All Forum Posts by: Chris Olson

@Bill B.

That makes sense. Thanks for your insight!

Thank you all for your responses. This is why I love the biggerpockets community!

@Bill B. - If we end up selling the house, our intention would be to pay off the HELOC balance, get into a house hack with 5% down or so, and use the rest to acquire more investment property. I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by downsizing. Do you just mean getting into a property that's less expensive? The next property will likely be a similar cost or more, but we would have less money tied up in it since we would be putting 5% down instead of the 20% we put into this primary residence.

@Dan H. - We don't love living in our current home and had always intended for it to be temporary. One reason is that there is an apartment complex next door, so we have about 20 windows overlooking our backyard. Another is that with two kids, we're outgrowing the space and so we're actively looking to get into our next house. A house hack of detached units in a nice area sounds ideal. 

Pertinent information

Primary Residence: North Hollywood, CA - 2 bedroom 1 bathroom. 1100sqft on a 9000sqft lot

Estimated value - $1,000,000

Remaining mortgage - $520k

Open HELOC - 170k credit line. 70k currently used.

My wife and I bought our primary residence in 2017 for 705k. We did a pretty major renovation and then in 2019 it appraised for 910k and we got a HELOC for 170k. We used that HELOC to acquire two STRs. A 1/1 in Big Bear, CA, and a 2/1 in Joshua Tree, CA. We want to acquire two more STRs this year, but we also would like to get ourselves into a house hack. Our original intention was to hold on to this property and add an ADU or two, but now I'm wondering if we sell would that be a better use of our equity? Our house is near a newly developed mall (one of the main reasons we bought it) and we're seeing quite a few small houses being turned into multi-million dollar McMansions in our neighborhood.

What would you do?

I'll be closing on a STR in Joshua Tree in the next week and need to quickly assemble my team. Does anyone have any recommendations for a great cleaner and/or handyman?

We had originally planned on using the property management company who previously owned the house, but after going through their owner's statements we realized that the 30% they were going to take would completely kill the deal for us. 

Thanks so much for any help!

Thanks, Ethan! And thank you for those book recommendations, I'll definitely add those to my reading list. 

Some of the books that I've read so far are:

Rich Dad Poor Dad (of course)

The Cashflow Quadrant

The Book On Rental Property Investing

BRRRR

Long Distance Real Estate Investing

Flip Your Future

Miracle Morning

Who Moved the Cheese

The One Thing

In typing that out, you can kind of see where my analysis paralysis was coming from. I've since decided to read more business / mindset books and less real estate investing books for awhile. 

My wife and I are brand new to real estate investing and discovered Bigger Pockets in June of 2020. I used to listen to a lot of different podcasts like This American Life, WTF, Radiolab etc, but ever since discovering BP, it's all I listen to. I started reading as many books as I could get my hands on, listened to as many episodes as I could, and by the end of 2020 felt like I was starting to get analysis paralysis. 

In January I picked up The Intention Journal with the goal of buying 1 property by April 25th. I'm happy to say that we closed on our first property, a 1bed/1bath STR in Big Bear, CA on March 25th, and will be closing on our second property, a 2bed/1bath STR in Joshua Tree, CA on May 20th!

I'm eternally thankful for this community. My entire adult life I've dreamt of attaining financial freedom, but I honestly didn't know that it was a possibility until I discovered BP. Now I'm working as hard as I can to buy back my time, so that I can be there for my wife and daughters (2.5 years old, and 1 week old) instead of being locked away in an office for the next 30 years or so. 

THANK YOU BIGGER POCKETS!

Hey Jonathan, thanks! I'll send you a DM. 

Hey @Jon Schwartz great to meet another video editor on the forums! 

Thank you!

My wife and I have been lurking the BP forums, listening to the podcast daily and are very eager to dive into our real estate investing journey. Being based in Los Angeles can make things seem a little daunting. 

In the past, we've bought a condo and a single family home out here in LA using traditional financing.  We are now looking into hard money lending for our next and future deals.  Looking for any recommendations, insight or advice anyone can offer.  

Thank you!