Aspiring Marine Corps Investor

[Arianna Crawford]

Hello! My name is Arianna Crawford. I am a native of West Virginia and currently serve as 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. I became interested in real estate investing after discussing investing options with a financial-savvy coworker. Since I am skeptical about handing my money over to strangers to put into stocks, he recommended real estate as a tangible way for me to invest in my future. I am about half-way through "The Book on Rental Property Investing" and have countless questions, especially as to how these topics relate to military professionals. My next duty station will be Pensacola, FL. I hope to invest in a buy and hold while there, so I have under a year to figure things out. I am already pre-approved for the VA Loan through Veterans United. Any information, advice, opinions, etc. are more than welcome. Thank you!

[Dylan H.]

@Arianna Crawford

Got a friend who bought in the Ferry Pass area and is house hacking there. It’s a good location and the area is booming. Just know that it’s a solid 30+ minute one way commute to the API building. If you didn’t do powered flight and validate IFS I’m not sure that I’d recommend it since you’ll probably be at NASP for 8+ months with the wait times. Then you might not even get Milton for primary and you’ve been commuting all that way for nothing, but up to you.

1% rule is a rule of thumb saying that your home/property needs to rent for 1% of the purchase price / month and you should at least break even in the long run. Expenses like CapEx, maintenance/repairs, management, and vacancy dig in to what cashflow you thought you had over the long haul.

Example: You buy a $150k house, you need to rent it for $1500/month to break even. Obviously also the amount of leverage plays a large role. It's more of a traditional financing rule. So being 100% leveraged using the VA loan you really need to be doing your best to meet the 1% rule. You can get creative with medium term rentals to flight students by furnishing the place, making it all inclusive and bumping the price up further. If someone can $700/month for a fully furnished room with utilities included, that's a great deal and they're still saving half of their BAH.

Hope this helps!