All Forum Posts by: William Brace

Roy Gutierrez everyone will tell you the same exact thing, summertime (May-August) due to summer break for students. Even within the same city you can have multiple school districts or even city/county schools and most parents will only make the switch during summer months.

As you stated you read/hear a lot about the 4/10 mortgages. If a lender tells you the Fannie limit is 4, they are not very well informed, go find a new lender. I just closed on my 6th conventional mortgage two weeks ago and have four more to go before I have to look for a different solution. Now specific banks may have a lower limit but that is called an overlay meaning their limits are lower for that specific bank but that is self imposed by that specific bank. As to the mortgage pay down, I wouldn't recommend using all that cash or cash flow to pay down the properties. I would take that available cash and acquire more properties. Think of it this way, if you take all that cash and pay off property # 1, you still have insurance and taxes. So you eliminated the interest potion of that payment. So how much per month did that save you? Keep in mind you no longer have that interest tax deduction. Now, how much cash flow could you make by taking that available cash and acquiring more property? Most seasoned investors will agree with the above strategy.

I know this thread is getting old and to be honest, I currently use excel as well. I am curious to see what other excel users actual have for a workbook if they care to share. Mine is pretty simple, one property per tab, one summary tab that pulls all info for each individual property into one page as well as a mortgage calculator that also shows me gross and net profit on a potential property taking into account PITI, HOA... And a final tab that contains everything that would go into a mortgage application. I update it whenever I'm about to go under contract on a new property and simply export it to a PDF and send to my lender. No more filing out mortgage apps. All I do is digitally sign what they send me and I'm done. With all the above being said, I did want an online way to handle my property management and I couldn't justify the higher prices of the main/usual property management sites and to be honest, I want control of my data, not on someone else's servers. I just love how the word "cloud" gets thrown around like it's some new technology. Everyone remember your first email account, yahoo/aol... Ya, that's right, your mail was in this so called cloud. Fancy name for a web server. So I set out to find my own property management script. Came upon a low cost basic php script. Actively developed with user requests without the useless bloat of the usual big names. Let's be honest, 90% of the crap they include and charge for will never be used. So I'm taking what the developer has created and adding what I want to it without all the bloat. Now if you truly have 100's of units I can see paying for one of the big names but for the average user, it's just an expense we can never quantify. I might have a couple hundred bucks by the time I pay to have everything coded in that I want (I'm not a programmer/coder) then I'll pay under $5 for a shared hosting account and have everything I want/need at my fingertips. I only have 6 single family homes, so for me, this was the best solution.

I have noticed this as well. Assumed JD would work it out in the next release.

As a landlord, and this is not legal advice, I would say if my lease expired and the tenant was now in a month to month and they provided me notice they were leaving, upon move out the property including the yard and the ac units are now my responsibility. I'm unsure why she feels maintaining the yard is your responsibility. If that's the case, you haven't been mowing my yard either. Shame on you!

But to be serious, I would say your fine. Yes she can try to take you to small claims court but she would have to prove that you stole these ac units, and I'm not saying you did. I have no idea how she would claim or even try to prove that. What happens to that property after you move out is her issue not yours.

I'm sure others will chime in but I have to ask, did you do a walk through with the landlord upon move out and do you checklist? You should have done a move in checklist as well.

I also wonder why you removed the ac units and put them in a storage shed or am I missing something?

Long story short, the company I work for was bought out years and years ago by a private equity company. The first thing they did is thinned our workforce to the point of almost killing the company. Then they dropped the pension plans we had, aka retirement. So I sit here with 12 years in and no retirement.

So I buy and hold my real estate as my retirement. I'm not a fan or believer of the 401K. I cashed out what I had after the buy out and paid down a rental and purchased another one. When my rental income begins to exceed what I make from my day job, I plan to quit. Not to retire early, but go find something I enjoy getting up everyday to do.

I have always done 30 yr as well. However if I could get a 15 yr loan and 85% of appraised value, I would do that all day long and refinance into a 30 yr after 6 months.

I haven't heard if any lender doing 85% of appraised value on a rental property meaning no money down in alot of cases.

Dennis Nemitz , as Stephanie Dupuis has pointed out, some swear by these rules and others such as myself don't follow those rules. I tend to buy newer properties that won't need a roof or a new hvac during the time I own them. Or if they do need it I do it when I first purchase the property. I consider that part of my purchase. Then my expenses will remain low for quite a few years. That's just how I do it so I don't follow any of these rules.

Now with all of that being said, you need to ask yourself what you feel comfortable making each month. What works for you may not work for others. If that cash flow doesn't work for you, bulk up your down payment and improve your numbers.

Not necessarily. I just meant that alot of small town community banks loan on the deal to the person rather than just a credit report. Lets assume Mr Banker is the branch president at Bank A, he may look at your ability to repay the loan and make an investment in you. I know this because I was in a similar situation last year after buying two houses at the end of the prior year. Even though I was an experienced landlord/investor, I couldn't get approved through my normal lender because of my DTI. My problem arose that I had mortgages on these two new purchases but no rent because they were literally purchased in November and December. They were both rented right away the following year but as far as tax returns go, no income. So I went to a small local bank with a personal financial statement and explained here is what I have and here is why my DTI looks high (on paper) at this specific moment.

I was pre approved with that lender for another mortgage. By the time I ended up needing that new mortgage I had she'd enough debt to qualify with my normal lender. So although I didn't go through with the loan at the small local bank, I was approved for it. So that wash point. Don't give up because some of those banks hold that note in house and don't always rely on what Fannie has for requirements.

So simply put if you found a small local or community lender, ask for a meeting with the branch president (its not that hard) and just explain what you have and what your trying to accomplish. But make sure you can back up your story with copies of rent checks or rent deposits.

Hope that helps a little :)