All Forum Posts by: Benjamin Rogers

@Nick Allen Paula Pant (a former podcast guest) has an excellent article on her blog about the rent/buy calculus. The case for purchasing a primary residence isn't nearly as tight as many assume, but Paula offers some helpful tools for the analysis.

Thanks, @Chris Seveney. Unfortunately, replicating that deal hasn't been possible so far. Since the bank accepted my offer below their reserve price, I was hoping that no one else was bidding on properties in this town on that particular website. It must have been a fluke, though, as the next two auctions on houses in the same subdivision went much higher. So much for developing a system for deal flow...

Thanks @Mark Fedorov and @Chris Mason for your thoughts. I eventually took out a 8 month interest-only personal loan for the entire purchase price at 5.5% There will be permanent financing options available after the rental has "seasoned" for 6 months; since I bought the property at auction as a "case only deal," conventional financing wasn't allowed by the seller. 

After several years of contemplating real estate investing, I finally closed on my first rental property! It's a 4/3, 2065 sq ft SFH built in 2011. Wells Fargo foreclosed on the owner and sold it in an online auction through Auction.com. My winning bid was $84,050; conservatively, I think the house is worth $135,000 - 145,000. We have placed a tenant for $1300/month.

Although I had read a fair amount, on BP and elsewhere, prior to purchasing this property, placing this house under contract really accelerated my learning process. I started at Podcast #1 and have listened to several dozen since. Knowledge is stickier when it's not abstract. My encouragement to other newbies would be to learn enough to analyze a property, then pursue a deal. For me, action has fostered knowledge and enthusiasm. I'm more excited than ever to find other deal.

Many thanks to everyone in the BP community who has taught me so much through podcasts, forum posts, and articles. 

My wife and I are preparing to close on our first rental property. The community bank that I was planning to use says that we will need a commercial loan since it will be a rental. They say that the only way around this is for me to indicate that this property will be our second home. Is this true? I expected to be able to obtain at least 4 mortgages before getting "creative" with financing. Thanks!