All Forum Posts by: Becca Young

Hi everyone,

I have a quick question, wondering if anyone could help someone out for International Women's Day! I have a friend who is a single mom and is singlehandedly raising her child, without any physical support or custody from the child's father. The child's father is trying to reduce his child support down to a ridiculously low amount. The father is married and has another child, and a few years ago he mentioned that he and his wife's mortgage is covered by an AirBnB rental guesthouse in their backyard. 

In the most recent court documents, he's claiming he doesn't have an AirBnB or short term rental income. He also claims there is no guest house in the backyard (even though it's clearly pictured in RedFin photos and on Google satellite view). 

What kind of discovery request can prove that he either has an AirBnB, or that he temporarily took it off the market to avoid having to pay child support? Is this something the court can require AirBnB or VRBO to disclose, past rental records? If you have any other tips on how to find someone's hidden STVR income, please let me know!

Thank you! 

I'm from Lexington and the apartments around campus are known for being extremely expensive. They charge high rates because parents fork out the cash. My husband used to work for a developer that held several of these complexes. Most "normal" adults don't live in The Lex, it's almost all students with parents paying the bill. 

That's good advice, @James Wilcox! Thank you!! I agree it would not make a good rental, and we'd rather have the equity some way or another! 

@Brad Campbell thank you for that suggestion! I've thought about that! I would be interested in buying a vacation rental in the Appalachian mountains or on Lake Michigan in Michigan. But I have no idea where you go to find fully furnished vacation rentals for sale. I've tried Googling it but can't find a good marketplace for homes like that. Do you know of a good place to look? 

Thank you everyone for your feedback! It's so nice to meet fellow professionals (especially Kentuckians) who are knowledgeable on this topic! We believe our business is going to keep growing, and we need to start taking more actions than we have in the past to mitigate taxes, while also investing some of business profits to continue to grow wealth. To answer your question Jonathan, you're right-- we're already maxing out retirement accounts and have started to invest in stocks beyond that. 

I am not sure about investing in real estate, and still trying to figure out if it's the right choice for us. I agree that if we took on a multi-family unit we would have to hire a property management firm. But even with that, I'm still trying to figure out if we "want" to own multi-family units or be in the apartment/rental realm at all. My husband used to work for a large real estate development and property management company in Lexington, and he came away with a bad taste for the industry. 

I was talking with him more this morning, and as we're still in the research phase, we might research other ways to get into real estate investment, such as timber rights or some other kind of agricultural path. We'll take our time, there's no rush (although it's nice how low interest rates are right now!). Thank you all for your encouragement! 

Hi!

My husband and I are business owners and our business is booming even in the pandemic. We decided to upgrade homes and we were able to put 20% cash down and get a 2.7% interest rate on a 30-year mortgage on a really beautiful home in Lexington, Kentucky, without even selling our current house first. We'll be closing on the new house in February. Our current house is in a nice neighborhood (95% owner live in, 5% rental) and we think our house is worth $320,000. We only paid $180,000 ten years ago (last time the market crashed), and we have about $90,000 left on the mortgage, so we're hoping to get about $230,000 in cash when we sell. 

We'll be putting the current house on the market in January. After we sell, we were planning to just put that cash towards the mortgage on the new home and re-casting the mortgage to get a lower monthly payment. But then I started reading that we can lower our business taxes by getting into real estate investment. 

My question is, is it the right decision to just pay down more of the mortgage on our new house with the proceeds from selling our first house? Or should we consider renting the current house (it's 2,500 square feet in a nice area, so maybe we could charge $1,500 per month?), or taking the money and buying one or two smaller homes in the same area and renting those? Or should we take part of the money and put it towards the new mortgage to lower our payment, and take the other part and invest in the stock market? We're a little awed by the influx of cash (and want to limit our tax liability next year). It's a delightful problem to have. What would you do in this situation?

Thank you!

Becca