All Forum Posts by: Carolyn W.

Dear Bigger Pockets community:

I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on my current situation.

The first rental property I bought last year has definitely been a learning experience on home repair and maintenance.

Purchase price: $59K, April 2015, Actual Monthly Rent $995 to $1050, Current ARV: $86K Zillow and Redfin Money spent:  May 2015: $12K bath & kitchen & floors improvement June 2015: $4100 new sewer pipe (June 2015) July 2017: $6700 New Air conditioner & blow in attic insulation (furnace okay) $22,800 for major capital improvements
Upcoming maintenance items: $1700 for pruning large trees, $720 to repair hole in roof from fallen tree branch.
Property has galvanized piping which my home inspector failed to warn me that eventually this will need to be replaced. The monthly cash flow for the next 17 months will be paying off the new AC. Since purchase, all cash flow has gone to other repairs not listed above.  Your thoughts?  I'm thinking sell as owner finance.

I'm finding the vendors that the prooerty managers uses are expensive. I'm out of state. is it possible to manage the property from out of state? I'm currently looking for bids for a new AC since their vendor charges are about 40 to 50 percent more than the estimates I've received. Any advice out there?

This is my first attempt as a DIYer.  I had thick painted popcorn ceiling to deal with and I ended up hiring help for it.  I tried this eco-friendly painted texture stripper and it caused it to be gum.  It did not come off easily like the videos.  The contractor showed me with a scraper that it's better to scrape the peaks from the popcorn off and then mud.  You don't have to scrape it off entirely.  This was a huge learning experience for me.  Painting is not "easy" because there is a lot of prep work.  The painting is just the final step.  I've learned a lot about mudding and texturing the wall.  For future work, I'm just going to hire it out.  It's a lot of time and expense determining and buying materials you need.  

How do we use IRA funds to purchase/invest in real estate? Can I just have the IRA fund just a portion of the down payment (eg. 10%) and then I put in 10% cash?

How do we structure this? If your a realtor in Houston that knows how to work with IRA funds for purchase, please contact me.

Hello,

I'm a new investor and have one SFR rental and just bought a condo for me to live in that is close to work. I plan on living in that condo for a few years before moving out and turning it into a rental. My goal is to have enough cash flow of $100K per year in 3 years. I have a demanding full time job so flipping may not be an option at this time.

I'm looking at $75K 3/2 SFR homes. This comes to about $23k of cash I need to save for $15k (20% down), $3k lender financing costs and 5K rehab budget.

I'm open to ideas on alternative real estate investing strategies so that I can get to goal faster. Even at best with $500K cashflow, I'd need to purchase 17 SFR homes in 3 years. I'm starting to educate myself on multi-family and apartments.

With just my income, I can purchase two $60K-$75K SFR properties / year. In 3 years, that would make 6 properties, one of which is the condo I'm living in. That would bring me to $2500/ month ($30K/year) cash flow if all 5 properties were cash flowing at $500/month.

The alternative strategy is to get a multifamily unit but that would mean I'd need to wait 2 years to just save $80K (20% down) to purchase a multifamily of $320K with a cap rate of 10% that provides a gross income of $32K/year.

From these two scenarios, it looks like I might as well purchase SFRs since the second scenario of waiting 2 years to buy a multi-family would mean I would not be actively investing for 2 years. 

Any suggestions you can give me are welcome.  Maybe there is a podcast or webinar I'll need to see.

At $300 monthly cash flow a door, you'll need 50 doors.  Is that 50 houses?  Or, do you buy an apartment?  It's going to take a long time to acquire 50 doors. 

Is the webinar recording going to be available?