All Forum Posts by: Clifford Paul

Nice job! On to the next one. 👍

I see you are in Texas. You haven't gone to the court house and pulled the title. Maybe the clerk at the court house did not send title over to the tax assessor. 

This happened on one of my rentals and I didn't realize it until 2 years after I purchased the property. I should have because I didn't receive a tax bill for 2 years. 

Went to the tax assessors office and they corrected it within 5 minutes. Paid my taxes and now it all shows correct on county website. 

Could be the same type situation. 

 I have a 1.1 acre yard with  12 zones in west Texas. You just can't put 10 minutes a zone and keep the yard alive. Doesn't help that my water supplier has the highest rates in the county either.  

 Does your rental house have a sprinkler system? During the summer my primary house water bill goes from $60 to around $400 a month with just watering 2 times a week.  

1. Have cash to purchase properties 

2. Get an investor friendly real estate agent with pocket listings.  

3. Let everyone you know you buy houses with cash and can close in 7 to 10 days. 

4. Network with local investors and when you find a deal that doesn't meet your criteria pass it alone to one of your new best friends.  Let them know what you buy and they will return the favor. 

These simple task have worked for me for 35 plus years. I literally have more deals than I can buy.  Of course I'm pretty much done buying rentals, I'm in the payoff stage. 

Awesome! This is the only reason I would ever buy a boat.  👍

I did a rental 1940 sq ft all wood looking tile @ $3 a sq ft with me providing the tile.  This is very common price in my area of Texas.  You should be able to find someone in the $3 to $4 per sq ft range in your area as well. 

Congratulations! Looks great! I love when we turn a old property into beautiful home.  Keep up the great work. 

Let's not forget one of the best and most underutilized VA loan programs. The VA IRRRL refinance loan. My wife and I bought 4 homes in under 3 year's by using this strategy with no down payment and no funding fees on 2 because I'm 100%.

House #1 bought it with numbers that would cash flow as a rental with my VA eligibility. Moved in house.

After 1 year did a VA IRRRL refinance loan and reduced our rate.

House #2 bought it with numbers that would cash flow as a rental with my VA eligibility. Moved in and lived there 1year.

After wife PCS

House #3 bought it with numbers that would cash flow as a rental with my wife's eligibility. Moved in and lived in about 66 days.

After 30 days did a VA IRRRL refinance loan and reduced our rate.

House #4 the house I still live in bought with my wife's eligibility.  We had to write a letter stating why we wanted to buy another house after only being in house #3 for only a short time. We simply told the truth that it would cut 24 miles each day from my wife's commute.

* the great thing about the VA IRRRL refinance loan is you only have to certify that you lived in the house. This releases you from the one year occupancy requirement. *

I think that's a pretty good military benefit buying 4 house,  3 becoming rentals in under 3 years with no down payments. 

Home Depot and Lowe's discount.  

Although it is policy that you are not supposed to receive sale items and your military discount it's not a 100% no.  I have gotten both by simply asking.  I actually did this today when buying appliances for a new rental. All the kitchen appliances were on sale and I simply ask the clerk if I can still get the military discount.  He said let's see if it will take it.  Typed it in and boom $238.73 discount. Oh an as an extra bonus I always use my 5% back credit card when shopping at Home Depot and Lowe's.  

USAA rental property insurance. 

Not sure who said above that USAA doesn't do rental property insurance but that's wrong.  We currently have 5 of our rentals, 1 primary and 2 secondary homes with USAA and the rest with State Farm. I did see someone in another thread on BP say that USAA will only allow 7 rental properties but I don't know if that's true.  Maybe I will call and find out.

SCRA benefits:

Don't forget if you deploy you can terminate any lease.  I used it to terminate a lease on a truck.  The finance company tried to not let me out of the lease but one phone call from legal and they apologized for being dumb and even sent me a prorated check for part of the month. They also paid to pick the truck up as I was down range and could not deliver it.  

Food and other service related businesses: 

Don't forget a lot of restaurants and other service companies give a 10% discount.  When I meet with another investor I take them to lunch and utilize my discount.  Most restaurants discount the entire ticket.  If you live in a military community there's more available discounts.  Here's a short list where I get discounts:

Carpet cleaning 

Pest control 

Plummer 

Electrician 

Roofing company 

Air conditioning and heating company 

House cleaner 

Pool service 

Lawn care 

Flooring and carpet store 

Fencing company 

And a few handyman companies 

There's a bunch more but not really investor related so I won't list them.