All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Thanks, Dave! The $20k selling price was as quoted by our realtor, who we worked with before when buying this house. Doing the math based on the 7-8% estimate, that's about right. 

Thank you all, that's all very helpful and gives us some clarity! 

Thanks, I appreciate that. Just to be clear, we have learned a lot since we bought this house and would do any necessary renos right this time (hiring appropriate people, not doing it ourselves). 

I hope this is going in the right forum. I need help! My husband and I bought our house (our first and only home we own) 3.5 years ago. Long story short, we bought a fixer because that's all we could afford at the time, and sunk $10,000 in doing renovations that, looking back now, we probably shouldn't have tried to tackle at all because we really didn't know what we were doing. But it was new and exciting and, well, lesson learned. 

So now we have this house that has all kinds of renovations unfinished, and we're not sure if we should sink more money into it to finish everything and do it right and rent it out, or sell as-is and take what appears to be a significant gain and move onto a house that doesn't need so much work. If we rent we could potentially bring in about $500 month cash flow. If we sell it looks like we could come out $80k + positive (and it would cost us about $20k to sell).

We aren't sure what/how much exactly we'd need to do to make it rentable. Some of the issues are:  

-The ceilings need to be refinished throughout the house (it's 900 sq feet), and some parts of the walls that were messed up during our renos from when we moved in.

-The previous owners made a garage out of an existing carport and none of it was done right, but it's been pretty functional for us.

-All the interior doors (4 doors) need to be replaced, and probably the front door too.

-Bathroom needs a renovation (very small, basic bathroom, it's the only bathroom in the house).

-The kitchen needs to be finished (upper cabinets installed, some kind of backsplash installed).

-Whole house needs to be painted inside.

We also recently had the roof done, which was another $10k. Any help or advice is much appreciated! It all feels so overwhelming. Let me know if more info is needed. Thanks! 

Thanks, Adrian! 

Hello! First time posting (besides my intro).

My husband and I are wanting to start investing in multi-family properties. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed as I'm trying to learn about all of this and I have lots of questions. 

~Our plan is to buy a duplex, live in one side and rent out the other (I just learned there is a term for this... house hacking), rent out our current home, and then after a year buy another duplex and do it again. The reason is so that we can get better financing with it being bought as owner-occupied, since this area is so expensive to buy and we're having trouble finding something we can afford. 

This situation isn't ideal for us as we have two little kids and we'd rather not move a lot, but if we can't find another way, we'll do it. Because of this, we're alternatively thinking about investing further away from where we live to be able to buy as investment property and not have to live in it. Maybe in central Washington? Maybe in another state? We just don't know where to look. Any advice for how to decide where to invest would be greatly appreciated.

~If we are looking to invest in cities that are hours away from us, do we contact a realtor in each city? How does that work? 

~I've been seeing people talk about how they buy a rental, then immediately refinance. Why/how do people do this? I'm trying to read about it but I'm not understanding. 

~How do you find a good, reliable contractor to work with? 

Thanks in advance for any help! 

Hello! My husband and I have been reading blogs and articles about investing in rental properties, and we're also being mentored by a family friend with lots of experience. Our only experience in real estate at this point is buying our home and we are ready to invest in our first rental property, looking at duplexes. Our plan is to live in one side of the duplex, rent out the other side, and rent out the home we're living in currently. Then as soon as we're able to, buy another duplex and do it all over again. 

We'd love any advice relevant to that, as well as how to find a good team (agent, contractor, property manager, etc). For example, if we're looking in multiple cities that are hours away from us, should we contact a realtor in each city? How does that all work? 

Thank you!