All Forum Posts by: Brian Ellwood

Hi Katie! Best advice is to seek a RE attorney in the state where you plan to invest and ask them this question. 

Generally, I'd want a separate LLC for investing versus trying to combine the two. Separate bank accounts, separate books. Combining them and dealing with that mess, just to save on the cost of an additional LLC, doesn't make sense to me.

Hey Michael - when you envision yourself scaling your portfolio - what are the biggest obstacles that you feel are standing in the way? 

Or another way of putting it - what, specifically, do you hope to get from the mastermind? 

Let me know and I should be able to point you in the right direction. 

What's up Bradley! Great question man - I've been in this boat before and a lot of other people are as well.

Quick advice:

1) Talk to a banker to see where your income actually needs to be to qualify. Then, when you do your taxes for the next 2 years, work with your CPA to hit that target when it comes to deductions, what you claim, etc. That's your long term plan to be bankable at a traditional bank.

2) Connect with private lenders and lending "institutions". You can use private lenders to take down the deal and then refi with an institutional lender (Like Marshall Reddick, Lima One, Corevest, etc). They don't look at your tax returns but their rates are a bit higher. 

3) Learn seller financing - where you don't need to go to banks period. Then you can structure these deals when you get leads coming in. I know many guys with 100+ doors who never once went to a bank.

Let me know if you have questions!

It really boils down to the deal - how will the #'s actually look in both scenarios? 

What market are you in? Do you have some rough #'s we could use for an example? 

Without knowing that, I'd lean toward the FHA route - it's always best to make your cash stretch as far as you can - as long as the property is stabilized and cashflowing of course. If your goal is to scale your portfolio, you don't want to overleverage yet you don't want to be too conservative either.

Hey Sarah - good question. The first thing I'd want to ask is "is owning the vacation rental, versus just renting somewhere when you want to go vacation personally, important enough for you to do this? 

Sounds like you're willing to do it for break-even, so I'm assuming the answer is yes. But always a good thing to consider before you put in all the effort. 

For short term rentals, you factor in the usual expenses, plus to have a short term prop mgr it runs around 18%, plus the cost of utilities, wi-fi, all the furniture, toiletries, as well as hotel/sales tax (depending on laws in the area). Also a license renewal fee each year. 

I may have left something out but that's the bulk of it! 

Hey Dan! I'm in Denver as well, in the Wash park area. Nothing around Denver is going to work too well as a rental from a #'s standpoint. I personally invest in TN and AL exclusively, and it's MUCH easier to find deals and make them work. 

Would you consider just bypassing the househacking in Denver idea and picking a more ideal virtual market from the get-go? 

Hey Larry! Wanted to share this really quick with you: I had the passive income bug years ago, read Rich Dad Poor Dad, got into real estate and started out wholesaling as well.

Did it for YEARS before I got the courage to pull the trigger on my first buy and hold.

Once I got that first rental - I realized that there had been nothing holding me back (but myself) all along.

I also realized that only rentals were going to give me the passive income/freedom I was after.

That's my biggest regret - not jumping into rentals first and getting sidetracked with wholesaling. 

Been talking to a ton of people who are on the sidelines because their market is too expensive - want to get a discussion going here on what's holding people back from investing virtually! 

I'm curious where - if anywhere - you feel that you've been misled by "the education industry"?

Right now, yeah, just yellow letters. I've done a ton of postcards in the past, also all the other usuals. I think the list and the copy actually matter more than the actual mail piece.

The piece is designed to get you to read what's on it, the copy is designed to get you to take an action. So the copy has a tougher task than the piece.