All Forum Posts by: Aaron H.

TREC should have everything you need. The only modification is to make sure that the purchaser is listed as "Caleb L or assigns" or something to that effect, so you have the legal right to assign the contract. Other than that, the title company will be able to walk you through all the rest of what you need to do to close the deal.

I'm not a pro on the IRA stuff, but it comes with a lot of restrictions and hoops to jump through that I'd personally avoid unless it was absolutely necessary.

If you have 100K in equity in another property, look into whether you can do a cash out refinance and get some of that back in cash (and hopefully still be cash flowing). If you can't do that, I'd look into the HELOC. If you find the right property where your 20K is enough to do the deal with conventional financing, that could work too.

Welcome to BP! I'd recommend starting with reading Brandon Turner's book on "How to Invest in Real Estate with No and Low Money Down". That's as comprehensive of an overview as you'll find anywhere on how to get started with limited money.

WIth only 5K, I'd recommend finding a partner to work with on your first few deals - you're otherwise not going to have enough to do much. Other than that, you could consider spending it on marketing and trying to go the wholesaling route.

I'd recommend starting with the Ultimate Beginner's Guide or any of the books in the Bookstore, both linked at the top of the page. Those materials will walk you through all the basic math behind buy-and-hold investing. Then, if you have specific questions after that, they'll be easier for someone on the forums to answer.

I know nothing about the Australian real estate market. That said, the answer is always "it depends" - there's a million factors, like how much cash you have to spend on building, what the rental demand and price is in your area, whether you have any experience in construction or managing a big project like that, etc.

There are plenty of counterexamples, but as a very general rule, most people would consider new build projects a bad place to start as someone new to real estate investing. They're risky, and they're prone to massive cost and timeline overruns if you don't know what you're doing.

Raw land is also usually not a great place to start investing - it doesn't produce any income, and predicting appreciation is very difficult, even for seasoned pros.

Knowing literally nothing about your personal situation, if I were personally in your shoes, I'd sell the land and use the cash to buy good cash flowing rentals somewhere else...

Usually when a bank sells a house they foreclosed on, they want to sell it for at least as much as they're owed on the mortgage.

So if the house was purchased for 100K, the previous owner put 25K down, the bank issued a mortgage for 75K. Now the bank foreclosed, so they want their money back. Ideally, they want full market value for the house and would want to sell for 100K again. But, maybe they'd sell it for 75K just to ensure they get their money back. They're not going to want to sell at 50K, though.

Obviously there are exceptions, and banks do sometimes sell at a loss, but knowing the previous loan amount lets you know what the bank's floor might look like.

Most online auctions are going to start at a low teaser bid, but the bank (or other seller) will establish a reserve price, so if the bidding doesn't get that high, nobody wins and they can redo the auction or try to sell it a different way. The auction site will tell you the starting bid before the auction actually starts. The reserve may or may not be published (but usually isn't).

So, you're not going to know for sure what you can get the house for, or what the bank is willing to do. At best, you can make an educated guess. My advice is to ignore the starting bid, reserve, etc. Figure out what you think the ARV on the house is, figure out what your maximum bid is where you're very conservative and positive you would make money at that price, and then don't bid over that price. If it doesn't hit reserve and they re-run the auction, bid that same amount again. Just keep bidding up to your max value, and if you don't get the house, on to the next one.

@Jake Cohen We'd love to have you! It's typically a pretty informal happy hour the second Wed. of the month, but you can check out the details on any upcoming events on the Meetup.com page (search Steamboat and Real Estate).

Or, drop me a line if you're ever in town and want to go skiing/climbing/grab a drink and chat real estate.

Really nice job! Keep us posted with how the numbers work out. I run the local real estate meetup in Steamboat, and "do AirBNB's work here?" is far and away the most common question I get asked.

Are you using a PM in town, or self-managing from Denver?

Yes, you can do a 1031 if the property is in your name. Yes, you definitely have to set that up in advance - doing a 1031 is complicated and involves using a 3rd party to hold funds, various timelines for identifying the exchange property, and lots of other restrictions.

There's a ton of content on the site about the details - search the forums or the blog and you'll find it.

Especially with project management experience, I'd suggest looking into a job with a property management company. You'd get a lot of valuable exposure from that - you get to walk through a lot of houses, you get to learn a lot about dealing with tenants, you get to see the financials on rental properties, and you make contact with a lot of property owners (i.e. other investors).