All Forum Posts by: Keith N.

@Curt Powell I'm not too familiar with Greenville, but I do browse the MLS sometimes and there are usually a decent amount of multi's right around ECU. properties are cheap compared to RDU area, but you also have to be smart about "knowing your streets." Seems like you can pick up good cash flowing properties (2% rule even) near the college that students would want to live in, but there are also terrible areas right around the college you'd likely want to avoid.

@Erik Cabral Not sure what the property tax rates are like in New Jersey, but in Raleigh they're right around 1%, and Durham around 1.3%.  From what I understand this is pretty low compared to other populated cities.  

Hi,

I am new investor who owns both a duplex, and the current Single-Family home I live in myself. I put 3.5% down FHA on the duplex 1.5 years ago, and bought my primary 6 months ago with 5% down conventional. I live in the Raleigh Durham area of North Carolina.

Info about my finances:

Credit Score 750+

I DO have rental income from the Duplex on both my 2015 and 2016 tax returns

DTI if rental income is counted is certainly low

I KNOW that there are credit unions out there (in my area) who will do 100% LTV home equity loans, however I keep running into trouble when applying and dealing with these lenders. Examples:

Lender 1: RTP Federal Credit Union: "Must have rental income on 5 years tax returns to get this loan"

Lender 2: Coastal Federal Credit Union:  I THINK that I do in fact meet their parameters to qualify for this loan, but they are idiots and I think they're interpreting my tax returns in correctly.  They were doing this:

Expenses: Single family Mortgage  + Expenses/gain from my schedule E + Duplex Mortgage (THIS WAS ALREADY COUNTED IN MY SCHEDULE E!!!"

Does anyone know of a lender that can do a 100% LTV home equity loan in my area OR anywhere else (Raleigh, Cary, Durham, Apex, Garner, Wake Forest, Holly Springs) and is easy to work with?

Of course you can!

@Justin Fusco Welcome to BP! There is a solid group of BPers in the triangle area.  And some in Raleigh who do meetups pretty frequently.

Any agent should be able to hook you up to an "MLS portal" which pretty much allows you to use 90% of the funcionality of what agents have on the real MLS. You can get EXTREMELY specific with filtering using dozens and dozens of obscure criteria at once, to essentially narrow down on your exact target properties.

@Kurt Gardner I think I paid $150-200 last year.  But again this was a good friend of mine.  He even sent me Excel spreadsheets showing exactly how he reported my income and kinda walked me through it.  Very helpful

@Kurt Gardner I will not.  My first year of owning a rental (last year), I paid my young CPA friend to do my taxes.  I'll pay him again this year.  I figure it's a win win win.  He learns more about preparing taxes, I get my taxes done professionally and cheap, and I have a relationship with someone who can become familiar with my finances and keep doing them year after year.

@Natalie Kolodij  In my opinion, you should calculate the total net cost of the purchase ($155,000 - $2000 in Seller Credits = $153,000) + Total costs to get in move in ready ($3,000).  Also, the majority of those closing costs are the 5% I put down and I now "own" 5% of the property.  

Finding 1% deals in the Triangle area is hard enough as is.  Finding 1% deals which I personally wouldn't be embarrassed to live in for a year is even harder.  The deal isn't quite at 1% based on my calculations, you're right.  Property taxes here are also like 1.3%, so lower than a lot of other areas of the U.S I'd imagine... But the Raleigh (and even Durham market) can be tough to hit those 1% and 2% rules.

I used a realtor