My last two articles at BiggerPockets (here and here) described BRRRR deals that went well. This one did not.
Indeed, I find real estate investment and most entrepreneurship writing to be overly optimistic. There are rarely articles on failure. Instead, each one is "How I did Great at X" or "How I Made a Gizillion Dollars with Y." And this paints a false portrait for newbies, who likely get down with any failures they have, when in fact, most of these people writing about one success after another have as many horror stories as success stories. Anyways, with this property, the results were as follows, "If you add our closing costs, we’re in over $80,000. So we’re all into the property for close to 95 percent its value. It could have been worse, of course. We have been upside down before. But this is definitely not how you do BRRRR right." I also describe many of the mistakes I made. One of which was "Becoming Attached," "We’ve backed out of deals we’ve gotten under contract in this way before, but the fact we had it under contract did add a bit of a feeling of commitment. Also, it’s a beautiful, old home with a lot of charm. But we don’t buy pretty houses; we buy good deals. As hardened as I am to that, I think those things might have tilted me over the edge to purchase a house that was on the edge to begin with. "Don’t become attached to a property. It’s just an investment. And never be afraid to walk away." Check it out.
Comments
At least as far as individual deals go (versus large purchases), this was probably our best deal ever. I give the rundown on how we found it, analyzed it, rehabbed and then refinanced it. We purchased it for $28,250 and after the rehab, were all into it for just under $44,000. In the end,
"The property ended up appraising for $106,000, and so we were actually able to pull out about $30,000 upon refinance! In total, our equity was about $63,000." I also discuss how we split properties into three general categories and try to buy a mix to create a balanced portfolio, - Equity Deals - Value Deals - Cash Flow Deals Check it out. I just wrote my first article for Medium.com. Not sure I will write regularly for them, but I figured I would give it a shot. The article is warning to liberals about what I call the "Muh Russia" conspiracy theory,
"After all, this fear-mongering over Russia, or Russophobia perhaps, has been going on for a while and has been lead by two the of the most hawkish Neocon Republicans out there; Lindsey Graham and John McCain. Bill Kristol — the founder of The Project for the New American Century, which literally dreamt up the Iraq War — tweeted the following when General Flynn was forced to resign after it came to light that he had discussed sanctions with a Russian diplomat, "'Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.' "Are these really the kind of people the Left wants to get involved with? These are the guys who are clamoring for every war they can get. And flirting with war with a nuclear-armed Russia is just outright insane. I mean, just watch Lindsey Graham throw a hissy fit because we weren’t going to invade Syria or something like that." I then quote former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell, who endorsed Hillary Clinton and probably would have become the CIA director if she won, concluded that, “On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all. There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.” And now the firm CrowdStrike, that determined Russia was behind the hacking, is coming under fire for an inaccurate report on Ukraine and holes in their Russian hacking story. Please check it out. I would really prefer not to have World War II. I would really prefer not to have World War II |
Andrew Syrios"Every day is a new life to the wise man." Archives
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