http://www.reistartup.com Building a Real Estate Empire Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:01:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've been meaning to write this post for a little while, and a comment on a previous post reminded me that it's probably about time. I know a lot of business owners think that over the course of their business life, they will naturally build credit, and a lot ... http://www.reistartup.com/building-business-credit The Second Chance House finished its due diligence period yesterday, so it's officially too late to back out of this one. While I wasn't able to get my Scope of Work completed for this one just yet -- and therefore wasn't able to get contractor bids, the price was ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-3-some-details Rehab has started on The Corn House. Just to allow everyone to follow along on this rehab, I've took a couple videos of the house, as well as a bunch of pictures after the first day of rehab. Here is a video of the main floor of the house, along ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-1-day-1-of-rehab I mentioned earlier that House #2 had some potential water damage, and that the due diligence indicated a few more problems than I had expected. Based on those things, I went back to the bank (the seller) before my due diligence period ended, and asked for a $5K reduction ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-2-going-to-closing I don't have much to write about today...everything is going as smoothly as I could hope on my first three houses (though two haven't closed yet, so things can't be THAT bad). But, I'm finally starting to realize how having multiple properties underway simultaneously (especially when they are in ... http://www.reistartup.com/lots-to-do Now that I'm officially closed on my first house, it's time to start focusing on getting my contractors moving and getting this rehab project underway. I picked a GC earlier this week after several weeks of walk-throughs, bids, and negotiations (I wasn't very efficient with this the first time ... http://www.reistartup.com/contracts-for-contractors Lots going on, so I thought I would post a general update on things... House #1: The Corn House Today is the big day -- I'm closing on my first investment property, The Corn House! Here are some of the other things going on with House #1: I finally found a GC who ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-1-preparing-to-close I've talked a little bit about The Bulge House, and now that I've gone through some of the due diligence -- and am fairly convinced I'll go through with this purchase -- I'll go into a bit more detail... First, here are some pictures... From a numbers perspective, I'm picking this house ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-2-due-diligence My out-of-town silent-partner was in town for my wedding this weekend, so I decided to take him around the three houses that we have under contract. We stop by the Corn House, and take a look around, and then we head over to the Bulge House. The first ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-2-water-damage I mentioned the Second Chance house in a post from last week. Well, the day after I wrote that post, I received a counter-offer from the bank for $1000 higher than my bid; considering this counter-offer was still $13,000 less than my original bid two weeks ago, I immediately ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-3-second-chance-house Getting married today!!! http://www.reistartup.com/im-getting-married I got my closing date for House #1 today -- it's next Wednesday afternoon. This will be the first closing I've had with an investment property, and is sure to be a lot easier than closing on my first property, my primary residence. Because I will be paying ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-1-ready-to-close Looks like I picked up my second house yesterday. While this one is far from a done deal, I submitted an offer, had several round of counter-offers, and ultimately we came to an agreement on terms and price (i.e., we have a contract). The reason I say this ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-2-the-bulge-house A couple weeks ago, I put an offer a house that looked like a decent deal. My offer was a few thousand below list price (it was a bank owned foreclosure), and I thought that were there no other offers on the table, I'd likely get it. Unfortunately, ... http://www.reistartup.com/a-second-chance I don't know if I have any contractors reading my blog, but now that I've started getting General Contractor (GC) bids on my first house, I have some recommendations to all the contractors out there who want to step up their game when it comes to doing a walk-through and ... http://www.reistartup.com/to-all-contractors I've had the busiest work week in recent memory this week (even compared to back in the corporate world). Things have been crazy, but in a good way. Here are some updates: 1. I met with a number of GCs this week to get bids on the Corn ... http://www.reistartup.com/update-for-73108 I've gotten a lot of questions recently about what parts of the rehab work I'll be doing myself, and why the hell am I planning to hire the expensive contractors vs. just picking up day laborers to do the easy stuff or doing it myself. The answer is obvious (to ... http://www.reistartup.com/my-business-philosophy I started meeting with contractors this week to get bids on the rehab work for the Corn House. While I was originally only going to get three bids, I screwed up and overbooked and am now on the hook to get about 5 bids on this job (a couple ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-1-scope-of-work ...continuation of yesterday's post with more details around the Corn House: * I had a full inspection of the house on Saturday. Overall, there were no major surprises, which was a good thing. My inspector is tremendously detail-oriented, and found at least a hundred little issues, but most of ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-1-more-details I officially signed the contract for House #1 ("The Corn House") on Saturday. And as promised, here are some more details: * First, some pictures of the new property. The basement pictures aren't in here yet, but since I'll likely be finishing the basement, I'll upload those when I ... http://www.reistartup.com/house-1-some-details