Hello and Help

[Daniel Hsieh]

Hey BP members, this is Daniel from Houston, Texas.

I have been in "ninja mode" in BP for some time now and I think the time is ripe that I get more involved in the forum to grow and learn from greater interactions with you all. 

Short intro.

1. Finance professional for the past 9 years.

2. 2 kids and lovely wife

3. Love cooking and photography. But you wouldn't care. I think. 

Now the real gist.  

4. Own 2 rental properties (SF). Both we bought, lived in, moved out and leased out.  

I have always thought about growing my real estate portfolio and have massive passive income (thanks to Grant Cardone 10x and thanks to Brandon for bringing him to the podcast). After listening to the audio book, I started to get more active and have talked to several banks to get the financing ready before looking at properties. I know... I should have also spent more time looking at properties first but my finance background urges me to get the money lined up before I actually need it. 

Combining personal line of credit and home equity line of credit, I believe I may have enough of a downpayment for a B-class 15-20 units MF. My question though is besides private money, seller financing and other creative financing strategies Brandon talks about in his book, what are other proven strategies to keep buying more properties. One strategy came to my mind is capturing some equity when buying this 1st apartment and improve the NOI so when I can get the needed capital (buying 2nd apartment) out when I refi the first. Or perhaps I can talk to other lender (like B2R) who more focus on the bankability of the apartment instead of focusing much on my personal DTI as most traditional banks do. I know creative financing strategy exists to really serve my growth desire, but I am very interested to know how other people grow their portfolio using more "traditional" financing. Any inputs will help and be much appreciated.

Finally, it is nice to meet you all and will be great to meet up with other like-minded investors in Houston. 

[Kevin Wood]

@Daniel Hsieh

Hi Daniel,

I'm a bit in the opposite boat. I'm currently in Mountain View and investing in Houston (my hometown). Welcome to BP. I have a Finance/Acct background as well and was always worried about lining up the money first. For multi-family at the size you are talking about I think you will need a commercial loan. I couldn't tell by your post, but it sounds like you want to just use traditional leverage and a commercial loan. As you point out without using other financing strategies you aren't going to grow as fast. 

Using only that financing strategy the best bet seems to be buying a property at it's current value, improving it (ie. getting higher rents, lower vacancy, reducing expenses, etc.), then either selling it or loaning against the new value of the property. I'm not a commercial expert or commercial lender so I don't know how aggressively you can get these re-finances. Good luck!