“Always have a back-up!”

This was played out in dramatic form with a deal I’m closing tomorrow. A wholesaler friend of mine brought me this great little three bedroom one bath home tucked away on a dead end street where pride in ownership is alive and well. The electric and plumbing is already upgraded and this rehab is cosmetic with the exception of adding a bath.

I’m buying it for $52,500 and the as-repaired appraisal came in at $86,000. Not a bad spread. This is the kind of deal I like!

When I called my hard money broker, she was delighted and we moved quickly toward closing. I was only waiting on the closing time…

That’s when the wheels fell off.

It seems my broker’s money source decided he was only going to invest in property valued at $250,000 or more. Yikes!

So, I went to back-up hard money broker number 1.

The broker took his time…about 5 days…to finally tell me that he only wanted to loan about 60% of the as-repair value. No way. Not when I can do better (70%) with back-up hard money broker number 2.

Back-up broker number 2 is probably who I should have went with in the first place. I’ve borrowed from this source before. It took one phone call, and the money is there and I close in a couple of days. Wham-bam, the deal is arranged.

It looks like it’s time to shift around the players in my core team a bit. Back-up number 2 is now my starter. Back-up number 1 (foot-dragger, doesn’t-loan-the-70%-he-said-he-would) is benched.

I tell this story to illustrate that it’s absolutely CENTRAL to your business to have back-up plans in all aspects of the business.

I strongly recommend having two or three:

– Hard money brokers
– Appraisers for quick value assessments
– Rehab crew leaders
– Plumbers
– Electricians
– Roofers
– HVAC techs
– Realtors

In fact, have two or three of any trade or profession lined up, ready to spring into action as a moment’s notice. Sure, I have my favorites in each of these areas, but I am striving to have 3-deep hot back-ups in each. Thing happen. Life happens! Be prepared for it.

Don’t stop there. Have back-ups when you rent or sell a property. A property isn’t rented until the rent and deposit (or lease/option fee) is paid and the keys are in the hands of the new tenant. So, encourage back-ups until the money is in your hands (in cash).

I’ve had appointments set up to sign leases, and the potential tenants never show up, no call, and they quit answering their phone. This is despite being hot for the house an hour earlier! If you are in this business long, you will learn that people will disappoint you and they will fool you. So, establish policies and make one of them “it ain’t rented until it’s paid for!”

Encourage back-up offers to purchase. Deals fall through all the time! Take as many back-up offers as you can.

Having back-ups is a mental frame of mind that fits within being a big-picture thinker portion of the Mind of the Real Estate Investor. In addition, rearranging your core team is thinking big and long term. It’s a constant process of improvement and adjustment. This approach is crucial to your business! Apply this principle and profit!

Of course, the first questions that you must answer is how emergent is your need for quick cash? You can likely generate the most SHORT TERM cash by selling a freshly rehabbed house. But, you will give much of it away in taxes come next April.

If you keep it, you stand to make more! You will also enjoy some great benefits while you own it such as cash flow, a tax break, and MORE cash with the future appreciation. You can still pull some nice cash a few months after buying it when you refinance (post rehab) the property from your hard money (at 70% loan to value) to long term financing (at 85% or 90% loan to value).

The short answer is an investor is going to make considerably more money by hanging onto a property after it’s rehabbed. There is a downside to it. You have to be a landlord, and you have to decide if you want to do that. I don’t think it’s too bad as long the landlording is done correctly.

Let me illustrate the difference in overall money between rehab and sell, and rehab and rent investing with this example;

Let’s say appreciation rates are 5% in your town and the average price of a freshly rehabbed property in the neighborhoods investors buy in is $100,000. Let’s also say there is Bill and Fred.

Bill sells his properties after rehabbing and makes $15-18,000 per house. Good boy Bill!

Fred keeps his rehab projects and cash-out refinances, pulling out around $10,000 per house within 3-6 months of ownership. (Fred trades his 70% loan-to-value (LTV) ratio hard money for long term, 30-year mortgages at a lower interest rate with an 85-90% loan to value ratio. He pockets the difference between what it costs to pay off the hard money and the new mortgage less closing costs. This works out to about $10,000 per property.)

Bill (rehab and sell) makes a great living. Ten houses per year is $150,000-$180,000 per year…nice jingle! The downside is that Bill has to keep rehabbing to keep making that living year-after-year and pays taxes on all that money as regular income (ouch!). So his $150,000 per year is in reality somewhat less.

Fred (the rehabber) also makes a great living. Ten houses per year makes him $100,000 or so in tax free, spendable cash. But, Fred controls a million dollars in real estate and it’s going up in value year after year. Also, Fred pays no taxes on that money he gets from the cash-out refinances. It’s part of a mortgage, so must be paid back, therefore is not income! I love that part!

Let’s look at what Fred’s doing more closely.

Let’s say Fred bought 10 houses valued at $100,000 each, owes $90,000 on each one (after the 90% cash out refinance), so he controls $1,000,000 in property. If he keeps them 5 years (assuming a low appreciation rate…which is pretty conservative):

Purchase year – 10 houses x $100,000 = $1,000,000
Year 1 – Same 10 houses X $105,000 = $1,050,000
Year 2 – Same 10 houses X $110,250 = $1,102,500
Year 3 – Same 10 houses X $115,762 = $1,157,620
Year 4 – Same 10 houses X $121,550 = $1,215,500
Year 5 – Same 10 houses X $127,627 = $1,276,270

Essentially, Fred makes an extra $50,000 per year for keeping 10 properties. After owning them 5 years, if he sells, he puts $276,000 in his pocket.

Remember

- Some parts of the country will appreciate much faster than 5%. Heck some places properties will double in value in 5 years.
- No tax benefits of keeping the property is included here. That equates to thousands of dollars in real income.
- This is ONE ten-house year. Let’s say you want to “top out” at owning 30 houses. Well, in just a couple of years your buying will slow down to a trickle and you’ll start selling and cashing out of properties. I mean, how many ten-house years to you need to string together before you are set for life?
- What if you hold these houses 10 years? The numbers get pretty exciting.

If you’re like me and you don’t want to do this for too many years, then holding properties for a few years makes a lot of sense, especially if you don’t have much personal money invested in them.

So what of poor old Bill? Chances are, Bill will satisfy his need for short term cash, then start holding property. What do you think?

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