All Forum Posts by: Chris Allen

@Torry McFall From your original post, what size property to you plan to list? From what I am seeing on AirDNA for 3-4 bedrooms in the area, over the last 12 mo the average monthly income for a STR is $4.66k. When looking at the area on FF (obviously I do not know where yours is) but there are several 1 bedrooms that I see renting for high $2k, and the 3 bedrooms I see are renting for closer to $3k.

I am not a lender, but as far as the financing goes, I think that if you go the MTR route, as long as you have a lease in place, banks will take at least most of that income. When I started on AirBNB for STR's, most banks really just wanted to see at at least 1 tax return showing the income from that property. So the financing aspect may not be as big of an issue as I think you are thinking. Plus, from how many properties it sounds like you have and are wanting to continue getting, you will likely be looking into DSCR loans soon anyways. At this point they do not care about your DTI, but rater the properties ability to service the mortgage. There are also companies out there that do DSCR loans for STR properties taking into account what the potential AirBNB income might be.

@Jeremy Fay is a great realtor, not sure if he is registered or not thought. 

@Torry McFall here is a link to a post I made a few weeks ago. 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Hey there @Jacob Breytspraak, welcome! I am a travel nurse as well, so I love seeing other nurses get started! It sounds like you are in a great spot to start, so here are my suggestions. 

- Focus on educating yourself, meeting others at meetups and online, and talking about real estate and your goals to others (never know who at work might be a great connection). 

- Have you identified a target market? Find a market you like, ideally one you have an "unfair advantage" in (you know people in, have some type of connection to).

- Write out your goals. Does not have to be anything concrete, but just something to get your started. 

- I would consider trying to buy a primary home first and house hack. It can sometimes be difficult to get a lender to approve you for an owner occupied if you are traveling and do not have a connection to where you are tying to buy. 

- You could also look at partnering with someone to learn the ropes. Being a private money lender to someone or being a cash partner can be a great way to learn. Just make sure you do it the right way. 

 Haha that's great, I was going to do CRNA before I decided to focus on the Real Estate stuff first. 

Yeah, that's a lot of cash to shell out for something you don't own. But yeah, I know people that do well with AirBNB Arbitrage as well; it can definetly be a great business for income. The only downfall is you are not optimizing the tax benefits of owning the real estate or getting the appreciation and loan paydown as doing that. So if you are truly wanting to run a STR business, AirBNB Arbitrage is a solid strategy, but if your goal is to own the real estate, then I would say focus on buying your first property, convert that to an STR, THEN arbitrage to get more business if you want.

Ill DM you as well and we can chat!

 Hey there Ivan and welcome to BP! I am an ICU nurse, so at least we have the love of BP to agree on lol. 

Couple of things here

- Rental Arbitrage is not investing, but it is a great way to help you build up some capital and experience in STR's when starting out. You will still need some decent capital to do this though (Security Deposit, furnishings, etc...), could be up to $10k depending on the size of property. This $10k could be used as a DP on a primary home instead.

- If you are really wanting to get into STR's, I would suggest that you try and position yourself as a "Professional Host" or a Co-Host. Then you can "partner" with property owners and you would not come out of your own pocket to furnish a property, you would just manage.

- If properties where you at are really too high for you to afford right now, I would either focus on increasing your savings, or maybe doing the out of state investing. 

What do you mean when you say the loan you applied for was "just not enough"? Like you did not get approved for an amount you needed or what? I know several people in Florida who are investing in the secondary and tertiary markets around the major cities and having good luck with that. 

 Glad you got some help from this! Get on Furnished Finder Travel Nurse FB group and other travel nurse FB groups as well. You can post your property on there!

 You can look at a few different travel nurse housing websites and search for your area and see what recruiters are posting for which hospitals and which nurses are looking for which hospitals. But in most cases, if you are able to find a property that is within 30 min of multiple hospitals then that is pretty solid. 

 Like others have said, I would not buy something in Killeen that has negative cashflow, especially if it is in a pretty rough location where raising rents might be a little more difficult. 

If your SFR has that much equity and is cash flowing strong, I would maybe see if you could get a line of credit on that equity so you could still utilize it to get more properties. I know getting a LOC on a rental is a little more difficult, but is doable.

@Allen Duan and I see you are in LA, so maybe $6k/mo for housing might actually not be that bad of a deal lol.