All Forum Posts by: Alexander Gondolfi

I am a 24 year old who just graduated with a bachelors degree in Louisiana. I will be starting an online graduate school MBA program while working full time at a local bank as a credit analyst. Louisiana is consistently ranked either at or near the bottom of every state ranking besides per capita incarceration and I want to move to another state in the next 5 years.

My father is well off and is pressuring me to purchase a house so I’m no longer living in an apartment, and is offering me up to $20k for a down payment. The requirement for this money is that I have to purchase a property worth approximately $150k. The only debt I have is my car ($6k owed).

If I purchase a house, it'll be a 3 bed, 2 bath and I would rent out the other two bedrooms at $350 per month. This puts me at approx. $800 a month in PITI payments and $700 of rental income.

My plan is that within 5 years, I’ll have my masters degree and enough banking experience to get a job anywhere in the country. My question is this: should I take my dad on his offer, get the down payment and purchase the house? Or should I simply continue to rent ($400/month) until I move to another state?

@Ruslan Pislar

After maintaining my 6 month emergency fund, funding my Roth IRA is my first priority. Currently, I'm 24 and the short term tax cuts are only going to last for so many years. With the huge government debt, taxes probably aren't going down in the foreseeable future. I'd much rather pay taxes today than in the future where there's a very high chance I'll pay a higher percentage rate as well as have more money to pay taxes on.

@Michaele Arneson

It's all about diversifying your income streams and where your money is. Personally, I contribute to my 401k up to the match, fund my Roth IRA up to the max, and I also have a taxable account which I plan to do a little dividend investing to get some side money coming in. Once the rentals are making good money, I'll be building a fund to invest in notes or syndications. The goal being that i can quit my 9-5 when I'll be getting income from 3 sources: rental income, note/syndication income, and dividend income.

As far as where to put that money, my 401k doesn't have the greatest options, so that's just in a S&P 500 fund. My Roth IRA is split between 4 ETFs that give me broad market coverage. My dividend account is invested in single company stocks (mostly dividend aristocrats).

It should be noted that I am not a financial planner. Just a guy 2 months away from graduating college with a degree in finance, but still working full time. Above is simply the financial plan I’ve decided for myself.

@Andrew Fallwell

I’m 23 years old, graduating from college in May with a degree in Finance, and already have a guaranteed job at a local bank. The only debt I’ll have upon graduation is around $15k on my car (no student loans or credit card debt). When I graduate, I plan on building my emergency fund to $2k, pay off my car, then pad my emergency fund to $10k. At that point, I’ll be saving for a down payment on a house hack. Once I have a foothold in real estate, I’ll be using some of the cash flow to building my portfolio of index funds. Do you have any advice on if there is anything that should be adjusted on that plan?

Also, I plan on being financially independent before I turn 40. Is there any benefit to contributing to my 401k past the employer match or contributing to a Roth IRA? Or should I stick to taxable funds and HSAs because any retirement funds won't be able to be used until more than 20 years into my retirement?

@Nic Bernal

I’m a credit analyst at a community bank. I can’t speak for their processes, but I have a lot of experience with these kinds of frustrations. For banks with centralized underwriting, you’re not talking to the person actually processing your deal. Your loan officer is simply the middle man that relays information to both sides. How our bank works is that, once the underwriter requests something from the borrower (by telling the Loan Officer), the LO is on a clock to provide that info.

If we don’t get that requested info in time, your loan is put on the back burner until we get it. Once we get it, your loan goes to the back of the line. When that happens, it may be a few business days before your analyst looks at your loan again simply because your LO didn’t provide the information in time. (Whether that’s their fault or the borrower’s)

I’m my experience, delays like this happen because your LO is juggling several deals at the same time and may either forget to submit the information to us, or just wait because they don’t want to call you to request more information (because they don’t want to keep bothering you).

I can see three potential reasons for your delays. 1) when your LO is requesting information, you are taking a few days to get back to them. Which means you’re causing yourself to be on the back burner. 2) your LO is delaying contacting you or submitting the information you gave him. 3) with the recent government shutdown, it’s possible the the federal department that processes your special type of loan was shutdown. Meaning there was nothing the bank could do. (I’m not sure if your loan program was federal or state, so I figured I’d put that here anyway)

@Michael Tempel

You bring up a lot of great points on the benefits of property management. I personally wouldn’t consider your post advertisement mostly since you didn’t even mention the name of your company. You were simply giving an example of the types of resources a good property manager can have.

Since you're in the PM side of real estate, let me ask you this. Is there a certain number of units / SFH that an investor should obtain in an area before reaching out and working with a PM? Not just to get optimal pricing, but is there a number to make you and your units worth their time? Is that number different if your portfolio is all SFH vs multi family?