All Forum Posts by: Chaz Heasley

Thank you Matt I appreciate the advice.  I've called a few credit unions but I'll look into long reach.

Thanks Alan. I've looked into FHA and asked banks about them but they tell me they need 2 years of work history since I'm a union worker. I had a bank tell me that they would qualify me for a $50,000 USDA loan for 0% down but they said it has to be single family.

I've thought about getting a single family that I can house hack into a multifamily with a few modifications if that's possible.

I’m looking for some advice on financing a small multifamily property to live in one unit and rent out the others.  

My situation: I’m a union carpenter so conventional banks say that since I’m in a union they like to wait until I’m in the union for at least 2 years so that they can determine my income.  I have been in the union for a little over a year and I have a pretty consistent work history before that. 

I own a house that I inherited and my sister pays $200 so I guess you could say I’m house hacking it currently.  I have done all the work myself instead of using a rehab loan.    Due to the condition, the bank won’t accept it as move in ready.  I have just used personal lines of credit to pay for materials.  I have every room but one bedroom and small half bath fixed.  Hopefully the bank’s appraiser will accept it so that I can refinance and use the equity, but I don't know how picky they will be.

With house hacking I have been able to pay off most of my debt and start saving more.  I have about $4k saved up plus about $5k worth of stocks that I can sell.  

My plan was to finish fixing it up so that I can use the equity.  However, that will probably take a couple months if I'm working a lot so I might hire some help.  I want to get my own place ASAP so I'd like to give myself more options if it takes too long to get the bank to pull the equity.

My question is: What are my options to finance a owner occupied duplex purchase so that I can move in ASAP? If I can't get a conventional loan are there other lenders I can connect with that might be able to help? Most of the places I am looking to invest are pretty cheap markets. I was hoping to find something under $100k and with my skills I can take on a BRRR if need be.

Originally posted by @Nathan Hayes:

@Chaz Heasley, if you've got any properties in the markets you just listed that you're wanting to unload before the bubbles you're referencing pop, I can find you people in each of those markets who will buy them for 15-20% below appraisal right now.  That way you can get out from under that falling sky before it lands on your head.  :)  

My day job is in the mortgage industry and I can definitely see a trend toward another housing bubble, but there will be many corrections followed by more appreciation before we get there.  There are so many factors involved, not least of which is the economic decisions made by this (and the next) executive administration, and how the GSE's respond.  

There are too many unforeseen consequences with so many decisions.  A microcosm example is with the announcement that Amazon is boosting all employees to $15 per hour, and giving a $1 per hr raise to those making $15 or more.  With the stroke of that pen, they also eliminated most of the restricted stock offerings to their hourly employees.  If I had to choose between a $3 per hour raise or 25-30 shares of Amazon stock, I'd take the stock in a second. 

Just some random thoughts...

Yea it's hard to tell when it will hit so I'll keep that in mind and let you know.  It could just be corrections for now.

I saw that Amazon is raising their employees to $15/hr.  Smart move by Jeff Bezos he's switching a lot of production and sales to robotics.  Amazon has been talking about even having stores with no employees.  A lot of smaller businesses that don't have the robotics or the money to pay their employees a $15/hr minimum wage will go out of business.

I work construction gigs as a carpenter and rehabbed my entire house down to the bare bones so I know all about that.

I just bought "Housebuilding" A Do-It-Yourself Guide by R.J. DeCristoforo.  It really goes into detail about every aspect of building a house.  Framing, roofs, exterior, plumbing, electric, ect.  It even talks about building codes and permits.

Even though your not building a house, rehabbing is mostly just tearing out the old to re-build.  In order to rehab you need to know how to correctly build. 

It would be a good book to use as reference if you are doing major rehabs that are complete gut jobs.  But if you are just patching some drywall and replacing a few fixtures then you can find all that stuff on youtube.

@Thomas S. is right there is a bubble in many cities that are about to pop if they haven't already.  San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Dallas, and L.A just to name a few.  So I'd avoid those cities that have outrageous appreciation like what happened before 2008.  Unless you want to take the risk and flip a house before the bubbles pop.

Find a market that fits your budget you can invest just about anywhere that you can find a demand for housing.  See what the area is like the local demographics, unemployment, ect.

Decide right away what exactly it is that you want.  What niche of real estate investing do you want to focus on?  Is it wholesaling, flipping, buy and hold, or note investing?  Single family, multifamily, ect.  Don't try to do them all at once.  Define your goals,

Then once you have your goals set then start reading books to get the fundamentals down.  You don't have to know everything just enough to get started. 

Last but not least, start building your network right away.  BP is a good place to network online and find events.  If you can't find any in your area check Facebook and Meetup.com.

@Nicholas Gray You already own rental properties. I don’t know what your debt column looks like but with the money your making as an aerospace engineer you should be able to go all in as an investor if you play your cards right. Cut your spending and save more to invest. Build up enough cash flow then invest full time.

I took a look at their website....Are you talking about the QuickFlip app?  If so then I would be cautious.  It looks to me like they are making up claims.

The website wasn't secured with a SSL certificate which is odd considering all the claims they were making and customers wouldn't feel as safe entering payment information.  There were only 3 reviews on their website and one of them was supposedly from a couple that was on HGTV.  On the homepage there are claims that they have been on abc, CNBC, A&E, the Today Show and others.  It also says that they have over 73k facebook likes and over 8k students.

However I couldn't find QuickFlip on facebook.  I couldn't find any reviews and nothing on google or youtube.  The shows that they say that they were on they obviously lied about.

Last but not least, I did find them on the google app store but they had ZERO reviews.

I would find a good real estate agent to help you out with that....You'll probably just have to take what your given.  I'm from a really small town and there is usually at least some somewhat recent home sales to compare to.  They might not be exactly like your subject property but you will just have to adjust the numbers accordingly.