Yes, you need proof…but most of the cashiers know us now…I guess 10,000 trips to Lowes will do that!
Keith
Keith, do you like Lowes over Depot?
Thanks
auggflo
I’ve done several price comparisons involving a large number of items and Lowes has always been a bit cheaper…plus they give me an additional 10% off on everything except install labor.
I actually like Home Depot better but for my renatal properties, price rules. Here where I am they’re only about 1/4 mile apart so there’s no real travel diffference.
Keith
My wife actually came across a printable lowes coupon online (don’t ask me where she finds these things) thats good for 10% off a single purchase up to 10,000. Most of the ones I have seen from Lowes and Depot are only good up to 2,000. And since Depot honors Lowes coupons I was able to buy just about everything for my rehab I needed.
Better yet I opened a home improvement lone with them which is an open line of credit that stays open for 6 months before its closed and starts charging interest. That should give me plenty of time to get this cash cow completed and sold.
Now if only I could find a contractor that takes competitors coupons and wont charge me interest
here in Sioux City, we have a Lowes and a Home Depot is being built. We also have a store called Menards, which everything is usally a few dollars cheaper than Lowes. It also seems that everyone else knows this as well, because Menards is always crowded and packed, and always very few vehicles in Lowes. But i can say lowes has a better variety to choose from, but when your doing rehab houses, you dont really need the variety
Sorry, but the educational professionals and investors from my point of you disagree. They say that you should never be the handy man or landlord. Your job is manage, make deals and administrate all facets. In other words, you should be spending your weekends seeking new homes and new deals not spending time painting or doing rehab.
Think about it?
If you could make some serious money on a property that you saw this past weekend, would you rather be painting?
Do you think Donald Trump does painting on the weekends or does he have someone do it for him? Do you think he is scoping out new deals or worrying about rehab work? I know he is loaded and has people working for him but, if you could use that same ideology in this business that makes more sense.
Best of luck to you!
John
<<Sorry, but the educational professionals and investors from my point of you disagree. They say that you should never be the handy man or landlord. Your job is manage, make deals and administrate all facets. In other words, you should be spending your weekends seeking new homes and new deals not spending time painting or doing rehab.>>
Perhaps in your “slice of paradise”, John. Personally, we have our own business model and it works for us…part of it is that we do most of our own work. Someday maybe we won’t…personally, we like doing the rehab work.
I’m not Donald Trump – don’t want to be Donald Trump (I have plenty of my own hair – don’t need a comb-over that looks like a dead red squirrel on my head)…
There are a ton of folks here just starting out…I can tell you for an absolute fact that a lot of them can’t afford to hire a lot of work done (yet) and can’t afford to do more than 3 or 4 properties a year (yet).
And, BTW, I trust most of the "educational professionals (read: "gurus) just about as far as I could throw one of them…what they REALLY want is you to believe that they have some new panacea that will make you rich overnight…and, oh yeah – send money!
Keith
agree totally kdhastedt. I myself do the rehab more as a hobby than anything. I work a fulltime job 8-5 and then spend a couple hours in the evening doing the work myself. I dont have any kids and my g/f helps me with them as well. It is something for me to do rather than go home and sit on the couch and watch tv or whatever. But i do not work on the weekends that often as i take them off to relax and go boating, hunting, watch football ect. But i do plan on going fulltime in this type of work in the future. I just need to get a bank roll built up to where i can go 6-8 months without a paycheck(Other than rental money). It also doesnt make sense to have someone do the management on rental properties unless you have more units than you can keep track of. I mean why give them 10%? Unless your complexes/houses are paid for or you put a big chunk of money down, it is hard to come accross a property that you can rent out and make enough money to cover everything and still put a little money in your pocket. Also, when your doing rehab houses, if you pay someone else to do it, your losing another 5-10 grand in labor costs. This last rehab i did, i figure i will profit 20k without my labor or 15k with my labor at $30 per hour. Although a contractor prolly woulda had less time into it, they would probably charge $50 per hour or more. So you figure if you made 15k after paying a contractor, then pay your 28% taxes, pay the realtor fees/closing costs, your only making 7 or 8k opposed to around 13 or 14k otherwise…id sure take that extra 5k for a months worth of work rather than subing it out IMO.
Well, black, if you look at john828’s last few post’s REIs are supposed to just be pushing a pencil somewhere and not getting their little hands dirty doing hard work.
But, hey, if that works for him – GREAT! But I think he has no right coming on the forums and telling others what they have to do or should be doing…he has no idea what point folks are in their investing career, what their long-term goals are, or what their business plan looks like – he just knows what the “educational professionals and investors from his point of you [sic]” tell him that he should know.
To which I would ask, “If you have a new investor and he/she doesn’t know what things should cost, how do they know when the contractor is playing a quick game of ‘who’s your daddy’ with the Noobie?” You’ve got to know what things cost, you’ve got to know what goes into repairs/rehabs, you’ve got to know how to manage properties, etc., etc. or you’ll get ‘jammed’ for sure!
Keith
yeah, There are so many different ways to be involved in real estate. I actually ended up in real estate by accident beleive it or not. I found my first rehab house that i was going to fix up and live in it cuz i knew i would have good equity in it and thought it would be something fun to do. Needless to say, the day before i closed on it i found out i was moving to CA for awhile, so after i got it rehabbed i tried selling it, and when that didnt sell, i rented it out. Thats when it started to click on me that this is where you can make some nice money. So its actually been 1 ytd that i have done 2 rehabs and six months of that time i was in CA. I almost hada 4-plex bought and have another property that i am going to look at here to rehab. This one i will probably hold and use as a rental. so right now my goal is to do 3-4 rehabs this year and maybe keep 1 or 2 as rentals and flip the others. i really havent put aplan together yet, but im going to get something organized and figure this whole thing out so i can go into it fulltime.