All Forum Posts by: K W

We live at 6000' elevation in CA mountains, snow in winter, warm in summer. We planted plugs of Buffalo Grass. It does brown out in the winter, but comes back every year very green and nice.

It's good for saving water - we never water all winter - but it will not stay green all year. Good luck!

Be careful in Moreno Valley, as well as in the High Desert. All the "good deals" that I have seen are in neighborhoods I'm not comfortable to deal with. Also, in both communities, there are tons of For Rent signs on every street with multi-family units. We thought Moreno Valley looked good too, until we took a drive down there and actually saw the situation.

Hi Paul,
Is it too expensive to advertise it in the Sun newspaper, or in some of the Spanish language publications?

I live about 40 minutes from SB and have been looking for multi-family property to buy, but San Bernardino and the high desert (Victorville, Adelanto, Hesperia) have such high vacancy rates that rents have fallen quite a bit.

Another creative option is to put up a sign with flyers, like you see on a house for sale. And maybe take some flyers around the neighborhood and someone may know of a friend that wants to move nearby. Although by doing that, you are advertising to the neighbors that the house is vacant - - not a good idea if you're in one of the bad neighborhoods.

Good luck!
K

What about title of the property? Are you positive the "seller" is holding title? Have you actually met the seller and seen the property? If not, this could be a scam, in my opinion.

Thanks everyone, for your input. As the owner of a 12-yr old business, as well as another business that I just sold last year, I'm familiar with hard work and working towards my goals.

I guess I just need to figure out my goals! I'll do the additional research you've all suggested and keep plugging away.

K

So just way too broad of a question for anyone to reply?

Thanks

I'm far from an expert, but i did just read about this type of thing in a Nolo legal book about Tax Deductions for landlords.

This may depend on how you hold tiile and do business. If you are an LLC, partnership, or Sole Proprietor, you can NOT legally deduct an expense based on the time you, as the owner, put into the rental.

I believe that if you are a corporation, such as an S corp, you can become an employee of the corporation and pay yourself, but then you have to pay income taxes on that as well.

Hope this helps.

We are still trying to determine what is the best route for us. We have a huge amount of equity in our home and can be debt free in less than 8 years. Then we can put all that money into savings and have a net worth of at least $700,000 at retirement. (not counting retirememt savings).

We thought we wanted to take advantage of this great buyers market, but the more properties we investigate, the more we wonder if we should go that route. For example, we would have to pull $$ out of our home (at less than 5% interest) to buy into a multifamliy property.

We have found a great triplex in a decent area that has great cash flow. However when I compare the numbers for where we'll be in 12 years - (stay with what we're doing now, or invest) - the numbers for total net worth are very close. So what's the point in having all the hassle of dealing with a rental?

If we buy this triplex, we could have it paid off in 10 years and have steady cash flow, but we would still owe on our home at retirement. I'm not sure how much debt I want to have when we retire.

How much does appreciation factor into your decision? I see it was brought up in another topic recently. We are in Southern California, and as an example, our home was purchased in 2001 for $220,000, then soared to a vaule of $550,000 at the height of the market, and now we'd probably get about $350-400,000 out of it.

If we could buy this triplex and I could count on more appreciation, then I might be tempted to go ahead and take the plunge. But you can't guarantee a thing in this economy. Crystal Ball, anyone?

Any comments, suggestions, etc would be really helpful!! Thanks!
Kathy

Hi Claude -
Hey, my son is at Fort Carson. His unit is just now getting back from block leave and heading over to Afghanistan as well - however he won't be able to go because he is on med-hold.

Please take care of yourself, and thanks for serving!!! And good luck with your investing when you return.

Kathy

Thanks for everyone's input; really helps me to understand. I did the property analyzer worksheet and came up with 9% cap rate as well.

Richard, we drove around the neighborhood yesterday. This is the first multi-family unit we've looked at that we felt comfortable with the neighborhood. It is mixed with small homes and other multi-family properties, but the majority of them seem cared for and well maintained. It is a lower income area, but doesn't appear to be crime ridden either.

There were very few For Rent signs, which we saw tons of in the other neighborhoods we had been looking at. Also the cars were decent and parked off the streets, while other neighborhoods had junk cars all over the place. This one looks good.