All Forum Posts by: Dan Brogan

Quote from @Justin Thind:

Update, if anyone cares lol: Put in an offer today on a house I found yesterday & immediately went to go see. Already got a promising counter that I’m thinking of jumping on. Enjoying the process for sure.

I’m happy to read that very last line- you are enjoying the process!  Taking action is where all of the fun is, but enjoy all of the steps before you actually spend the money. 
There is always a lot of people saying to just go and buy and don’t freeze because you have all of the options. It sounds like you are on the good side of that line where you get as much information as you can and listen to what makes sense and do your own thing on your own time. We sometimes don’t like to mention that there are indeed bad deals out there that would be a financial disaster to purchase. You never want to make that mistake, but you especially don’t want to make that mistake on your first property. 
I also found it difficult to get cash flow so I adjusted my goals and am happy to have a single long term rental that breaks even. The renters are paying the mortgage down and I’m getting the appreciation so net worth steadily goes up. I gave up on any real cash flow in my area, at least for the first few years. 
The people that have good immediate cash flow are the short term renters, I may make a foray into that- but it is a lot more work. That is for another day. 
I like your plan of an easy, safe first property. Be happy to break even years one and two, then you have some safety to make more adventurous moves. 
In addition to getting a good first house, get good first tenants too. Vet them well, I turned down the first 4 people and that was harder than I thought it would be. 

My two cents :)

let us know how things work out once you have the property purchased, renters in and the house on auto pilot!

I agree that a house hacking route is the way to go. There are houses in the Vine neighborhood that are in good shape, but even in good shape, a 100 year old house is going to be a challenge!  If you are living onsite, you get the added value of really knowing the ins and outs of the property. There will always be students to rent to if that is your goal. 
My one piece of advice is to hold out for a house that has vinyl siding if you can. There are houses that were sided at one point and they are now grandfathered so you can keep the siding. If you have a giant, old, wooden house you will need to budget for a lot of ongoing maintenance that will be painstaking to do yourself and expensive to pay for. 

Keep looking!  There are good houses but they don’t stay on the market long. Go visit a ton of them and run the numbers. Be sure to run the numbers to convince yourself to pass, not trying to justify a purchase. It may take a year or two and you might hesitate on a good house and miss it. Better to do that than jump on a bad house. Have confidence the house will show up because it will. Just know what that house is and you will do it!  

I ended up buying a long term single family in the Oakwood neighborhood and I’m so happy I did, but I’m more looking for passive income (ie less work). 

You are on the right track!!

Hi Alex- I live in Kalamazoo, close to WMU. I'm looking at duplexes near the university right now. I'm also considering SFH in the area.
mid you are interested in meeting up to see if we can work something out I would be open to that. 
I also recommend going to open houses so you can have some conversations with the realtors there. Sometimes you get good info, sometimes you may see it the same, but always good to talk to people and learn. 

Quote from @Brandon Koster:

FYI: Lake Michigan Credit Union recently stopped doing HELOCs on rental properties.  

 I just found that out about LMCU- they were my first choice.  Happy to see the other options listed here though!

I’m very excited to be part of this group and looking forward to learning more quickly with the benefit of everyone’s experience here. 
I’ve been researching how to invest and started looking at properties that fit what I’m looking for, I’ve finally started the financial step and I’m doing things like actually posting for the first time here :)

I have my HELOC in process. I got prequalified for a mortgage amount. I'm not certain I want to use a mortgage, I may wait to find the perfect property I can fix up and start renting strictly with my HELOC.

I did NOT expect to get flooded with phone calls the day after I got pre qualified for a second mortgage. does anyone have any tips on how to put a stop to these or do I have to let them run their course?  One of the callers told me he got my info from it going out on Experian when they ran my credit check. 

Any advice?

Any other advice on going BRRRR to start or getting an easy win and buying a turnkey property? I want BRRRR but I keep reading I should go for a slam dunk on the first property.

Thanks!

Dan