All Forum Posts by: Alejandro Calixto

Hi folks. 

For any fellow Cook County suburban landlords or tenants out there... if you had any financial hardship due to COVID-19 you could be eligible for up to 12 months of missed rent and utility payments plus 3 months of future payments. Landlords may apply for tenants. You can find out more in the cookcountyil.gov website. This is for the Cook County suburbs only, not the city Chicago.

https://www.cookcountyil.gov/s...

@Nicholas Ladas I definitely second the suggestion to reach out to @John Warren. He is the best in these areas. He helped me with my current house hack in La Grange using my VA loan benefits. A great agent like John can help you organize your priorities to better see what you really should be looking for.

A lot depends on what your short and long term goals are with the investment property as well as your financial standing. This all can be deciphered with a good realtor and lender. Are you looking for an investment in higher rated school districts because you have kids, or plan on having kids? Or is it just because that seems to be the "safer" areas?

Do you see yourself staying at this property longer than the one year minimum requirement for VA loans? How much longer?

A lot of people here on BP might tell you that tenant stability is highly reliant on your own vetting of possible tenants. That said, I have had a great experience with my 3 bedroom units. It does seem these larger units attract families and tenants that see themselves staying there long term from the beginning. So this may be something to consider. Of course there are less 3 or 4-unit properties filled with 3 bedroom units so that would be harder to find. You may find more 2-unit properties with 3 bedroom units but that will lower the cash flow as a house hack. No matter what you choose though, when you take into consideration what you are saving in personal housing costs, house hacking is the winning ticket starting out.

@David P.

Hi and welcome. Before my first property investment I did a lot of educating and communicating. You already found one of the best places for both. You can find a lot of ways to educate yourself here (podcasts, book lists/suggestions, REI associations, etc.). The communication part got a little harder in some areas due to COVID but it is not impossible. There are still meetups that happen. Some are virtual for the moment.

The next step for me was getting my "team" together. I found a realtor first. Someone who understood what I wanted to do and where I was at. A great realtor then can provide contacts and direction. This is where you can get your lender, attorney, contractors, and all other contacts you might need to get going. I found my realtor by looking for meetups and I found someone that had just started a meetup where I was looking to invest. I highly suggest @John Warren's meetups. He is full of knowledge and good leadership and always brings great people to provide some info.

Get together with a good realtor and lender. They should help you narrow down what path might be best for you.

Happy hunting on whatever you do. Feel free to reach out if I can help with anything.

-Alejandro Calixto

@Joshua Jones perfect. Thank you so much as always.

Sorry forgot to paste the link to my previous post.

https://www.va.gov/housing-assistance/home-loans/loan-limits/

@John Warren, again you come thru with a great gem.

@Jason Bohling, you pose some great questions. I too learned that since the beginning of 2020 there is no more "loan limit" for VA loans. But I am still unsure of what that means exactly. According to he VA site below, it seems if you are still paying back an active VA loan then you are considered to have "remaining entitlement" instead of "full entitlement". With "remaining entitlement" it seems there are still loan limits based off of counties. It sounds like this contradicts what your lender was telling you. But I may be mistaken.

At this point, we definitely have to refer to the experts. Cue in @Joshua Jones. Josh what can you say about this kind of scenario?

@Lindsey Matejak not sure what lenders you have been talking to already, but reach out to @Joshua Jones. He's the best. if anyone could answer your questions, it would be him.

@Briana May so glad I came across this post.

I am in a similar situation. We have a nonprofit organization that looks to bring opportunities for underprivileged children through sports (volleyball in particular). We are located in the Chicago west suburbs currently. We were having issues coming up with a more permanent location to have our volleyball clinics. It has been particularly hard now with many places still being closed or having restrictions on gatherings.

Aside from this nonprofit I have done REI. So that part of my brain thought there has to be a way to get the organization a property to fulfill its goals. I finally got to doing some research today and I came across your post from a couple days ago.

I'm hoping to get together with others that have done this or professionals (lawyers, lenders, etc.) that can help our organization find a solution.

Can't wait to learn a ton from this one too. Thanks John!

Can't wait! @Brie Schmidt had some amazing insights last time I had a chance to experience one of her talks. Thanks as always for the content @John Warren.

Looks like another "must attend" meeting. Looking forward to catching this one. Thanks for putting these together.