All Forum Posts by: Blake Williams

Hey there welcome!  There are a ton of people here who are really knowledgeable and more than willing to help! 

Thanks for all the advice everyone, I'll be sure to look into the zoning etc... of my area as soon as possible. 

Hey everyone, I'm a new investor and I just purchased my first rental property recently!  

I bought a duplex, and I am currently living in one unit while renting out the other.  I don't currently make enough to cover the mortgage and expenses with just the rent but I will when I move out.  

My question is this.  I have a basement with a good amount of space that's not being used.  I was told I could fix it up into a studio apartment because the only way to get in the basement is from outside anyway, if doesn't attach to the other units. 

Someone else told me I could turn it into a storage unit and rent it out that way too.  

What other options are there for renting out an unused basement, and how much money and work would it take to repurpose the basement for that use? 

@Ken Quagliata I believe chfa is for first time home buyers, but I'd have to double check.  I can't look it up now because I'm at work but you should be able to find out here. 

The property I bought is in Waterbury and I think it's great because there is so much nearby!  Places to work, places to shop etc... 

Admittedly, there are some areas in Waterbury that I wouldn't want to be at night, but that is part of the reason I visited the property a few times on my own.  I feel safe there any time of day.  I think that's something important for buying a rental property. 

Hey everyone, I meant to post this a while ago but I've been pretty busy lately. 

I am 25 and at the beginning of this year I decided I was going to move out of my parents house.  I've also been thinking about getting into real estate investing for years so I thought this would be a good opportunity! 

Even though I've read the forums and books and listened to podcasts etc...  I don't think anything could have really gotten me ready for this year! 

I started by researching towns near where I lived and finding properties in those towns through various sources ranging from the mls to Craigslist and realtor.com.

Any time I came across a property I was even a little interested in I would drive out to it and look at the house (outside because I didn't have an agent at first) and park my car somewhere and walk all around the neighborhood to try and get a feel for it.  Sometimes I even spoke to the people around town and asked them their opinions of the area. 

I learned about fha here on bigger pockets and also learned about investment clubs so I did some research and came across ctreia which is the nearest club to me.  A few meetings with the ria and I learned about chfa a program similar to fha but specific to Connecticut.  That program covers your down-payment and closing costs up to a point and can be used together with fha. 

Now I had a strategy! 

After months of this process I came across a property in the city nearest to me and began to persue it! 

This was a two family house and the seller initially intended to live there the rest of his life.  How work situation changed however and he found himself having to move out of state. 

The house is about 100 years old, but he had renovated everything about it straight down to the studs. 

The house also sat unsold for a while, so he ended up reducing the price by $10,000 to about $98,000.

Actually going through a traditional mortgage company was SO MUCH more off a hassle than I expected and there were so many issues I honestly don't think I want to list them all! 

Eventually I managed to make my way through that process with a lot of help from my attorney and real estate agent and I ended up buying the property! 

The building is a two family home and I inherited a tenant who so far seems to keep to herself and pays on time.  I'm very optimistic about the entire situation. 

Right now I am not making money on the property, but I knew that would be the case going into this and have ideas for how it can be improved. 

My inspector recommended I turn the basement into a studio apartment and rent that out as well.  Also, when I move out obviously I can rent my unit too.  

In the mean time the rent covers the lion's share of the mortgage payment and I only have to worry about utilities. 

Either way, I set out to purchase my first property before the end of the year and now I've done that!  I'm looking forward to what the future brings! 

@Liz Ritter I'm not sure that's going to be an option in all honesty.  

@Justin Tahilramani I can't really provide you with specifics because there are a few different properties in my area I was looking at and I don't have all the information about them.  To answer some of your questions though, deferred maintenance is definitely a possibility as the earliest of the places I've been looking at was built in the 80's.  The oldest was actually 1850, but I didn't look too hard at that one and it ended up selling anyway.  I'm also only looking at places that are individually metered for utilities.

@Justin Tahilramani I haven't considered other programs, but I'm going to do some research on what else is available.  

I have been working on getting an fha loan for a duplex to get into real estate investing and have come across several hurdles along the way.  As a recent college graduate, my student loans were one of the biggest issues.  I was told that even though my payments were $0 per month because of income based repayment, they needed to be deferred instead otherwise they would consider my payments to be a percentage of the total loan per month.  They would essentially pretend I was paying $800 per month instead of 0 which severely limited what I could borrow.

I managed to get my loans deferred by getting myself back into school (online classes), but now that they are deferred, my mortgage broker is telling me that the rules of fha are about to change and that they'll have to use the percentage again which brings me back to square one. 

Does anyone have any advice for what I can do to make this work?  I'm not certain what I should do right now.  

One thing that I've seen as a good rule for picking a location for your properties is to go for an area with population growth, job growth etc...  I'm curious where to actually find this data though?  The census is only taken every ten years, so I'm assuming people are using sources more frequently updated? 

Hello everyone! I'm a new investor working on getting my first rental property before the year is out. In a nutshell, my plan is to use the FHA program to get either a three or four unit home and owner occupy while renting out the other units. Now, here in CT we have our own program called CHFA which can also pay your down payment and closing costs. I intend to use both of these together to get my first property with no money down.

I've also recently realized that I'm more than likely going to need to use FHA 203k because at my price range (~120k) most of the properties need work before they can be rented out.

As far as my frustration, I currently work full time at a bank.  My employer gives incentives such as discounts on fees etc... to associates looking to finance a property with them.  As a result, I've been in talks with their mortgage department to do just that.

Unfortunately, I was told that they don't work with CHFA but that there are other down payment assistance programs that they do use and I just need to find one that works.  I was also given a phone number to speak with someone from the Mutual Housing Association of Greater Hartford.  That is a program that the bank will work with and they recommended I see if it was a good fit.

What's wrong with all of that you may ask?  Well, when I got on the phone with someone from the mutual housing association, they told me that they are really just CHFA.  Now I've got conflicting information.  The bank won't work with CHFA but will work with the mutual housing association.  The mutual housing association IS the same CHFA that the bank won't work with.

To make matters worse, no matter how many times I call I have not been able to get someone on the phone who can make sense of this discrepancy.  

Honestly, I know this is not a huge problem and I'm going to schedule some time for me to speak with someone in the mortgage department because I can't seem to get a hold of them on my own time.  It's just frustrating and it's also making me reconsider using this bank for my mortgage.  If something as simple as this is such a hassle, it makes me question what doing business with them on a larger scale would really be like?

Also, before anyone asks I feel I should let you know that one of the terms of my employment is that there are specific ways I can speak about them on social media.  As much as I'd like to tell you what bank I'm talking about, I'd be putting my job at risk and I'm not at a point where I'm willing to do that.

If you've gotten this far then thanks for reading!  I'm curious to know if any of you have been in a similar situation and how you handled it?  Also, what would you do if you were in my place right now?