentor

well you will want to find someone in your area of course...I'd start by talking to friends to see if they know anyone. If you have no experience in any part of it I could see it being pretty difficult. I'm sorry about your first experience.

You're right Oregon, and I appreciate the response. Every task or
endeavour you embark on is dificult at first, and it all starts with one single step, hence the reason why I am asking for help now. The road is long but the reward is great. Besides I'd much rather suffer a little while I am still young and not when I am 70 working at Walmart.

haha...yeah, nobody wants to be 70 and working at walmart I'm trying to eye ball 45 for retirement...That gives me 21 years to make it happen and its looking pretty good. You'll be able to reach me in some far away Villa off the Spanish Coast line. Well, we'll see on that but that's the goal!

Tell me about your personal experience. how did you started, as you can see I am trying to gather as much info as possible, some people make seem so easy to do you know while others (like me) have a much harder time at it!

I didn't mean to mislead you, I'm not a real estate investor like you are trying to do. Yes I still look for the occasional flip. I'm more so looking for long term rentals. I'm a Loan Officer so I handle the financing. I work with investors, my brother is an investor so I handle all of his deals.


Its really a matter of knowing the right people. You need to find the right home and make sure the margins are really there and plan to go over your budget. Most of the time people go over budget for various reasons. It helps if you know how to do the work yourself, regardless of if you plan to do the work. Then you will at least be able to check the work and make sure it is what you want. That or higher someone to be the general contractor on the project but that adds to the expense of the project. If you can hire the sub contractors yourself and act as the general you'll be able to do it for cheaper. But then you also need to have reliable people you can call to come do work on the house for a fair price. If I wanted to fix up and flip a house around my area I could do it a lot cheaper than just some random person wanting to do it.

1. I handle the financing
2. I know HOW to do the work so I could hire the people myself
3. I know plenty of quality people who do various jobs on a home that I can get a good deal from and get good work from
4. I know people that I can get my materials from at a better price than walking into a Home Depot and buying the supplies.


It really boils down to "Who you know not what you know"


You really need to establish the connections to save every penny you can. I know people who have lost money on a home and at the same time made a killing off of a different home so when it is all said and done they are ahead. Some houses don't have huge margins to work with so you also need to be in with a Real Estate agent who can keep an eye out for you. Just let them know that you'll sell every property through them and I'm sure they will help you. They can also give you advice to little things.

If hardwood floors will cost $5,000 but only add $6,000 in relative value but carpet would cost $3,000 and add $5,000 then you'd be smarter to go with carpet. There is such a thing as overdoing a house and you have to know when to holdback on some thing and how to keep those costs down. An agent should be able to help you determine if you should even put certain things or if that would be "overdoing" the house.


If you can pick up a house for $150k and then put $20k into it and then turn around and sell it for $220k you would net around $35k-$40k minus real estate fees and other associated fees. Now if you took that same house and "overdid" the home and spent $40k then you might be able to sell it for $230-$240k but you actually either lost money or still had the same profit as putting the $20k into it.

I hope this is making some sense...haha. my email is in my signature in the first post I did and you are welcome to email me all you'd like and I'd be happy to help you out as much as I can.

I found this site that has an interesting investment program. Seems decent, especially for those with little capital to invest or risk.
www.YorkStreetInvestments.com

Thank you guys this is very usefull info!!!!

Check out homefixer's website. I cannot add URL's yet but it is homefixers dot com. Rick Villani does courses on house flipping. He has a great book out that was on the Best Sellers list. Contact him and let him know that I have recommended you to him.

P.S. I have taken this course with him

Hussain Hashim
Hashim Investments, Inc.

I will be happy to invest some time to correspond with you. My email is on my site.

-AndrewFalde.com