Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Josh Handler
The Memphis BRRRR trap nobody checks: your refinance may be too small
Forum Categories All Contractor · Memphis, TN · Member since 2026 · 72 posts · 81 votes Member since 2026 · 5 posts · 2 votes 33m Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.
Section 8 Mentor (Memphis)
Forum Categories All Member since 2026 · 1 post · 0 votes I am starting out my investing journey with Section 8 in Memphis. I was hoping I could connect with some veterans in the business that could shed some light on their experience and guide me in the right direction! Thanks Contractor · Memphis, TN · Member since 2026 · 67 posts · 72 votes 23m Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.
Checking a Memphis contractor with public records instead of reviews
Forum Categories All Contractor · Memphis, TN · Member since 2026 · 61 posts · 70 votes Real Estate Agent · Memphis, TN · Member since 2023 · 630 posts · 322 votes 36m As an investor and agent here in Memphis who regularly deals with rehabs, I think this is one of the better contractor-vetting breakdowns I've seen because investors tend to focus way too much on the bid itself and not enough on the person or company responsible for executing it.
Can You Afford the Cheapest Contractor?
An investor once told me he had saved $30,000 on a rehab. Three bids. One contractor came in about $30,000 below the others. Easy decision, right? For a little while. Then came the change orders. Deadlines slipped. Some work had to be done again. The project sat while everybody argued about whose responsibility something was. That beautiful $30,000 saving disappeared. There's a lesson here that I learned from a completely different business: recording studios.
The Memphis turn nobody budgets: what an eviction actually leaves behind
Forum Categories All Contractor · Memphis, TN · Member since 2026 · 54 posts · 59 votes Englewood, NJ · Member since 2018 · 414 posts · 63 votes 27m Real Estate Agent · Columbus OH · Member since 2018 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes 14m the blind period is an interesting concept. speaks to really that if we are sticking to the inspections we know we should be doing we will catch these things - regardless you are correct it does not require possession to enter and inspect per most leases.
What a Memphis house tells you in ten minutes, and what needs a crowbar
A lot of out-of-state buyers here are working off photos and an inspection summary, and both of those documents are worse than people think. So here's the honest split from the construction side: what a Memphis house will tell you fast and for free, and what it will not tell anybody until something gets opened. WHAT YOU CAN KNOW IN TEN MINUTES These are the things I look at first, and I'd rather you know them than pay me to find them. The electrical panel, door open.
Memphis leasing season is closing. What it costs if your turn slips to November
Contractor · Memphis, TN · Member since 2026 · 37 posts · 34 votes It's the first week of September, which is the point every year where a Memphis vacancy quietly gets more expensive without anybody noticing. Renters here move on a school calendar and a weather calendar, and both are closing. The families who were going to move already moved in June and July.
What do you look for in a turnkey company?
Forum Categories All Real Estate Consultant · Birmingham, AL · Member since 2023 · 10 posts I've seen posts about whether people should use a turnkey company or not, but for those of you who have used a turnkey company for out-of-state investing, what KPIs do you pay the most attention to? Do you focus more on the front-end stuff like how many properties they look at vs. acquire, how often major items like roofs/HVAC etc. are replaced?
What a Memphis house hides, by the decade it was built
Out-of-state buyers keep asking what a Memphis rehab costs, and the honest answer is that the year on the tax record tells you more than the zip code does. Two houses at the same price on the same street, one built in 1928 and one in 1978, are completely different projects. Here's what I brace for by era. This is what I've found opening walls, not a chart from somewhere. Pre-1940. Assume the plumbing is original or close to it.
Your Memphis house isn't renting: a contractor's walk-through, not a price cut
There have been a lot of long-vacancy posts on here lately, and the advice almost always lands on the same two things: drop the rent or fire the PM. Sometimes that's right. But I do turns in this market for a living, and a big share of the houses I walk that "won't rent" are priced fine and marketed fine. They lose the applicant in the first ninety seconds of the showing, and nobody ever tells the owner why. Here's what I look at, roughly in the order a renter experiences it. The approach.
The scope of work that gets you a real bid (from a GC who reads them all day)
Half the "contractor ghosted me" stories start with the scope of work, or the lack of one. When an investor sends me a vague list, I know the job will fight me the whole way. When the scope is tight, everyone bids apples to apples, the draws are clean, and nobody argues at the end. Here's what a biddable scope looks like from the receiving end: 1. Room by room, not trade by trade.
The HQS items that fail first Section 8 inspections in Memphis (and cost you a month
Every failed HQS inspection in Memphis costs you the same thing: a re-inspection wait and usually a month of abatement or delayed HAP payments. After doing rent-ready turns on a lot of voucher units here, the same short list fails over and over, and almost all of it is cheap to fix BEFORE the inspector shows up: 1. GFCIs and open grounds. Any outlet near water without GFCI protection, or three-prong outlets on ungrounded circuits.
Renovate to the appraisal, not to Pinterest: how BRRRRs actually hit their refi numbe
I build rehab scopes for BRRRR investors all week in Memphis, and the single most common reason a BRRRR misses its refi number here has nothing to do with the market. It's that the scope was built forward from the house instead of backward from the appraisal. The pattern that works: lock your ARV with real comps first, talk to the refi lender about what they need to see, then build the scope to close the gap between the house and those comps, and stop there.
Merchandise Archives - Arts Access Program
Arts Access meets the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Josh
Contact Josh, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack