I received a message on my Instagram account:

We have to meet!  I’m also vegan, and a woman, who invests in Boise real estate!

So we met… and we are now going to partner on a fix and flip!

Joint Venturing

My LLC and her LLC will own the property 50/50.  I hired a Boise real estate attorney, recommended by a realtor friend, to draw up the operating agreement, do the filing and get the EIN for our new company.

To set up the business account, we went to the small, local branch of Wells Fargo in my partner’s neighborhood. The business banker who was helping us had never seen a case of a corporation being owned by 2 other corporations.  She was going to have us fill out paperwork, which she would send out for approvals, and then we could open the account.  This was going to take a few days.  Not good.

Fortunately, we called the larger branch downtown and the woman who took our call assured us that it would be no problem. They could open our account that day, so we drove downtown with 2 toddlers along for the ride.

The bankers were very nice and tried to take care of us as quickly as possible but there was a glitch in the system software slowing things down.  We were all getting hungry because it was now past lunchtime and the babes were getting restless.

Then the power went out.

It was out for the whole building.

So we went to get lunch.  We found a restaurant with vegan options (Wild Root Cafe) and had a nice meal, as relaxing as could be with two toddlers in tow.

We decided to finish opening the account on Monday.   I would be back in California by then so we arranged for me to visit the Wells Fargo branch in my neighborhood in Ventura, at the same time that she returned to the Wells Fargo branch in Boise.  Our bankers coordinated things by phone and we got it done.

Funding

The house we are flipping together will need a full rehab. It could take 6 months to complete the buy/fix/sell cycle.  I didn’t want to tie up my money for that long so I contacted a private lender to arrange for a hard money loan.  Terms: 2 points, 12% interest, 4 month minimum, interest paid monthly.  Pretty standard.  After he is paid back on this deal, I will expect better terms on the next one.