All Forum Posts by: Christian Clark

Hi Guys,

I'm looking for a book recommendation for my upcoming winter vacation. Last year I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and it was incredibly eye-opening and inspiring. I went on to give real estate investing a full hearted attempt in the first quarter of this year, but did not end up making a purchase.

I'm now thinking of investing in multi family out of state, and I'm wondering if there are any books on that topic that I should check out. Alternatively, if there's nothing that specific, what should someone interested in investing in multi family read after Rich Dad, Poor Dad?

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

-Christian

I read thru a lot of the rules on this and it seems the "catch" is that you cannot use debt service as one of your expenses. I'm not exactly sure what this means but I think it means that your monthly principal and interest don't factor into the equation.

@Michael Enriquez Congrats! I am in LA and also thinking of investing out of state. Can you share how long you were looking before you found this deal and what your process was for finding a specific city to invest in out of state? Did you narrow it down to just one city and then work with a local realtor? Or were you working with various realtors in a few cities you thought might work?

Any advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Congrats again!

@Tim Ryan I know you've done this research and ended up buying out of state. I'm interested to hear which areas within a drive of LA get closest to the cash flow you experience out of state and if you think being within a drive outweighs the smaller cash flow we'll experience in the LA area. I'm in a similar situation as the OP.

@Gina Tavizon Can you provide an example of how you pulled this off? I have heard about it on the podcast but can't find the episode at the moment. I am looking for a creative solution to a property I found off the MLS and thought assuming the loan might be a technique to explore.

This is a follow up to Brandon's webinar yesterday...

How does house hacking affect your 2/3/4 unit analysis? My goal is to live in the property and have the other units pay for most of the expenses.

I have been basing my math around wanting to have the same expense as an owner as I do currently now as a renter, but I'm not sure if that's realistic in SoCal. 

I sometimes feel like I should stray from that for a great property (location, location, location), but then sometimes I feel like I do need to stick to my guns because if the property isn't cash flowing with me in it, I'm essentially still paying rent but ALSO taking on the liability for the building. My cost per month therefore increases because I have to be saving for whatever might come my way. 

I guess this is just the name of the game, but would love any thoughts!

@Lee Ripma Where can I find more info on such conventional loans? I'm not familiar with the term "direct lender." Are these true 5 or 10% down scenarios or do they break it up across two loans - one at 80% and the other at 10 or 15%? Thus giving you a higher "blended rate" bc the small loan has a higher APR. Not that I can see any downfall to breaking it up across two loans, just curious...

@Jim Costa I'm not sure if Miko has this problem in the OC, but in Los Angeles County, we have rent control so a lot of 2/3/4 deals appear to be dead once you learn the ten year old rents. The building will lose money unless you spend $10-20k per tenant to evict them. Plus you have to be morally okay evicting a perfectly good tenant who pays on time and whose only strike against them is their previous landlord didn't increase the rent each year when he had the opportunity. Sorry if hijacking your thread, Miko!

@Miko Lee I'm in the same boat as you. Looking for my first 2/3/4 in the LA area so I'm sure we can swop war stories at some point. I just wanted to point out that you should not have to open escrow to see the properties. It is almost a rule that you can't see an occupied property until you put an offer out, but once the offer is accepted, they will show you the property (possibly simultaneously with other buyers at one time arranged for all of you). Then if you don't like the tenants you meet or the conditions of the units, you can back out.

If anything I've said is incorrect, please someone correct me. Trying to help but have only been at this since beginning of December!