All Forum Posts by: Bryan O.

Oh, and to touch on what @Linda Weygant said about the LLC, I'm finding that it's much easier to get traditional mortgage loans to yourself the person than it is to get them to an entity. So there's not excuses about not knowing how to set up an LLC either ;)

NO EXCUSE FOR YOU! I pay child support myself. Wouldn't it be great to let your property pay that for you?  ;)

Best of luck.

You're in Littleton... Buy the house, wait 6 months, and reappraise! Property will likely be 40% higher value by then  ;)

Or, you know, not.

@Michael C.

You can use pretty much any provider to host your e-mail. Unless you host it yourself, you are going to have to pay. I use West Host for hosting my e-mail and website and it's something like $5-$10/month. I used to use HostGator but I didn't like their sneakery. Also, using a service like this allows you to host your website at the same time.

Here's a quick flow of how the Internets work for this:

• Buy your domain name (GoDaddy or someone less evil)
• Select your hosting provider (GoDaddy, HostGator or someone less evil)
• Point your DNS from GoDaddy to HostGator
• Log into HostGator and create your e-mail accounts
• Use whatever you want to check them (Outlook, Thunderbird, Firefox, Chrome, etc.)

Child support is just another debt, like a student loan. No big deal.

If you are using traditional financing (Freddie or Fannie lending) you can have up to 4 or 10 mortgages. Make sure you check first if they will count tenant rent as income because some require you to have been a landlord or owner for 2 years.

I like the idea of a basket with toilet paper and such.

We provide our new tenants a bottle of bubbly in the fridge ($10) and some plastic wine cups. They also get a Welcome Home card and a $20 Target card. They have absolutely loved it and get a nice cold bottle of Brut for their first night in their new home and some money to buy those little knickknacks that you always seem to need to make it feel more like a home.

@Wayne Brooks and @Mark F.

Thanks for clarifying, and thank you for the link. You are absolutely right and my information was dated:

The FHA requires borrowers who financed 90 percent or more of their home's value on or after June 3, 2013 to pay the MIP for the life of the loan. Borrowers who took out their FHA loans before June 3, 2013 can automatically cancel the MIP if the loan meets certain conditions -- namely, a sufficient amount of equity.

I have an FHA that is after the cutoff, so it looks like my lender was either uninformed or lying :( At least I have better understanding now. Thanks again!

Best of luck. Look into the rules for getting a mortgage on your 4-plex. FHA is an awesome way to start (I'm in a 3-unit FHA living in 1) but you still have to meet all the lending requirements. That may be tougher depending on what your market cost is...

Best of luck and it sounds like you're on the right track.

@Joe Doman I have one tenant using cozy.co because her and her boyfriend want to pay their halves and I don't want to deal with any splitting. I want 1 payment, on time. Cozy allows them to do this and I don't pay anything.

For my other tenant I use the bill pay through Quickbooks. It works just fine except that there is a glitch when downloading the transaction into your books (the transfer is fine, but the download has problems). They said it's known and ignore it. The transaction still goes into the books, it just doesn't mark it as finished in the software.

Overall, both very easy. I prefer quickbooks because it is faster for me to enter, but both work great for different reasons.

MIP is not for the life of the loan. It was prior to 2001, but not any more. Once you are at 78% LTV (and I believe 5 years, but check on that) they should remove that portion. If not, you call or write your lender and have it taken off.