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.

[Sam Levin]

Hi Susan.  First of all congratulations on acquiring and holding on to the 3 rental houses. I will try to address your questions in order.

First to you question about your late paying but well behaved tenants. I have tenants in my own investment properties. If I had a tenant who pays their rent, albeit late,  but takes good care of the property I probably wouldn't rock the boat too much. I'd certainly rather have that than a problematic tenant or one who causes damage. Maybe there's a way to help them manage the lateness by accepting smaller amounts bi-weekly or even weekly.

1. Buying US real estate from overseas can be tricky if you are not paying cash. Have you been filing US tax returns while in Dubai. If so you are good for domestic loan programs. 

If you haven't been paying us taxes there are some programs designed for foreign national investors you can use that require 35% down instead of the 25% down required by most domestic programs. Please let me know if you want information about the international lenders. 

There are definitely income tax implications here, and you want to make sure to avoid or minimize any double taxation on your gains that you could incur by involving two countries. Fortunately real estate comes with many tax advantages, especially pre-con/new-con real estate that is placed directly into a revenue generating endeavor. There's a 50% "bonus depreciation" available from the IRS on new build that many seasoned investors and their CPAs don't know about or fully understand. There may also be a considerable amount of additional tax advantage laying dormant in your current investment property portfolio. You will definitely want to look into a cost segregation study of same.

2. I don't know for sure if you can maintain an RE license from overseas but it seems likely that you could. You should run that question by the NAR. There's a little more to it than just taking the classes and joining a brokerage, but for some investors it's the right move. It's worth mentioning that I pay over $15,000 per year maintaining my license, my membership in Realtor boards, MLS dues, etc.

3. If I had $200k in equity in one of my properties I would definitely use the 90/10 refi program at MACU to cash out the $180k down payment on a FIG fourplex townhome. I would do this tomorrow, as I know that the value (income, tax benefits, appreciation) generated by the addition Income property far outweighs the cost of the additional financing. If you compare what you save by keeping the equity in place vs what you gain by leveraging it the long term difference is staggering.

4. Yes. As long as there are renters standing by to pay it off for you, and the line of available renters here in Utah seems to be getting longer every day in spite of the feverish pace of building, then yes. Unfortunately with that equity distributed in several little pieces your transactional cost to use it goes up. Do the math. 

5. The beauty of investing is that your money is making you money with you having to earn it directly. Properly used leverage, especially when it's invested in something like high quality rental property, is essentially a cash producing machine. I'll take as many of those as I can get :)