All Forum Posts by: Andrew Giunta

Do not buy an apartment right now in Jersey city or Hoboken with 10% down and a 75k (im assuming 58k take home after taxes) a year income. The numbers don't work and anything that cheap in Jersey city or Hoboken means something is wrong with it (usually co-ops with ridiculous HOA fees and bad management) It will be a nightmare trying to get rid of that thing in the future.

At your salary and a 7% interest rate you'll be stretching yourself reaaaally thin, its not worth it until you get your salary up or rates go down. You're going to be paying about $20,000 roughly in interest alone. Tack on HOA fees, taxes, etc. and you're probably at a stupid % payment to income ratio.

I appreciate the response by people above me but they are not in our market and don't understand the nuances as well. 

I am looking at a 5 unit building that I want to do a condo conversion on. 4 units would be vacant 1 has a rent controlled tenant in there who does not want to move. I would owner occupy it so I don't know if I have an avenue to remove them so I can do the condo conversion or if I could even do the condo conversion while they are still in there. I have an appointment with a lawyer, but id love to talk to anyone that has had experience of converting in the past in Hoboken. Thanks in advance!

I was considering doing something like this and owning one in each LLC in cash if it meant I had options to better financing. If I can just do a DSCR loan I probably wont bother with that. These are for the most part meant to be a pretty conservative cash flowing investments that I hold until I die. With the cashflow alone I could pick up another one or two yearly so im not too concerned about being super efficient.

They are also property managed in an area that I really don't have a large desire to live in. If they were in a town over Id probably do less down and build out a management team but the yields are relatively high and cost per door are relatively low. I don't think the homes with appreciate a ton in value maybe just slightly over inflation so the benefit of putting less down and buying more weighed against the headache of having that many doesnt make a ton of sense (unless I decided I wanted to move there)

I am looking to build a SFH portfolio and I would like to use leverage and put them inside an LLC. Im really not a fan of commercial debt with rates that adjust. At that point id probably just pay them off completely. Leveraged I'm looking at about 20-30 houses so my idea is 2-3 houses per LLC. Is there a creative way to get 30 year fixed financing this way ? I'm looking to do 50% down payments to begin with so the loans are pretty conservative. I know many people use DSCR loans, are the 30 year fixed DSCR loans available inside an LLC ? Id prefer to have the protection of an LLC on top of an umbrella liability policy. It might be overkill but for me the peace of mind is worth the extra cost.

Id probably do landscaping and roll it into their rent due to liability concerns. I expect them to pay all utilities and shovel snow though. Id also having them pay a certain amount of small maintenance items like clogged toilets etc. Im saving roughly 15% for cap ex and maintenance a year which at 4k a month in rent works out to $7200 a year. Does that seem steep ?

I am looking at investing in a portfolio of buy and hold mostly turn key properties in the town I grew up in New Jersey. I'm not in a rush to buy and looking to pick them up over the next year or so im just trying to get a good handle on what I can be expecting in terms of maintenance. I'm looking for 3-4 bd 2 ba and prices between 600k-650k. Taxes are around 12k-13k on those houses but rents currently are around 3.8k-4.3k. Its in an upscale area, one of the best public school districts in the state/country and a suburb of NYC.

A lot of demand is coming from NYC people who want to raise their children here and I see that only continuing as people will probably be forced to go in to an office 3ish days a week. I'm paying cash and looking to acquire about 5 properties. My goal is a 4% cap rate and this is mostly my fall back retirement real estate portfolio. I dont plan on selling these properties ever. I'm budgeting 15% for maintenance but ill try and do most of the easy stuff myself.  Does anyone else in the Bergen county area have relatively well maintained properties and insight to what their maintenance costs are ? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. 

Hey Jennifer fellow Bergen County dweller here. I wish it made sense to invest here but unless you have a contractor in your immediate family that will do you favors (so you can eek out some rent through renovations, do repairs, etc.), I would look elsewhere. Multis in desirable areas in Bergen county are far too expensive because people are willing to pay the cost just to get into the school districts and the NJ property taxes in general kill the deals, the cashflow is just not there.

In many cases unless you are willing to go to less desirable areas you'll be competing with multi generational families as well. Anecdotally I see a lot of people of Indian or Asian descent buying and having parents/in-laws live in one unit while a younger family lives in another. They aren't looking at it as an investment as much as they are looking at it as a home where they can live together while having their own privacy still, which means they will pay more than a rational investment would. 

There are some places where you might be able to be cashflow positive but mostly in rougher areas and in my opinion you don't want to deal with those tenants. Personally I think you're better off either looking more in central/south Jersey if you're keen on staying in NJ or potentially look at PA.

I see so many of these properties and they look okay at first glance. My problem with them mostly is im assuming the value of the property itself depreciates quite quickly especially on year 10 when you have to start paying taxes. Also im sure the cap rates are completely fudged to make the deal look better. Also not to mention many of them are just builders looking to capitalize on the tax incentives so it might be hard to tell the quality of the construction etc as a layman. The nice thing is if they live up to what they claim, I can hold them for low maintenance. I play on holding them for 40+ years as well and they will probably last that long compared to some of the already older Philly properties. Would love to hear thoughts. 

Lehigh Valley! It is booming, the rental market ! There are no vacancies and people are waiting for apartments

I can get some great properties in pa and get people to manage property for you.