Is this a solid idea? Just wanna know if this is an 'attainable' path.

[Jason Greenway]

Hello,

I was on here about 6-7 years ago, but I underestimated where I was in my life (ended up having a couple kids). Now, my situation has changed (divorced now, and the kids are a little older) and I am looking to revisit real estate investing in the buy and hold realm. Here is my situation :

I am 40 years old, I have no mortgage, and my only bills are my car lease, phone bill, car insurance (my partner covers utilities) and groceries for me, girlfriend and my kids (when I have them) and my take home from my day job is about $900 a week. I have about $300 on my credit cards (just finally paid them off for the most part, and have about $20,000 limit).

My cash on hand is relatively light, but what my plan was was to find some single family homes in the north Detroit area (currently anywhere from $40-$60k and put about $15-20k tops into any repairs or fixes (not looking for total rehabs, mostly something I can do some small repairs here and there and paint, personally I am knowledgeable about renovating up until complex electric and plumbing). Rents in the area are anywhere from $1k-$1300 a month.

My plan was to get a hard money loan to get it going and fixed up and ready for tenants, then within about 6-7 months refinance the home with a traditional lender, then sit with that home for awhile until I get fully comfortable with the one house. Rinse and repeat.

My question is what do I need to do to get started? LLC? Bank accounts? What are the first steps I should be taking?

[Arsen Atanasovski]

Hey Jason, you have a lot of open options here. Are you going to be managing these properties? If so will you be comfortable managing in the city? As far as repairs and maintenance if your looking for small rehab deals that price range your looking at will be very slim and if you find something in that price would most likely be in your C or D areas, with that being said back to first question are you willing to manage them or not? With a PM in place you will have to pay them their cut and to go back to the second part if you end up buying in a lower class area you will be getting a lot of turn around it’s just the way it is. The story you have really sounds like a condo in the suburbs would work for you. Less rehab, better neighborhoods, and could manage it yourself if you like. There will probably have HOAs but with your price ranges your limited on the selection of properties. If you were to up your buying box from $60k to $100k you will received much better options and rates, also much better properties and areas. It’s all in the numbers . I have a guy that buys single family homes at $150,000 no rehab puts 20-% down and rents it the next day long way to invest but he has been doing it on the upswing and now just refinance the older ones to buy the next ones. As for LLCs you may open one and protect yourself,  it you always have house insurance and in my leases my tenant gives up the opportunity of insurance and has the option to get renters insurance. But LLCs and banking accounts is mostly your personal preference of how you would like to organize your business structure.