CPA or financial advisor for tax advise and which house to pay off sooner

[Davin Pauline]

Hello!! We are looking for financial advice to look into our stuff and help us better decide which mortgages to pay off or how maximize the returns on our funds and give us sound financial advice. We have a tax preparer, but we feel like she doesn't have much experience in real estate to give us sound advice as to what to do in the future. I tried looking into it from the forums, but the financial advisors I found start off at 10K-- we are not earning that much that it be better if we use the 10K to pay some of the principal of our mortgage. We have 5 SFH rentals. Both me and my husband are currently working, so the excess, if we do have it, sometimes goes to one of our rental houses. Rentals have different interest rates ranging from 2.85% to 5.125%.

Where do I start looking for financial advisors?

[Henry Clark]

I am not a financial advisor and not giving financial advice.

Reading through your post, your concern is risk management versus paying down debt, which might be a solution.

1.  From a straight interest rate standpoint and return it is better to not pay off your loans.   
2. Or pay down to get off PMI.

3.  Look at your personal resident and the rentals separately.

4.  Are your properties primarily cash flow or appreciation type investments?

5.  Lay out your cashflow by property.

6. Lay out your future Capex by property.

7.  Do any of the properties not fit your Buy box today?  Should you prune.

8.  How secure are your two jobs?  Does one make more than the other?  If you had more kids who would stay home?

9.  Do a cash flow with the one less W2 and an extra child or two, or with extra daycare costs.

10.  Can you offset lost income with doing more maintenance?

11.  Risk management. If things got tight, in order, which units would you sale?  What would be the cash impact to your situation and does it change anything as far as your risk?

12.   Do a sensitivity analysis.  What if?  One tenant doesn’t pay for 4 months?  One leaves and it’s $10,000 to clean up?  Etc.  

13.   What is your potential appreciation gains and how far out?  Do they beat inflation?

Key is to lay it out on paper.  Otherwise you will dream up the worst scenarios.  Basically look at potential failures and determine their impact.

Use the lookup function on my name and What happens if you die?  Go thru those items to help manage your risk.