Please Advise on my Florida Real Estate Plans

[Ali Taghikhani]

Hi Everyone!

I'm personally from Canada, but a dual US/Canadian citizen. I'm 28 years old, own and operate a Tech Recruitment Firm, and as an entrepreneur, my net income is solid. I'm currently living in Vancouver, Canada, and the real estate prices here are out of control, and the weather isn't great either. My plan is to move to Florida!

So, I've been put together my plans combining what I've learned from David Greene, Graham Stephan, and Grant Cardone (among many others).

So here is a high-level overview of my plan. I'd love some advice, feedback, and also connections (ie Property Managers, Realtors, Lenders) to make this happen. I would like to move to Florida, by latest September. My plan is to purchase a Multi-family home, ideally 4 units+. The extent to which I would have to rehab the property will depend on the conditions at hand. I would like to in total, use $75k USD of my own capital to make this happen (includes down payment, fees, rehab, etc..). Again, I make money from my recruitment company, and will continue to invest more as necessary. The regions I'm looking at are Cape Coral, Palm Coast, Winter Haven, Fort Meyers, or even Tampa or Orlando (open to other suggestions). Once I find the ideal 4plex (or bigger), I would need to get a bank loan, or use a hard money lender (need advice, ie Visio maybe?) to finance the rest of the deal. My plan is to rent out 3 units as soon as possible, live in 1 for a period of about 3-6 months. Then I would like to refinance the house, take out my capital, and invest it into a 4+ bedroom, 2500+ square foot house that I can live in and call HOME. Ideally, I will be using my rental income from the multi-family units to pay the mortgage.

The plan is to live in the large home, refinance it eventually, then invest in more multi-family homes. Some of the dilemnas I currently have is that I'm having a tough time finding the RIGHT property/deals (ie foreclosure, discounted properties etc..), and also, I really don't know how financing will go given that I've built my credit history in Canada only, and the fact that I'm an entrepreneur. Some good things I have going is that we've been in business for over 6 years here, and have the bank statements, tax filing to back it all up.

I'm looking for advice on how I can make my dreams into a reality, and ideally, looking for Property Managers, Realtors, and/or lenders to help make this happen. Oh btw, I am willing to come down to Florida for 2 weeks so this all goes through.

Thanks Bigger Pockets fam, and looking forward to your advice, connections, referrals, or general comments :)

[Michael Hakes]

I would start looking at your financing side of things now since I think that may be your biggest sticking point. No Credit in US(not certain how that would work) and no W2 income make it more difficult so you will need to look for a company that does manual underwriting.