All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Hi Ian!

Congratulations to you & your wife on the new job! I am not a realtor and have only bought one house, so my advice might not be worth much. In case you haven't found it already, you might want to check out http://rvar.com/ (RVAR = Roanoke Valley Association of Realtors). You can use the Property Search to get to the MLS, and you can also use the Find a REALTOR option to search for a realtor by name or by a company name. As they helped me with my first purchase, I recommend The Real Estate Group! They can be found at http://www.thegreensign.com/

I hope that's helpful, and welcome to Roanoke!

--Amos

Welcome to BP, Carlos! I live in Salem, VA & know what you're talking about! Are you interested in investing here while you're in the area or just focusing closer to home?

I am in as well!

Welcome, Patrick! I live in Salem and am investing in the Roanoke Valley too. There is a lot to learn here on BiggerPockets, just search for anything you are interested in and you'll find tons of related forum and blog posts. If you haven't yet, I recommend checking out the podcasts. Josh & Brandon update weekly and talk with their guests about many different investing strategies, problems you'll face, & deal analysis methods. It's a great way to figure out which route you want to go with in your investing.

Another great resource is the Ultimate Beginner's Guide. It is very appropriately named--definitely check it out!

I am pretty new to REI as well, but since we're in the same area, if you'd like to talk goals & strategies or bounce some ideas off of each other, let me know.

Thank you @Scott Stevens and @Wendell De Guzman !

That is the choice I was leaning towards, but I wanted to make sure my thinking was in the right place. I would be managing the property myself, but as it was built in the '40s and I've already had some issues with it, I figured it'd be too much of a headache to earn too little of a monthly cashflow. Thanks again, I appreciate the advice!

I've looked at some other posts in regard to making this decision, and have determined that every case is different. I'm just going to throw some numbers out there and see what opinions I get from all you smart people!

I bought a 1250 sqft 3/1 house (appraised at $108500, cape cod built in 1942, located just inside city limits) this past August for $92k ($3220 down, 30-year traditional mortgage at 3.875%). Mort/tax/ins is $689/month and my close friend (realtor, property manager, and owner of 8 SF homes) said when I bought it that it could probably rent for about $1000. It was a foreclosure, so it needs some work. He and I walked through and (with the intent to sell in mind) made a list of projects and an overestimate that came out to under $10k. He also gave me an estimated sale price of $130-140k.

A few questions for the more experienced:

Was this as good of a deal as I originally thought?

Is it better to keep it as a rental (and move on to the next place as soon as funding is available) or would it be more worth it to sell (in which case I'd stay long enough to keep gain tax free)?

Thanks in advance!

Elizabeth Colegrove

That is in the works as well... I'll be asking her today what she thinks about moving every year! Thanks for all your help, Steve.

@Elizabeth Colegrove Thank you (and your husband) for your response and your numbers, it really helps. I am feeling more confident that investing early and often is a good plan and is going to work out well for me in the future. The thing I have been most concerned about with my plans is that I'll be biting off more than I can chew without really knowing what I'm eating!

That feeling is going away now, as I can see now that it is definitely possible to buy at the very least 4 properties in the next 4-5 years while keeping my full-time job. And 4-5 years is plenty of time to learn more about financing options for that next step into 5+ properties. Not to mention that in the meantime I'll be learning what it's like to have tenants!

@Steve L.

I'm still a bit confused with this part. Does "any profits" basically mean cashflow from the property? Bear with me, I have to put it all in Rich Dad Poor Dad terms as I am still learning the vocabulary of the REI world! So for easy math, if I made $100 off of a property in a year, and the long-term cap gain rate for that year (for my bracket) is 15%, I'll pay $15 on it.

If I don't occupy for at least 2 of the last 5 years and I sell, and I make a profit of $100,000,000 (Why not dream big?), then I'll pay my short-term capital gain rate (same as my income tax rate) on that $100,000,000. So if I'm in the 35% bracket, I'll pay $35,000,000. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

If nothing else, I do understand this part.

Just read this in here. Thinking ahead, could I find a lender whose due on sale clause would not be triggered by moving to an LLC, or do they all do this?

Thank you, I hope the strategy is very good too. I really like the idea--I am pretty fresh out of college, so I am used to moving in and out of places quite often. I enjoy it. Change of scenery, meeting new people... and it keeps me focused on not wasting money and accumulating too much stuff because I always know that I'm going to have to move it soon. I guess you could call me the new age drifter.