Done deal.

We closed on the Ft. Lauderdale property today. It was a roller coaster. The lender and title were working together very closely to try to get this done today...I am yet to see the final HUD but the lender told me the amount and it was less than the initial estimate HUD so I'm pleased. Anyway, because they couldn't pull off the closing by the 2 pm deadline we gave them due to my husband's availability, they actually sent out a notary to his job and -- between massage clients -- he managed to close on this property in 15 minutes. Hilarious.

I just got back home from the Broward Real Estate Investors Association (BREIA) meeting. It was pretty informative. I'll have to try to get to those more often. The good news is that I met a couple investors, contractors, and hard money lenders. I also got a valuable tip on how to determine maximum offer price on a duplex/triplex. I'll explain that in a minute. The bad news is that I had to leave the meeting early since its a school night and I needed to get the kids in bed at a decent hour...which means that I didn't get a chance to take advantage of the post-meeting networking.

Going back to the determination of offer price on a multi plex....here's what David suggested (and he's been investing for 20+ years):

You want to make sure that you are able to get 2% of the purchase price in rental income. So for example, if a duplex is going to cost you $100,000 then you need to be able to make $2,000 gross rental income per month to make it worth your while. If you can't get $1,000 per home in the duplex per month then you shouldn't pay $100K . He said that 2% is actually pretty high and that 1.5% can get you solid deal but he wouldn't go down as far as 1% like he used to do before the market went nuts. Obviously one must account for the costs for financing (if applicable) to ensure cashflow, but this was David's rule of thumb. I'll have to run some numbers and see how it comes out.

We haven't ventured into these types of properties yet, but we very well may...and perhaps we'll work on wholesaling one.

Ta for now.