All Forum Posts by: Chloe Mayer

Thanks for the reply! I asked the lender including the investment property appraisal for more details, and learned exactly what you shared: that they do a rental income schedule. Which is kind of cool. It's just odd to me that the LoanDepot disclosures don't talk about it, maybe they don't require one!  

The first time I got a mortgage was 3 years ago buying my first home, that is and still will be my primary residence. Back then... I knew nothing, and felt like the lending process was super veiled and not really setup to help the consumer. Now as someone more informed and working on my first deal, I want to confirm what one is supposed to compare on loan estimates in order to make the best choice.

I have two loan estimates for the same loan terms: 

Loan Term: 30 years

Loan Type: Conventional

Loan Amt: $124,000

Interest Rate: 3.125%

The first loan, from LoanDepot via the broker Credible.com, costs significantly more for the points, but is cheaper on the underwriting / processing fee, appraisal fee, and apparently doesn't charge for a credit report. However, their estimate doesn't disclose items like: Flood Cert, MERS, Tax Service Fee, etc. 

The second loan, from Caliber, costs less for points, but is more expensive for underwriting / processing fees, charges an additional "Investment Home Appraisal Fee" (I learned that this is something charged by appraisers, does this really change lender to lender?), charges for credit report. It also discloses the items LoanDepot does not: Flood Cert, MERS, Tax Service Fee, etc.

I kind of assume that Flood Cert (if needed), MERS, Tax Service Fee, etc. are all required on any given loan, and the LoanDepot estimate is just failing to disclose that. 

So my question is, which pieces should I in fact be comparing 1:1 in order to determine what is the better deal? 

The Credible agent said the following: basically you want to compare the 3 items Appraisal/Credit Report Fee, Lenders Fee and Discount Points or Credits.

Is that correct? If yes, then Caliber is the better deal by... $24, so, doesn't really seem to matter. But if LoanDepot were to actually charge an additional "Investment Home Appraisal Fee," then they continue to that much more more expensive.

Thanks ya'll! 

@Donald G Longenecker Im also thinking about this! Looks like most conversations around this are quite old. I think Im going to look into reusing a national bank I have (Ally), or possibly looking for a local (in Tennessee) credit union. 

My sister and I are new to REI, but we're stoked as hell to jump in, and we happen to be lucky enough to have access to ~$275K in cash. We're trying to think through what is the best approach for investing this cash in order to get the most out of it, as fast as we can (in the sense that we want to really grow our investments quickly). We're interested in the BRRRR / buy and hold approaches, but, it seems generally that the BRRRR strategy is for folks with little to no cash?

We're currently looking in the Nashville market as we're from there, and believe it has lots of opportunity yet still. Initially we've been looking at single family homes, excluding new construction (not really our vibe), as multi-family units are almost nonexistent in the inventory in our budget. But how to spend this cash has been of the biggest concern, because without really having a strategy, we're not "crystal clear" on what we want, and so we can't successfully narrow down our field of opportunity and hone in on the right deals. 

Would ya'll: 

1. Buy a single property in cash and just have pure rental profit? Our fear is that with this option we don't really gain the ability to access capital in the shorter term in order to grow and purchase additional properties.
2. Use the cash in a traditional financing situation on more than one property, (OR maybe a bigger more luxury property) which give us a lower rental income return but longer term ability to do more? Or so this is our thinking if we can refi, etc.
3. Something else entirely that we haven't thought of..?!

We welcome any thoughts / suggestions. Thank you!