@Revelate wrote:
Heh S10 is in Florida which gets plenty of sunshine, though I didn't look into the numbers more than casually but looked like around where I am in S. Cal if I had a SFH that I intended to stay in it would make sense on back of napkin calculations.
I moved to SoFla for 6 weeks and then moved back. LOVE the area, disliked the people as a whole. Not sure what it was. The weather was perfect, though. I'd probably get a solar bicycle if I lived down there (I have a great e-bike here but solar charging it is way too slow).
Yeah, the majority of people here aren't investors, for me while I'm sure I could learn what I needed to do a basic sanity check on a walkthrough plus whatever public record data there is, it's a handy thing for preventing making a dumb mistake; I suspect with your buying strategy you may be putting some cash in anyway to pretty up the place so to speak anyway which might cover a bunch of things that get found during inspection time?
To be honest, I didn't even do a complete walk through. I went into the attic and saw that the roof was 5 years past due date, saw that the kitchen was 30 years outdated, talked to 3 of the neighbors with identical WW2 soldier homes about past issues and lowballed the asking price by close to 30%. They admitted they had a free home a few suburbs over from a family inheritance and needed enough to pay off their mortgage which my offer allowed AND I offered to close then and there as the banks were open another 2 hours. They needed a week or so to move out.
After I took over the place (fastest closing EVER) I realized I paid too little and they should have negotiated another 15% up because the bones of the place were fantastic. In the few years I've lived here I keep finding GOOD surprises but as yet no bad ones, other than the roof which is in horrid shape but I'm waiting for a housing market crash for labor rates to plummet. The last time I redid a roof on a property was in 2009 and got into a bidding war with 10 different labor contractors begging for the job. I figure another few years and I can get it done for 60% off, but I am patching now and looking for leaks during winter. Fingers crossed for a recession.
I tore the kitchen out myself (hired some college guys in the neighborhood) and rehabbed the kitchen with barter labor. Want to redo the bathroom but waiting for a recession there because I can't do that labor myself but someone will want a gig eventually. Long term goal is to rent it out either on AirBNB ($120-$130 a night is common in my area) or short term commercial leases to traveling businessmen ($520 a week is common in my area) and find another deal after the next recession hits.
