All Forum Posts by: Alecia Loveless

@Jonathan Stone I've been involved in many forms of REI with various degrees of success over a 20+ year time frame. At the moment I've got a SFH and a duplex with a 4-plex under contract.

I've read many books and attended many webinars and while I have not ruled out the right SFH's I've realized that for scalability purposes larger MF properties make more sense.

I hope to settle in with these 7 doors for the first part of the year and get a management system in place while I research other properties.

I plan to research OOS MFH in the future if nothing turns up in my market. I am open to staying local if the opportunity arises or expanding my horizons as there appears to be value to be had in many other markets.

@Omar T Sharaf Hi Omar, I'm not that familiar with Plattsburgh but I live in a small area, there's about 8500 people in a 15 mile radius. With the help of my long term realtor I bought a great duplex and got a steal on a SFH in the past year but since then the market has been too hot to handle.

A few weeks ago at work, I work nights, I started cruising the MLS and found a 4-plex that my realtor hadn't showed me because it was in a town 30 minutes away and it had been on the market 30 days when MFH in my immediate area goes under contract in less than 2 days no matter how awful it is.

The town this 4-plex is in is more blue collar than my immediate area is, rents won’t grow as quickly, appreciation of the building won’t be as great but it’s cash flowing at $850 a month, has a generous amount for capex, $1400, that once there’s enough reserves I can tap into a little and it’s the nicest MFH I’ve seen in my area the owner has taken great care of it.

We are set to close in 25 days.

Moral of the story, don’t be afraid to look at all the communities around you.

@Justine Scheuher Hi Justine. I've been investing in real estate on and off again for about 24 years now. I currently have 1 SFH, 1 Duplex that I house hack, and have 1 4-plex under contract that I'm doing due diligence on and hope to close on next month. My goal is to get 2 additional doors by the end of 2021 if possible.

My ultimate goal is to build up my retirement fund. I spent my first 20 years after college owning bed and breakfasts and my accountant never helped me plan for retirement so now I’ve realized that I can recover and be prepared financially with passive income through real estate.

@Young Kim Hi Young, I grew up in Denton and my family used to own a ton of commercial

Property by the University of North Texas down by the Fry Street area. We sold it during the mid 90s. Today my sister owns 18 rental houses in the area but unfortunately she is not a member of BP and was never taught that you make your money on real estate when you buy and that there are calculators that help you with your estimates on cash flow and bills.

Her biggest problem with rentals is that all the students move out when the universities let out in May and usually look for new housing come fall. So sometimes she has a hard time renting her houses in August when school starts up and sometimes she has a waiting list. But she usually has June and July vacant if she has students renting her houses from her and no one paying rent.

When you calculate your CapEx definitely put in a little extra for vacancy and I'm sure you'll be fine. There's a lot of nice neighborhoods in the area now where you can get a great house for your price range and as DFW continues to expand as a business hub the Denton area is only going to appreciate in value.

@Jasmine Bailey The condo development in my small town has an HOA that replaced all the roofs with an affordable loan that they had budgeted for at a reasonable assessment fee of $85 a month to the owners over 10 years. The next winter, I'm in northern New Hampshire, the roofs were found to all be faulty and failed.

The roofer filed bankruptcy and had no insurance and the HOA had to re-roof the whole development. Now the owners have an $800 a month payment for 15 years plus the $85 payment remains for the rest of the 10 years which is equal to most of their mortgage payments.

The condos still sell to out of staters but no one local can afford them now. And the HOA also passed a no rental clause once the out of state owners got on the board hobbling the remaining local owners from being able to rent their basement apartments and support the high property taxes.

I would avoid the HOA.

@Blaine Kosek I vote duplex. I’m sure with having other properties you have experience vetting tenants which would be my major concern, 2 sets of tenants instead of 1.

But all things considered over time with urban sprawl this duplex may end up getting some appreciation depending on how long you hold it if more people move away from the city.

And as others mentioned if one set of tenants leave the other set pays some of the bills if not all of them.

@Christopher Cordero I just locked in a rate of 3.5 for an investment property yesterday which obviously is higher than the current rate for single family which I heard has dropped around 2.67 and probably higher than second home rate which I do not know. I don’t think it’s terrible although it could have probably been better had I shopped around more. It was a local bank that will not be selling my loan and I regularly do business with them so I was ok with this rate. You might do better with your 5 bankers.

Unless you actually plan on using the home several weeks/months a year I wouldn’t do the second home loan myself.

@Jody Dobson The first thing I look at is the size of the bedrooms and how many there are. I’m not necessarily opposed to 2 bedroom houses but they must be priced accordingly. I prefer larger bedrooms rather than standard 10x10 bedrooms that are common in my area as I feel that’s important to my tenants. The second thing I look at in my state where the only real tax we have to fund everything is property taxes is the property taxes on the house as they can vary as much as $3,000-$4,000 for houses in the same price range and that can definitely eat up your cash flow.

@Felix Stone. For several years I’d been “about” to sell a bed and breakfast I owned and lived in but hadn’t finished all the necessary upgrades on. I was bleeding money left and right because I wasn’t running it. Then, right next door a duplex came on the market that I knew was overpriced. I offered on it 3 times over the course of 6 months. All the other buyers believed it needed foundation work but my expert said no it was fine and told me it only needed some insulation and a heater. I was able to buy it for $75,000 under the original asking price, got the B&B on the market, renovated one side and rented it to the perfect tenant and moved into the second side. I now collect rent that pays for all my living expenses, including my cable, internet, and heat for the whole building which is important in Northern New Hampshire, and have been able to buy other properties from the proceeds from the sale of the B&B.

@Esteban Jimenez I work overnight so nights I’m working I spend about an hour on the forums. If I get a good lead then I spend a half hour or so on the calculators.

Alecia