Afraid to Buy Your First Rental? Here’s How to Finally Start (Rookie Reply)

What if the biggest mistake new investors make is waiting too long to buy their first property?

And what if the fastest way to lose money isn't a bad deal, but a bad contractor?

Today we're answering three questions every rookie needs to hear. How to start when you feel stuck. How to avoid getting ripped off by contractors. And how to capitalize when you stumble on a potential cash cow.

This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast and I'm Ashley Care.

And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let's get into today's first question. So this question comes from Corey in the BiggerPockets forums. And Corey says, I'm completely new to real estate and would like to know if someone could help me and guide me through getting my first deal. Great question, Corey. And that's the entire reason that the Real Estate Rookie Podcast exists, is to help guide you through your first deal and beyond, obviously. Now that said, it is also a very loaded question because there's a lot of goes into guiding someone through their first deal. So I think the goal for me and Ashley isn't to give you a super kind of tactical step by step for every single thing you need to do, but give you a general overview of the big things you should focus on and some of those more major milestones. I think the first step and Ash, let me know if you disagree with this, but I think the first step is just to clarify what is your why and what is your end goal? Because every person who invests in real estate has a slightly different mix of motivations and resources and skills and abilities and goals. And those mixes can lead to slightly different plans in terms of what should you be doing within real estate.

And I think oftentimes people aren't getting niche enough. So you could say, well, my goal is to my why? The reason is because I want to quit my job or I want to build wealth for my family. But what you're not think about is the actual step and the lifestyle to get to that. So if you want to quit your job, does that mean because you want to go and you want to live on the beach and you don't want to work anymore, you want to be retired, or does it mean you want to work for yourself and you're going to. So like, the difference between the two is you're most likely going to be able to quit, quit your job sooner if you've put yourself into a new job where you're working for yourself. So maybe you're becoming a co host, you're, you know, managing all of these short term rentals, you're an operator, maybe you are flipping houses, which is a very active income, or maybe you are buying long term rentals. We had a guy on, you know, not too long ago that was an out of state investor and he set up property management and he had his long term rentals just sitting there accumulating appreciation. They had some cash flow and he was really just banking on them building wealth. And he was still working his full time job with no, you know, reason to actually quit anytime soon. He, he liked his job, he wanted to stay into it. Because the strategy that you pick I think really depends on not only what your why is, but what you want to be doing to actually get to that point to reach that goal too.

And I think once you have clarity around that why and what that end goal is, the next step is to understand. And actually you kind of touched on this, but understand your strategy and your niche. And I think oftentimes we confuse those two things, but they're actually slightly different. The strategy would be long term, traditional long term rentals, midterm rentals.

Short term rentals, long term, obviously flipping, wholesaling, but within even. Let's talk about flipping, because I think when a lot of people think about flipping, they only think about flipping single family homes. And while that's true, that that's probably the most popular form of flipping, we've met and interviewed people who flip raw land and they buy land, they sit on it and they flip it later for some sort of profit. We've met people who've flipped land but improved land. So they'll buy the land, they'll do all of the initial work to get it ready to get built on, and they'll sell it to a builder, and the builder can plug and play. We've met people who buy small parcels of land, we've met people who buy large parcels of land. So even within the strategy of flipping, there are different niches in terms of what you can flip. You can flip apartment complexes big or small, you can flip hotels if you want to. So just understanding both the strategy and the niche that makes the most sense for you, given your current resources, abilities, goals, et cetera.

Yeah, and I think like a big motivation for people to get into real estate is because they want to do something they love, they want to have a passion and like designing a house excites them or flipping a house. And.

There are two ways to take this as to you hate your job, you want to, you know, live, do something that you enjoy, but you actually have more of an opportunity to be successful at first and to make more money if you take advantage of your current resources. And when I first started, I was working as a property manager. I knew everything about property management. I had a mentor that was a long term investor. So right there I had an advantage because I had those skill sets, I had that network, I had had all of that where if I would have said, you know what, like doing an Airbnb, that actually looks like more fun and I would really like that more. Designing it, coordinating with the guests, like I wouldn't have even have known where to start with an Airbnb. And it would have taken me longer to accumulate all of that knowledge. I didn't know a single person that was doing a short term rental at the time. I would have had to learn everything from the ground up. So eventually I did pivot. Eventually I built my foundation of long term rentals and I was able to pivot to try some short term rentals. The first one, I went $40,000 over budget. If that would have been my first deal, I, that would have bankrupt me. So as much as you want to like pursue your passion and do something that excites you and love, see if there actually is an opportunity and you have an advantage doing one of the strategies that will actually propel you to reach success even faster, I think the.

The other piece of getting started is building out your team and for rookie investors, the people you should focus on initially. A good lender. And I say lender, maybe even first, because I think before you can focus on markets or properties, you need to understand what can you actually afford? What is your purchasing power? So you know how much cash you have to deploy for down payment, closing cost, renovation setup, whatever it may be. But you need a good lender to tell you what loan amount can you get approved for. So talking to a great lender, working with a great agent, right. Someone who knows the market or can expose you to different markets. And luckily Beefy has the resources to help you find both of those folks. We've got the agent finder, biggerpockets.com agentfinder we also have the lender finder. So go in there, go talk to some folks and get a sense of what can I afford, how much can I actually buy? And then once you've got that idea, then go start talking to agents who fit within your purchasing power.

Yeah, so I think if you start to think about all these things and actually take the time to write them down, there's actually a really Great journal. What is it called that Brandon Turner had created? The Intention Journal. It's on the Biggerpockets Bookstore and it is just like a great like resource to actually build out what your why is, what your goals are, but also like action items that you can do every single day to move the needle. Highly recommend checking that out at the Biggerpockets bookstore.

The next thing that we'll touch on is and this is more so mindset, but it's that momentum beats perfection and we can get so caught up in analysis paralysis, waiting for the absolute. And I'm using air quotes here, perfect deal that we end up waiting forever. And now you looked up and it's been a decade and you still haven't gotten started. And I think inaction has killed more real estate investing dreams than slightly misaligned action. Right? More people just not doing anything has stopped more investors from becoming investors than them maybe buying a deal that didn't pencil out exactly how they wanted it to. So momentum, momentum is what we want to focus on. And that's how we get from no deals to one deal, from one deal to five deals, from five deals to 10 deals, and so on.

We need to take a short break here, but the last thing I'll add to this is building confidence. And that can be with just making those very small moves, low risk moves and networking, analyzing deals, shadowing someone, finding a mentor. Those can all help you get to the next step. So coming up, if you're worried your contractor is overcharging the how do you actually know for sure? We'll break it down right after this with a quick word from our sponsor.

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Investor okay, welcome back. Our next question comes from Matthew in the BP forums. Newer to house flipping and also just moved to Charleston, South Carolina. I've got a 2 1, 900 square foot house that needs a full rehab including new roof, all new drywall flooring, adding plumbing for washer, dryer and dishwasher, getting electrical up to code, full kitchen and bathroom remodel, etc. My general contractor is estimating 90k in rehab. This is about $100 per square foot. Is this reasonable for the area or is he pricing this way too much even for a heavy rehab? I was expecting closer to $65 per square foot totaling a 60k rehab. So this is roughly 30k more than what I was expecting. Would appreciate a fellow investor familiar with the region's opinion on pricing. Are you familiar with the region's pricing in Charleston, South Carolina?

I actually know nothing about pricing for rehabs in Charleston, South Carolina.

I am going to say I don't think, I think you'll agree with me. I don't think that we need to to answer this question as in a full gut rehab. So new roof. Let's say it's 900 square foot house. So let's break this down Tony. If you were doing a 900 square foot house and we'll say Tennessee because that's closer than Joshua Tree to South Carolina. What what would the cost of a New roof be about.

I actually haven't had to do a new roof in Tennessee, but we got quoted on a new roof for a property in California, and it was like five or six grand. I want to say.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was for here. I did a duplex not too long ago, and it was 5,000. Okay. So then flooring. My flooring guy charges, I think it's 450 per square foot, but that's material. That's including the flooring plus labor. So if we got 900 square feet at 450 a square foot, what does that come out to? My math genius.

Oh, you're pushing me right here. 9 times 4, 360 add on. It's like a little over 5,000 bucks, give or take.

We're just going to assume the whole place is getting LVP flooring. Okay. Adding plumbing for washer, dryer, and dishwasher. That I probably could say.

We have a really good relationship with our plumbing district. A lot of work. So, like, sometimes things are, like, ridiculously cheap because they're already at another property or something like that. But I would say to add that, like, probably around.

500. $600 feels reasonable. Okay, so put another 500. I did skip the drywall. All new drywall. I'm trying to think of what. I did a property recently that we did, like, a bunch of drywall. Like, we had to rip it all out because we did some structural improvements to the property, but it wasn't like a full house that we did at all. But I don't know. What do you think for the. The drywall on this?

I don't even have a good sense of that, because anytime that we've done drywall, it's been within the context of a larger rehab, you know, So I don't even have a good context. I just wanted to replace a drywall and a property.

Okay. We're going to put for, like, drywall mudding. We're going to assume every single wall, every single ceiling. We're going to put ten grand.

And then electrical up to code. So this can, like, vary. Are you, like, a breaker box to replace, like, the panel? That can be about a thousand bucks.

I was going to say, like two grand maybe in my market, you know.

Yeah, but. Yeah, but you're updating the electric, too, so it's not just the panel. Mostly likely that you're going to be doing. So let's do two grand.

Full kitchen. So full kitchen, cabinets, countertops. It's small kitchen. If it's a 900 square foot house.

I was going to say 900 square feet. It can't be that, that large.

So some cabinets, the. A new sink. Assuming not new appliances like I'm doing, I'm throwing in 20,000 for the kitchen.

Yeah, even that feels like a heavy amount, you know, but Yeah, I guess 20 grand, you know, for being a little bit more optimal or not optimistic, but giving a little bit more room here.

Yeah, and I mean, I guess it depends on like the quality too. Like I, I'm done with Lowe's cabinets. Like I actually go to a, a cabinet place now, have them do the design, order from them so the, a better quality that's going to last longer. Cabinet. I mean appliances, you're looking at $5,000 just for appliances in a property. Really?

Because this is a flip. We have to remember it's not a rental. And then the bathroom remodel, so.

And he said it's a two. One bed, one bathroom as well.

Yeah, one bathroom. Okay, so let's say like it small bathroom, five grand.

So what total does that get us to right now, Ash?

That gives us 5, 10, 20, 40, 45, 46, 46, 50, 4650.

And correction on my math earlier, 900 square feet at 4.5 is actually just over 4,000, not 5,000. So we can knock that down to call it 45 grand.

We'll say 45,000.

Okay, 45.

Significantly less than the. What did he get quoted? He said 90k. But I think even before we go on, like just the thought process that Ash and I just went through, you can do that even if you're remote, even if you don't step foot into the market that you're flipping in, you can still look at the pictures, get an idea of the changes and improvements you want to make, call around to subcontractors or companies that specialize in installing kitchen cabinets like Ashley just talked about, and you can get a ballpark quote on what that total renovation would be without even having to walk into the property. But I think. Ashton, you know, let me know if you disagree here. I think the absolute best way to know if 90k in that market is reasonable is to go talk to like three other contractors and see what those range, what the ranges are in those bids. And if everyone comes back at 90 grand, either they've all colluded to try and make sure that you spend as much money as possible on this rehab, or maybe for whatever reason, just the cost of labor. And Charleston, South Carolina is higher.

The most recent Flip that I did was $30,000 just for the labor. It was bigger. It was a three bed, one bath. But we also finished off the basement too and added a bathroom into the basement also. And that rehab altogether was I think 80,000 with materials and labor. But it was way bigger than this two one. And we did like really nice tile all throughout the kitchen, on the backsplash, on the floor. We did tile surround in the bathroom, tile in the floor. Like, we did like really nice finishes in this property too. And that was still less than that. 90,000. And you know, there's a lot of things that aren't even included that he didn't like write out because, like, you can get even more niche. So, like maybe in this it is closer to 90. I mean, you still got trim work, you still have paint, like light fixtures, like maybe, maybe it could get there depending on how rough of shape this, this property is in.

Our last flip that we've, that we did, it was just over 1,000 square feet and we spent about 65k on the rehab. So we're at about 60 bucks a square foot on this renovation that included, included fully redoing the kitchen, new flooring all the way throughout. We didn't do any electrical work.

We redid the, the bathrooms, we redid a lot of the decking. And yeah, we were all in for about 60 bucks a square foot on that property. And that's in, in California, right? One of the more expensive, higher cost living areas to rehab in.

So I think my gut is telling me that 90k is a little high. What's your take, Ash?

Yeah, I think you can go back to the basics of like estimating out the rehab materials at first. So, like make a list of every single thing that you would need as a material. A toilet, a vanity, a tub, a surrounding, everything you need, go room by room, and then go on Lowe's. This is going to take forever. It's super time consuming. But if you really want to learn your numbers and learn estimating and learn what prices are in your market, you can at least get really, really close to the materials and knowing how much the materials are. So if this contractor is saying 90k, but like you go and see the materials are only 30,000, okay, that's a lot of labor costs that you have and just go down your spreadsheet and put in, okay. At Lowe's, a toilet is this cost. A vanity is this cost, you know, and like, even if you don't even know what toilet to pick, like you want an oval One, do you want a round one? Do you want one this low? That one's that high, you know, one sets heated, just pick like the average price of them and put that in there. So that's like, that's one thing that I did for a very long time and that's how I learned the cost of materials. Now I have somebody that you know, runs all of this that for me that rehab stuff. So like it's not as familiar with me but at first every apartment turnover, rehab, that's how I was doing it. I was building out a spreadsheet of materials and then I was buying the materials and hiring someone just to do the labor.

So you've got a few options here I think to identify what should the correct price be. But even more so for all the Rickies that are listening. Hopefully now you've got a framework on how you guys can validate prices for rehab work in whatever market it is that you guys land in. So we're going to take a quick break before we hit our last question. But while we're going, be sure to subscribe to the real estate rookie YouTube channel. If you guys are listening to this on audio, you can find us at realestate Rickey and we'll be back with more right after this.

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Back with our last Question, and this one comes from Chris. Chris says, I managed properties for my father for 20 years, a long time, and I'm prepared to do what it takes to renovate, manage and maintain my own portfolio. I have $100,000 in cash saved up to begin investing. I found a property. This is the opportunity. It's a 10 unit. Each unit is one bedroom and the purchase price is $550,000. The exterior needs a lot of work, but the interior is finished and ready to go with less than a week's worth of renovation. Each unit has historically rented for $800, $950 and is in a desirable area. There are no active tenants, but this appears to be the opportunity I've been waiting a long time for. I promised my wife I would not purchase any rentals with a personal guarantee to protect our house and our livelihood. But I cannot see a path toward getting a loan for this property. That gives me a couple of months to get it renovated and occupied. My personal credit is over 800, but the LLC is only a few months old and I have no collateral beyond the 100k. I do have experience managing and renting for others, but this would be my first personal company owned acquisition. What is the smartphone?

I like this question. It's one we really haven't gotten before. This is a new one, refreshing. And I pretty much on every loan that I've done, whether the property is owned by me personally or an llc, I still have been a personal guarantor on the loan. Even if the LLC is on the mortgage, you're getting a way better interest rate and it's a lot easier to actually get the mortgage too, on the property. What about in your case?

Yeah, I don't think I've done any loans that don't have some sort of personal guarantee. Actually, the, the hotel, there's no personal guarantee on that note, it's just, just for the hotel.

And that's the, that's seller financing, right?

That was seller financing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a good negotiation technique. Yeah, maybe that is an option.

Right.

It's like if you, instead of going to the bank, if you go the seller financing route, you know, they're not going to be checking for things in the same way that a large, you know, publicly traded corporation is going to be checking for things. So maybe that is the, the right move here is you go to the seller, offer seller financing. It's going to be your LLC that's going to be carrying this debt and see what they say, you know, you can Draw up your own promissory note, your own mortgage security document that would protect you and make sure that if there is any default that they would only be able to go after the, after the property. So that I guess that is one option I didn't even think of. But I think another option there is none recourse debt. And I get that the LLC is somewhat newer, but I would imagine there are some lenders out there who work with newer entities and specialize in non recourse debt. So I think the question is how many lenders have you actually spoken with specifically about non recourse debt and what is the feedback that you're getting? Are, are you assuming here that maybe you wouldn't be able to get approved or have you actually, you know, knocked on the door of 100 different lenders and they all said the same thing of like, hey, you're not, you know, your LLC isn't seasoned enough.

Whenever I open a new llc, one thing I do within like the first three months is I get a credit card so I can get the sign up bonus so I can get travel points. It is not that hard to get like credit for your llc. Like I think there's this big misconception that like you have to build credit in your llc. But if you open one and you're, you open your llc, whatever and it's tied to your name like on the application for the credit card, like you're putting your information on it. Also like you can, if you want to start building credit, you can open a credit card for your llc. It's like very easy to do to get that. But I think another question is, is, and this is when I first started I always had this big fear that if something went wrong, like I would get sued and my house would be taken away and all of these horrible things would happen. And I guess really think about what that, what is your wife's worst case scenario? So she said she doesn't want it affect your house or your livelihood. So what does that mean? Is that more like she doesn't want to get sued and somebody comes after your house comes, you know, after your savings. Is it because she's afraid that you're going to foreclose on the property and you're not going to be able to pay and the bank's going to come and take that property and then do you think there's not going to be enough equity in that property that they're going to come and take your house too? So I guess really is there a way that you could address her concerns. So if it's a liability thing.

The. Whether you're a personal guarantor or not, if you have the llc, as long as you're following the LLC rules, like, you still have that LLC protection, you can go and get an umbrella policy, an umbrella policy on the LLC and umbrella policy on your house. So, like, you can have those multiple layers of insurance protection, but the LLC is still going to do its thing whether you are a personal guarantor on the loan or not for liability. Four, if she is worried about the bank coming in, taking the property because you didn't make the payments or couldn't make the payments, is there some kind of plan that you could put into place for her to actually show her what it would look like if he missed a payment on the property? Like, in New York State, it takes two years to foreclose on a property. So you could have two years to kind of figure out what to do. Okay, so, like, that, you know, like, obviously you don't want to start going into foreclosure and getting behind on your property, but I think maybe if you explain to her what those, what the risk actually are of being a personal guarantor. And I think ask the lender because, like, honestly, I don't even know. Do they start coming after your savings account first before they foreclose on the property? I honestly don't know. And I, I think ask that, find out, like, what does a personal guarantor mean? If I stop making payments, default on this loan, do they foreclose on the house? And then if it's not enough equity to cover the loan, they go and, you know, come after my life savings, my personal house, do they come and garnish my wages? Like, what does that actually mean? And I think to some extent, if your wife is this worried about this, maybe you need to have the conversation of, like, how does she become more comfortable? Because I think if she's worried about this risk, there you, you need to find a way to kind of ease her mind and make her more comfortable, because potentially it could cause more issues down the road that she's already, like, nervous about you doing this and setting these kind of limitations on doing the deal too.

Yeah, so I just quickly did a search on, like, hey, what happens if I were to default on a loan where I'm the personal guarantor and again, go fact check all of this? It's just a quick search on my side. I'm not an attorney, but basically what we said, Ash, like, If the equity in the deal satisfies the loan, then potentially there's no liability left for you. If there's not, say there's a balance of, you know, 100k and they would have to go through, get a judgment against you. So there's some court proceedings involved in that. And if they win that judgment, then they would have the ability to go after potentially bank account, other investments, other real estate, you own, personal property, future income through garnishments. So it does get pretty dicey if they are able to win that judgment. But that would be like the worst case scenario. So is there some risk there? Possibly. But would it get to that point? Maybe, maybe not. Do you guys have the cash just to pay it off if things go awry?

Or just like the W2 income to cover the mortgage payments? If all of a sudden, what was it, a 10 unit property, all 10 units become vacant and you can't pay the mortgage anymore. So I think like showing your wife to the, the deal analysis and like actually laying it out. Here is the, in this scenario is what it would look like and that I can't afford the mortgage payment. That means that half of the property is vacant. So I have to have five vacant units for me to have to take money from my W2 to pay for the property and then kind of go through like here's, you know, what the risk is of that, the chances of that. Here's my, my reserves I have in place. Here's my contingency plan. Like, you know, like you're doing a pitch, you know, like do the presentation. And we haven't talked about this in a long time, but in our partnership book we actually wrote out like how a visual presentation or just putting it down on paper can really help a partner, a spouse, like really visualize what this can do for your life and what this can do for your family. So say like, hey, you know, worst case scenario, five vacant and I can't make the mortgage payment. Best case scenario, we're cash flowing, $2,000 a month. So I, I think if you can put, write all that out and explain that in a visual thing, gives people more time to absorb it and it becomes more real actually visually seeing the numbers on paper than just like hearing you and the numbers going in and out one ear. Like when I tell Tony to do math real quick for me.

That'S how it's coming in and out of me. But he's absorbing it and he's calculating.

I think one last way to mitigate risk on this type of deal, or at least maybe make your spouse feel more comfortable, is to bring in a partner. Because if you've already found the deal, if you've got the cash but you just don't want to be on the hook for the mortgage, then there might be someone out there who says, yeah, dude, I just got to sign on on these loan docs and you're fine bringing the cash and you already found the deal and I'm going to get X percentage just for putting my name on the loan. Numbers look pretty good. We're probably not going to have to go to that point anyway. Sure, I'll do that. And that could be a way for you to still acquire this deal. Giving up a percentage of the equity in exchange for someone else to actually carry the debt that comes along with that.

That's one way real quick on that one. Don't some syndications do that where they take a partner that actually has like a very high net worth to actually sign on the loan and be the personal guarantor and that's like what they bring to the table for the partnership.

100%. Your key principle. Right. So say I'm a new syndicator and you know, even if you're going out and get commercial debt, they usually want to see someone with the net worth to be able to kind of guarantee this loan. And a lot of times you'll get a percentage of the deal just for signing on the loan docs and you don't do anything else, you know. So yeah, it's definitely something to me is scary. It is, you know, but if, you know, if you know the operator and you underwrite the deal, you know, but there's always some risk. But, but that's why, you know, if you've got the net worth, maybe it's not, not as scary. Right. But I think the, the final piece on just like mitigating the risk is maybe it's the right call to start on something smaller. Maybe 10 units is too big of a leap for your wife to say. Yeah, that actually feels good. Maybe start with a very inexpensive brrrr somewhere in the Midwest where you can buy it for less than 100 grand, put in 20 grand into the renovations and you can either flip it, burr it, whatever with the cash that you actually have. That way there is no worry about guarantees or loans or anything to that extent. So if the type of deal that you're going after is causing the friction, then maybe just a shift in what you guys are going after could be the solution you need to actually get that first deal done.

Thank you guys so much for joining us on today's Rookie Reply. I'm Ashley, he's Tony, and we'll see you guys on the next episode.

Hey Rickies, if you're watching this, we want you to apply to be a guest on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. That's right. Ashley and I are looking for amazing stories just like yours to be a part of our Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Now look, you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to have done thousands of deals. Even if you've done one deal, your story could help inspire the next listener.

As a rookie investor. Especially if you just got your first deal. It is all fresh in your minds and you are the best person to tell your story. Give your experience on how you got it done to help someone else get their first deal.

So head over to biggerpockets.com guest if you want to be a part of our show again. That's biggerpockets.com guest and we'd love to have you on.

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