Just starting out. Anyone have any tips.

[Dustin M.]

Hi.

This site is great! I wish I would of stumbled upon it years ago!

I'm a 28 year old just getting started in real estate investing (so if you guys have any tips please feel free to share). I'm investing with my mother. She has had rental property for the last 20 years. She is kinda new to flipping homes since she is a buy and hold type of investor. We both have excellent credit (around 750 or more for both of us). My job as a software engineer enables me to save around $2,500 a month that I can use in real estate investing.

Last September my mother and I purchased a home from a house auction for $36,000 put $5000 more into it fixing it up and sold it contract for deed a month later for $75,000 at 10.5% interest a year. I was so happy with the result. I paid cash for my half of the house and now I'm collecting $330 a month in payments from the person that purchased the home.

We went to another house auction in December and purchased another home for $58600. It has a fair market value of $95,000. We plan to put $6000 into it fixing it up and sell it at the fair market value price of $95,000. We will either sell it contract for deed or sell it outright and use the money and a 1031 tax deferred exchange to purchase some more property. I had to go to the bank to get a 3 year loan home equity loan at 5.9% for $27,000 to pay for my half of the house. My monthly home equity loan payment will be around $330. I currently have $6,000 in savings right now and I will probably use most of it to pay for the rest of my half of the home and the costs needed to fix it up before we can sell it.

Question 1: Did we do a good job on our first home that we purchased?

Question 2: How did we do on the second home. Haven't sold it yet but we plan to put $64600 into it and sell it for $95,000 so LTV would be 0.68 right? Is a LTV less than 0.7 usually a good deal?

Question 3: We love going to house auctions, especially because it is fun to buy a box of knick knacks for a dollar before they sell the home. Are estate auctions a good place to buy homes for investing in real estate? Should we be focusing on other avenues to invest in real estate?

Question 4: We would rather not have to deal with renters right now. Would you recommend focusing on selling the homes outright, selling them contract for deed, or is there another option for us that we haven't considered yet. Maybe we should sell it to whoever wants the property first regardless of the situation they are in.

Question 5: If we sell the second house that we just bought contract for deed and we buy a third home I won't be able to use a home equity loan to pay for my half (since it is nearly maxed out now). We will either need to get a mortgage for the home or some creative financing. Any suggestions on what type of financing we should go for?

Question 5: We need to setup a company to deal with the real estate investments. Would you recommend an S Cop, C Corp, LLC? From talking to the banks it sounds like we should get a corporate line of credit. Sounds like there would be less bank fees with one.

Question 6: Do you think it would be worth the time for me to get a real estate license? Can I find extra special deals with one?

My goal for 2010 is for us to buy fix and sell four more homes. I think that we will be able to do it. I also plan to spend at least thirty minutes a day on this website learning as much as I can about real estate investing.

Any help / suggestions / criticisms welcome

Thanks in advance,

Dustin Michaels