New To Everything! Confused - Become Homeowner or Investor First?

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New To Everything! Confused - Become Homeowner or Investor First?

Nathalie Rivera
Dunedin, FL · Member since 2017 · 1 post · 0 votes

Hello!

This is my first forum discussion. At the moment I am extremely confused towards my goals and life. I recently got married and my husband and I want to buy a home in order to start a family yet we also want to begin to invest in real estate. My husband is an Army Veteran so we qualify for the V.A. Home Loan. I am in a sort of confused route as we don't know if we should begin to invest - Rent/Flip now or wait until we buy the house next year. We have a sort of timeline in the house as we want to definitely buy our own home by next year and start a family but at the same time I feel that if we wait we wont be able to invest because we get caught up in life or we won't have all the funds. Yet if we do end up investing before we buy our home, would that affect our V.A. Home Loan? We don't personally know any real estate investors and we are completely new at this. We have just started in all of this by reading a few books and research. What would you recommend? I know it's all out there but I am just so confused at the moment. I am lost.

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  • Ethan Atkinson
    Investor · Athens, GA · Member since 2011 · 306 posts · 156 votes
    9y
    Congrats on finding BP and it's ginormous community. Start listening to the BP podcast and all the rest of the RE podcasts out there. In my quick short answer you "need" to start out by house hacking or buying a duplex or some multifamily. Your husband has a VA letter of eligibility which doesn't mean he will qualify for the mortgage itself. Step one is to talk to a loan officer and find out how much you can borrow. If you have a good down payment maybe use conventional financing. VA, USDA, and FHA loans have low or now down payments but are quite strict on buying a home that needs very few repairs. Ask the loan officer a million questions if you need to. Then you are able go out and start looking everywhere for a house duplex, triplex, or even quad. When I say house hack, I mean to buy a house large enough or already set up with a basement apartment or maybe has even a room/unit over the garage or in pool house that could be used as a rental. Rent the extra rooms or unit to Help you cover your own expenses and mortgage. I know FL is limited and almost no basements. How is your area? What about using airbnb.com to get short term vacationers in your area? If you can find a duplex or bigger then you live in one unit while your building your family while collecting rent on the other units. Triplex and quad help deflect a bad situation with a tenant even more so. If one bad tenant happens you are still collecting rent from the other units. You should easily be able to cover all your mortgage and utilities if you have a tri- or quadplex. Find your local REIA or BP meetup or just look in meetup.com for networking groups to help get you going. Find a good realtor who already has some listing of duplexes or multifamily and meet in person to talk about working together to help you. It's free for you in the buyers side to have an agent. Take action and it will all start to happen.
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  • Stanley Parsley
    Investor · Chandler, AZ · Member since 2015 · 409 posts · 214 votes
    9y

    Nat

    get you a place first

    there are so many people out there that talk the talk but do not even have a home

    once you get you a home that you can live in and enjoy you can use it as leverage for flipping or buy and holds

    when you go through the purchase process you understand how it all goes together

    with out that info

    becoming a investor is a little difficult

    kind of like changing a wobbilator shaft on a kunudson valve when you don't even know what that is

    enjoy

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