All Forum Posts by: Bryan P.

A few of you have talked about if a beginner doesn't have alot of cash it's a good idea to start out by learning how to wholesale.

How can you wholesale without cash buyers? I live in a small town in PA with 40,000 people in the whole county. There's some people with money but they're not out buying houses. The only people buying homes around here are first-time home buyers (young people) and investors.

Our county has alot of cheap properties in the 20's and 30's.

Is wholesaling possible in this environment? In your responses please remember I have no contacts, I have no experience, and I only have a vague idea of what wholesaling is based on articles on this site.

Jon-

Is it the case that foreign govts are unpredictable or is it that properties are hard to buy? Does the average investor know where to find property agents and managers, etc, in say Mexico? I briefly looked online and I can't even search for single-family homes in Brazil or Mexico.

Wouldn't it be a cheap way to do business, as long as our currency is worth more than other currencies? (Until our currency falls through the floor completely.)

Why don't real estate investors do more foreign transactions? I'm only a novice but it would seem beneficial to me to invest in a developing market such as Brazil, Chile, certain parts of Mexico, etc.

How does an average every day person go about doing this?

-bp

I have it wrong. I have approximately 18,000 in equity to use in case of emergency. Every year that would increase by approximately 4,500 dollars. So next year I will have over 20,000 in that available equity on line of credit.

-BryanP

Have a primary mortgage 36,000 left at 5.6% and 12.5 years left. Have a rental worth 30,000 that is cash flowing 100 per month. I used a line of credit on my primary for the rental. I now have about 13,000 in equity to use in case of emergencies.

My aquaintance/friend is selling his house for 45,000. He's willing to do seller-financing for 25 years at 6.5% interest and no down payment. The rent I could get would be around 500-525 and would cash flow around 80-100 per month.

Questions:
1.) Is it wise to allot 13,000 to cover the expenses/emergencies for three rental properties? (we're moving out of the primary soon which would make 3 rentals, total.)
2.) Is it wise to do owner-financing for 25 years with an aquaintance/friend?

-BryanP

We are 3.5 hours north of you, Lewistown PA. Recently bought our first rental for 22,000 and it rents for exactly 600. It was almost exactly 30,000 in total investment. So that's kinda ironic.

I bought my rental property for 22,000. I've been working on this sucker for 5 months after work, 3-4 hours per night and some weekends. Luckily I've only had to pay for 2 months of holding costs. I'm finishing up this week and will have put around 5,000 into the place, plus my own labor (whatever that is worth).

So now I think to myself, what if I just bought a place for 27,000 and didn't do any work to it?

Any thoughts on this? What are considerations when doing work yourself vs. buying a rental that has the equivalent of the total cost, as I've mentioned above?

-Bryan

Ben,

My wife and I bought our first rental on Dec 3 and I'm working on it myself. I just spent 500 bucks on heating oil and I'm throwing money out like crazy and the only "hope and security" I have is the fact that I ran the numbers. I know the numbers work out, but yet I still have anxiety about the thing.

But, then I keep telling myself...If I play safe, it's the MOST risky. Maybe not now, but years down the road it's certainly the most risky to not invest anything.

And I keep telling myself, where else is there to turn? The market has made close to 1% over the past 10 years. Ain't no way I view that as safe. If I invest in cash (savings accounts/CD's, etc.) I will lose through inflation. So...hello...I might as well suck up the anxiety and deal with it.

Anyways, I'm with you...and I don't think it'll go away.

I never heard of wholesaling before I started reading this forum a few weeks ago.

Please make this simple for me because I don't understand the intense real-estate jargon!

So a wholesaler is an unlicensed "middleman" who has a buyers list in their hands. The middleman wholesaler then finds properties for this buyer.

Does the wholesaler middleman buy the property? If so, how do closing costs not kill the wholesaler? Likewise, how do holding costs not do the same?