All Forum Posts by: AJ Howard

My moms credit score is not the hottest on the block but it is improving. She wants to buy my gmas house (her moms). My grandmother wants her to pay the mortgage, so in essence, rent from my grandmother until their credit rises and they can have the score they need for the loan. But they don’t want her to turn and sell it during a mood change. How can my mom and grandmother both be protected? Anyone have rent to own contracts? Like to buy within a year? Etc.

My wife and I bought an investment property about 6 months ago in our area. We have been renting it out and in that time frame have done a full basement remodel. Due to the market status and analyzing it, we believe it would be best to sell it and to pour that money into our primary home which we already have so much value in. It would give us the capability to refinance to a 15 year mortgage and still have a lower payment and also open the door to pull over 100k to buy multiple houses or start building and selling houses. If we hold it and refinance the investment property we would about break even and it would not allow us to move forward in real estate investing. If we sell we can move faster and acquire more properties.

The question... when we sell how to keep more in our account and onto our primary house and less paid in taxes. We have looked at capital gains and don’t fully understand but we are under the limit as a single family for not paying capital gains we think. But if we sell the house, does it get considered as income? Any advice and guidance/help would be awesome. Thanks!

If it helps, we are in Washington state.

Currently my wife and I have two rental properties and our own primary house. Both rentals have roughly 100k equity in them and we owe 200k on our own home. We are thinking of selling both rentals and paying off our own primary because then we are financially free. Then we can get back into flips, rentals or building affordable housing for people on a HELOC we can pull on the equity of our own home.

The only problem is that both rental properties will bring about capital gains. Is there a creative way to avoid those and put more profit in our actual pocket?

Based on some research we did for our state (Washington). We would be in the lowest taxed area of capital gains because we have one income (school teacher). So we are good there, but trying to avoid realtors and capital gains could make it possible for us to pay off our house completely. Thoughts?

Recently I posted on here about whether or not to start an LLC and there were two common themes: if no LLC, at least get an umbrella policy. And secondly, to also check in with and have a person on your team such as a real estate attorney.

But I’m my area I have a good amount of real estate attorneys. Is there any advice on how to pick a high quality one? I see they can do transactions which is nice because we have done two private deals and haven’t had to pay a real estate agent a lot of money (I get it, it’s there job. But if I can skip and have more money in my pocket, I want to).

but my wife and I have our home and two rentals currently and plan to continue to expand and move more into the real estate game. We love it! To become more financially independent would be sweet!

thank you for your time and information!

Thank you Anthony! That’s a great point. And thank you for the direct person, real estate attorney, I need to find one in my area I think. 
Also good to know about the private money part of things. We have been wondering about that moving forward.

I appreciate all of your responses. Thank you so much. This forum post was well worth it, I was hoping for good content. Now I will be posting all sorts of questions!

Jordan, first of all, thanks for your time and information. We were wondering who we should talk to or who to ask questions... should our tax dude know? Do we figure that stuff out? Is there someone to talk to to coach through?

I appreciate the response George!

Thank you so much for taking the time and abating your advice. We don’t have an umbrella policy but I think it would be a good idea to get one for sure!

Thank you, but why I guess? Can you explain more?

And right now any profit, I just put into my account. If it was a LLC, would I then have to pay quarterly or yearly taxes based on the profit if I had a LLC?

Is it also easier to get more loans for additional houses if we have a LLC?

A little background: We are in WA.

We have heard about people in the tents gam starting LLCs. And we are wondering if we should start a LLC and why...

So we bought our first house about 4 years ago and lived in it for a year and remodeled the whole thing. We mover across the state and bought another house as our primary residence and started renting out our first home. This year due to rates dropping we refinanced the first house and took cash out. We decided to buy another house with that money and use it as a single family residence rental as well. We started renting it this last November (2020). 

Now our next wonder is we have heard of LLCs and other things and wondering if we keep rocking with what we have and are doing or if we need to move to the LLC world.

We are a family of 4, single income. Under $70,000 a year. 

We plan to keep moving ahead and continue in our real estate journey and want to start looking ahead if we start an LLC or not. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!