All Forum Posts by: Brian Falcon

All, I have not used the Rental Unit Calculator yet because I don't want to waste one of my 5 free tries. I wanted to start by running numbers on my current (and only) rental which was my last single family home. We built new last year and were able to keep the old one as an investment property. We put a HELOC on this rental to help fund the new construction. So a couple questions I have:

- What do I put for home price?  We purchased for $258k in 2004, but based on Redfin/Realtor/Zillow, it's current value is $435-$465k.  Should I use current price so this represents an accurate value as if I were analyzing this for whether or not it would make sense if I was looking at this to purchase?  My goal is to mimic the process I'll use when searching for viable properties.  

- Our HELOC is currently $191k, so I assume instead of mortgage payment value I'd just put what we are paying per month on the HELOC, right? Also, assuming I want to get that HELOC debt down more quickly (and put towards another property more quickly) I assume makes sense to use whatever cashflow I have after my other expenses to get this down?

- We have GREAT renters who signed a 2 year lease.  Rent is $2,275.  We anticipate them renewing next year for another 2 years, as we're in a great neighborhood with lots of little kids for theirs to play with.

When you create one of these reports, does it save them under your profile, or is a one and done thing? I'd like to be able to come back to it and edit line items from time to time if I need to, or just have access to it. I want to use this as a working analysis tool until we get our HELOC paid down and I can dip into it for my next rental property. I'm sure I'll remember more questions I have as soon as I hit the Create Post button, but I appreciate any help you all could offer. Thanks!

Brian

Hi all,

Is anyone incorporating sustainable or regenerative strategies in your business practices or into your projects?  If so I'd love to keep a dialog going with like-minded folks.  I'm an architect with a long standing passion for sustainable and now regenerative design, and I incorporate that with my W2 gig, but interested to see what anyone else is doing with their properties.  Knowing that aside from new builds, approaches may be limited to materials selection (targeting local and low/zero VOC materials), green cleaning products and potentially incorporating low maintenance landscaping (natives, xeriscaping, polycultures to mimic nature so they don't need regular trimming/maintenance), what else have you seen/used?  I know that depending on location/state, adding solar may be a cost effective way to add a revenue stream and support renewables (due to the multiple revenue streams they can generate), but from a design/construction side there needs to be analysis, and the building would need proper orientation and clearance from trees.  Thanks, I appreciate any comments!

Brian

Good morning all. I'm an architect and have a small construction company where we are currently focusing on ONLY building zero energy ready and zero energy homes for private clients. I have been reading and listening to a lot of podcasts on personal REI stuff and am planning on acquiring more properties (my wife and I currently have one - our old home) once I educate myself a bit more on the topic, establish some more connections in the RE space and do enough analyses to feel more confident with the process. However I'm considering new construction RE development options for using our business profits from the construction entity. We've discussed just doing the typical spec home or small neighborhood projects when we have funds (for sale), but I'm reading a bit on Build to Rent for single family developments. Does anyone have experience with this? If so, I'd be interested to hear about your take/ experience, and how this could be more beneficial long term compared to simply build to sell approach. Thanks in advance!

Quote from @John Mocker:

Brian,

Did you remember to change the insurance from a Homeowners to a Dwelling Fire policy.  Most Insurance carriers will only write Owner occupied buildings on a Homeowners Policy

Hi John,

Thanks for the reply.  Yes, our agent made all the necessary adjustments.

Quote from @William Anderson:

Try dealcheck.io their calculator is great for investment purposes.  Fill in the blanks they provide with information that you have at hand.  Taxes are taxes.  Consolidate similar items e.g. insurance flood, household.  

You just want to get a good idea of what type of investment you started out with.  

FYI, Zillow stopped buying houses because they could not accurately determine house values yet they continue to put out numbers that do not work in the real world.  If you plan to work with a real estate agent in the future contact that person now and ask what they think the value is.

William, thanks for the dealcheck info and the advice on Zillow.  I know the home values pretty well in my old neighborhood from living there for so long and the value they listed seems about 20-30k too high.  I appreciate your helpful feedback!

Hi all. We built a new home last year and were financially able to keep our old one and have it rented with a 2 year lease ($2,275/mo). We did it sort of ad hock knowing we could sell if it didn't work because the area is very desirable. I want to reverse engineer an analysis, just to learn the process. Could I just use the BP calculator for this? What confuses me is that we bought the home in 2004 and had it mostly paid off. (Paid 258k, Zillow lists current value at 393k) However we opened a HELOC to partially fund the new home. So would I just put my HELOC payment in place of mortgage since that's our only payment now? We have 8 years to pay off the HELOC. Of course we have all the tax and insurance data since we're paying those. When listing tax, do you just combine the property and school tax into one number? Also, we wouldn't be listing closing costs, etc. since we already own the property. Would this make numbers inaccurate - or should I dig into old paperwork to see if I can find what we paid for those costs in 2004? Sorry for the newbie questions... just looking for some guidance from those with more experience, so I can see real numbers on how this looks on paper once I account for cap ex, etc. Thanks in advance.

Brian

Quote from @Daniel Scannapieco:

Looking for a reliable architect that can design and get plans approved by the city of Philadelphia. Please let me know if anybody has an recommendations. Thanks! 

Hi Daniel.  I'm new to the forums so am just seeing your post.  I'm an architect just outside of Philadelphia.  Let me know if you have particular questions about things, or if you already found some.  I'd be glad to help any way I can.  Thanks!

Brian

Hi all. This seems like the closest forum for this topic, but if I'm in the wrong one, apologies. Does anyone have experience with HUD foreclosures or other approaches to acquiring REO projects? I'm a newbie and wasn't sure how much of a headache this approach may be to accomplish, but on paper it seems like a good approach. Any advice/feedback on this process would be appreciated. TIA!

My son just went off to college and we are considering looking into a duplex to use as an investment property.  Would it be considered a house hack if our son lived there (not us)?  Or does it have to be a primary residence for the loan holder (us)?  And if the latter, is there a way to get his name on the loan application as co-owner?  TIA!

Thank you everyone for your great feedback, I really appreciate it.