All Forum Posts by: Caroline C.

@Desmond Walker another vote here for All Florida Title. 

Honestly though, if you are working with a realtor, I'd go with the title company they are comfortable working with, assuming price is in range of other companies.

@Jeffrey Franco for someone starting out, I recommend the podcast Passive Real Estate Investing. I'm not endorsing (or not endorsing :) ) the company behind the host, but the podcast is definitely informative.

Good luck!

@Jesus Lopez Jr we've used our HELOC's several times over the years to either be the down payment for buying an investment property, or to pay cash for the property and refinance later. Always for buy and holds. When we draw down the line of credit, we always work to pay it back as quickly as possible to avoid paying too much interest, and to have the line available to us if we find another investment we want to make. The nice thing is that you can use the line over and over and over again, depending on what your cash needs are at a moment in time.

@Irina C. nice - sounds like an amazing deal. It was just hard to really evaluate when some of the detail is missing. Getting a SFH in Jax that rents for $1300 for only $88k is really amazing.

Congrats! 

@Joe Davola Not sure if you are settled on south florida, but being from NYC myself, it was important to me to be near a city, and we love Jacksonville because it is a pretty big city, so lots of interesting stuff going on (when no COVID), especially when you also consider the beach areas. It's also way less crowded than the cities in the southern part of the state. Schools in Jax are not great, but next county (St. Johns) has great public schools, I understand best in the state, and some great communities to live in.

@Irina C. Congrats, and given you could negotiate the sales price down, the raw cash flow numbers look great! And a great experience having to dealing with the issues, especially a break-in. Did you come to Jax to look at properties firsthand with your realtor?

Given the rent to purchase price, just wondering if it is a duplex? If so, and given you already had a break-in, you might be on the lower end of the rental scale, so you'll definitely need to reserve funds, separate from capex, for eventual turnover costs (most all of my lower end places have had higher than expected turnover costs when the tenant left), and there is also potential for tenants that stop paying rent. 

What I thought was my best cash flow deal ended up with a huge turnover cost when the 2nd tenant left, and then with the couple of months of no rent, and tenant finders fee to the pm, it wiped away a lot of the previous 3 years cash flow - deferred maintenance had became a problem and also there was a major flooring issue. So now the overall deal doesn't look so great. But we have better property management in place now, so hopefully that particular place is turned around for me and doesn't get out of control again...

Good luck with it!

@Azmat Hossain I've done it x 3 - very easy to buy property there for foreigners. While I created an LLC and a bank account, you don't even need either of those. Just go visit, meet with local realtors, and you'll find some from the USA who will be happy to help you and introduce you to other locals you will need, like a lawyer and property manager.

Financing is a problem though - you'll need to pay cash or find a seller willing to finance it for you. Otherwise it is very expensive and/or impossible to get.

The other problem, unfortunately (COVID), I don't think Americans will be welcome to visit for quite some time. 

@Jon Woosley depends a lot on where you live. We were living in NYC when we started investing, and so out of state was necessary. We've had great out of state experiences, and bad ones. I'm sure the same could be said for investing locally. Certainly investing locally will make it easier to do your due diligence and meet and hire local partners, as well as network through a local REIA, a definite advantage when getting started. You should do your research though on out of state markets of interest to you, in case the deals are great. Also market diversification of a real estate portfolio is something to consider, especially if the market you might invest in is on the smaller side.

So many factors. If your reviews and particularly photos are good, and you are priced right, you can also beat the average. Is there seasonality? That's a big factor. Also sometimes larger and more expensive houses are harder to get fully and consistently booked.

PM fees can be rough. I actually have used more botique pm's - people who essential have their own str's and manage a few others to make it more of a business for themselves, and charge a smaller fee. You could research some listings similar to yours and see if you can if you can find that situation - where 'hosted by' or 'co-host' have a few other listings in their profile, and message them directly. 

@Brendan Nolan Jax area in general is great compared to other US markets - Beaches probably not so much. Being local, you have an advantage in that you can meet and get to know some of the wholesalers to learn the market and find the best deals. Start meeting people and looking at deals.