New Investor with questions

[Susan Blanco]

I’m new and finally making the move to become more active in RE.

My husband and I own three homes-all rented. We bought the last 2 in 2007 just before the collapse but have managed to hold onto them. The same renters have been there for the last 8 years but always pay late. However, they always end up paying, take care of the home and we have no problems other than late payments. During the financial crisis we lost our jobs and made a drastic decision to go overseas for work. We now have lived in Dubai, UAE for 6 years. We have paid off all our debt and are three months away from paying off our home in Utah.

We really want to change our careers to real estate and go forward with buying more single family and 3-4 plexes and then scale up. I would love to network and start/grow this business. However, if we leave our jobs and go back to the USA we won’t have the income levels required to save and get loans.

My questions:

• 1.How can we do this from overseas / long distance? Network locally (Utah-Orem/Provo/Utah county SLC county areas), buy, fix and refi, find a mentor who we can work, work with contractors, wholesalers etc. Is there a whatsapp group/facebook group etc we could join in Utah to make contacts through networking? We come back every summer and I would love to network and maybe buy a property or two each summer and throughout the year if we can figure out how to do it. If needed, my husband could travel to the US every few months to make it happen.
• 2.I also would like to get my RE license but would need to join a brokerage. Is this correct? Would this work if I am still overseas? I can study online and take the test this summer.
• 3.Should we use the 150-200k equity we have in our own home now? (we just have to pay off one more loan-a 50k HELOC to have 220k equity)
• 4.We have about 50K equity in each of the rentals. Should we use this as a deposit for another rental and is it wise to leverage so much?
• 5.We were following Dave Ramsey’s ideas of paying everything off. Now I am having second thoughts about paying off the rentals. It would take us 2 years to pay off one home. Each home that takes 2 years to pay off will give us $1200 a month in cash flow. Do we pay off the rentals or save for deposits for other properties?

Sorry this is so long but we need some advice about how best to achieve these goals without giving up our current jobs until we can replace our income. We have a large family (5 children) so need to replace our income first with rental income/flips. Our plan is to return in the next 2-5 years.