All Forum Posts by: Crystal Robens

If you have a profitable cash offer and a crazy squatter - I would take the offer.  That's just my two cents.  You made money - try the next one.  

Our second home, which is a rural 1920s farmhouse, was hit by a car.  I am a licensed contractor and the repairs will be ~$70k to rebuild.  I want to take out a loan but I keep running into issues.  My credit history is perfect, but my score is low (~640) thanks to a high debt to income ratio.  
It used to be my primary residence, but I bought another house - so I already have a primary mortgage.   The house will be worth ~$270k when repaired.   As-is value is at least $130k (it's on 9 acres and the guest house and shed are intact).  Ideas on lenders???    Is this a "refinance" or not?  Between it being secondary home, my mediocre credit, it being owned and not already financed - I can't seem to find one! 

Thanks for the reply!   I work from home with a comfortable salary so my goal is to cover our travel expenses with our investments.   We don’t have any kids younger than college age so we are hoping to do exactly what you are and travel and have a great life from our investments.  I just feel like a distressed property is where the majority of upside will be and we are buying it below market so even if we improve it minimally we can always trade it out for a better performing property in a few years after squeezing out some tax benefits.  Thanks for the advice!

I only replied since you said you’re in Tempe.  I’m a real estate investing student at Harvard and our team chose a project there for our class project.  Happy to trade you the work of a bunch of Harvard students on a deal in your area to pick your brain for your knowledge of the area to help us get a better grade :). PM me if you’re interested.  

So I'm trying to up my game as far as investing in real estate. I have flipped one house that was a "learning experience" (aka I basically broke even lol). Another with a small profit. Then I house hacked by having one FHA mortgage in my husbands name only so we could take out another in my name only two years later. So we still own his - it's a house and a guest house - both rented.

We are looking into multi-family and hotels.   What I have going for me - a Class A Contractor’s license, a healthy W2 salary (I’m an engineer at a “think tank”), a little bit of experience, and about $25k or so in the bank for my next investment.  And I have fancy degrees in finance and economics and a real estate investment certificate from Harvard if anyone cares lol.  

What I have against me - no commercial experience.  A totally over-leveraged credit profile (fancy school student loans ain’t cheap!)  And not a lot of cash money to invest (wouldn’t feel comfortable with more than $25k-$40k).   Essentially no network except one amazing realtor who has been on this journey with me for 20+ years of me buying crazy fixer uppers :).  Yeah and broke-*** family members who would be happy to help if they weren’t all broke.  

Advice?   Specifically - I know I need to expand my network.  Where’s a good place to do that?   What has worked for you?  Other advice?  I don’t know what I don’t know...

Marco if you’re parents have good credit, ask them to add you as an authorized signer on a couple of their credit cards.  I did that for all of my kids when they were 16.  Then, at 18, one of my boys walked into Navy Federal a week after his 18th birthday and got a car loan for $6k and a $10k credit card because his credit score was 760.  All from being added to my cards.  At 19, he could now buy a house.  It’s a great way to build credit and the best gift I ever gave my kids was good credit and how to MANAGE it (he’s never charged more on that card than he can pay with a single paycheck.  So proud!)

I did a 203k on my first investment property.   It was with Wells Fargo and I can tell you it was a NIGHTMARE.  If I wasn’t the most diligent dogged never give up personality on earth, it would have never closed.  That said - with my credit and money available and the area I wanted to buy in it was the only fit.  Once it was finally done - I would say the headache was all worth it.