Introduction, Newbie from Jersey City, NJ

[Terence Eng]

Hello BP community, 

My name's Terence (Terry) Eng I'm a software engineer by day and I'm looking to join the ranks of the many successful BP members in this Real Estate game.  I've stumbled upon BP about 7 months ago and started taking in all the basics and information that I can.  

I started with the UBG, started listening to the podcasts (about 2/3 of them so far) and lurking on the forums searching for topics of interest that I wanted to focus on or information that I didn't know. Picked up a few books and read through, "Building Wealth One House at a Time" by John Shaub, "The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down: Real Life Strategies for Investing in Real Estate Using Other People's Money," "The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Intelligent Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing!," by Brandon Turner, "The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs: The Investor's Guide to Defining Your Renovation Plan, Building Your Budget, and Knowing Exactly How Much It All Costs" by J Scott and found them all so informational it has got me amped! I have also turned my girl friend on to REI, she joined BP as well and now we both are excited and trying to learn as much as we can.

Our strategy is to pursue some buy and hold rental properties within a range locally to Jersey City, Bayonne, Union City, Newark, Garfield, and with the prices and returns here we feel the multi-family (2-4 Units) realm would yield better than SFH properties. It's a little tough to find good value add deals with low entry points, but we're on the sites looking at potential listings, driving the areas getting to know the people and neighborhoods, and analyzing the numbers/scenarios to see what the COC and Cap Rates would be, while we line up the funding side. Of course we're new to this so some items like estimating rehab and rent rolls (using rentometer) could be off a bit.

So as I mention I live in Jersey City, currently own a condo which has appreciated nicely since I had purchased back in 2012. Our plan was to obtain a HELOC to fund the value add investment properties' down payment and potential rehab costs, then secure long term conventional financing for the rest of the purchase price, and refi later on down the line to pull out the cash laid out and pay back the HELOC.

I've been looking up HELOC rates of various big banks, credit unions, and local smaller banks. I have excellent credit rating, and only 1 CC left to pay off (~$6k); for the HELOC amount I am targeting, Affinity FCU (2.99% first 12 months, Prime after) and Santander (3.99% first 12 months, Prime -.75%) are the front runners, however I am looking for other banks that could have better rates. All assuming they will qualify me for those best rates.

If you made it this far in my introduction wall of text, thank you for making it through! 

I look forward to learning more, meeting other local investors in the area, contributing back to BP and jumping into the game!

-Terry