All Forum Posts by: Dave Poeppelmeier

That's a great lender question. In general, if you're showing cash flow from an investment property, it's fine as long as you have reserves in case something goes wrong. You do have to look at your Debt to Income ratio to make sure you don't have too much debt vs what you think you'll be making with your new career, which is what Nathan is referring to. But again, talk to a lender and they can fill you in on all of the details. 

@Amy Summer welcome and congrats on thinking this far ahead! You have a few options here: 1: Simply focus and pay for your schooling. Unless you're going to be a full time Real Estate Professional, focus on your career. There's nothing wrong with bringing in a good W2 income to save money for down payments for future Investment Properties. 2: Buy a house where you're going to go to school and house hack. House hacking is where you buy a property, live in it for a little while, then keep it as a rental and buy a new house to live in. Look at the numbers on what it would cost to borrow money for Student Loans vs your Mortgage Payments. If you're going to leave in 2 years, you can keep the house as a rental there. 2(a): Buy a house where you're going to school and find some roommates to help cover the mortgage, utilities, etc. Yes, you'll still be spending money on the down payment, but at least you'll have to take out less loans because you'll have money coming in from your roommates. 

If you're going to try something like this, you need to contact a Realtor/Property Manager where you're going to school to see if these numbers would work. There are great contacts in most every market here on BiggerPockets that can help you figure this out. The one thing I wouldn't do is buying a property where you are now and you're not going to be there, so you're going to need to hire a property manager. Then a big cost item breaks/something happens, now you're distracted from your studies worrying about a house you're not living in, etc. 

Just my two cents on everything, but best of luck to you!

Agreed, go with what's here on BP. Most investors fine tune their leases over time to their tastes and needs, but if you just want to keep a renter in your old house and make some money, that's the easiest/cheapest way to get a solid basic lease. 

Also agreed on leasing 1 year at a time. I would also stop in more than once a year if you can. There are "professional tenants" out there that can tell if you're a seasoned pro or on your first property. Hope this helps, good luck!

Talk to @Chris Wharton at First Ohio. He works with several clients of mine. If you're interested in the Toledo market, let's set up a time to talk. 

@Christian Wendelboe to answer one of your original questions, yes you can switch lenders mid-transaction, but you and the new lender have to get on your horse to get things done by your closing date. The biggest thing is the appraisal, you need to make sure the new lender orders that ASAP. If you're going to do that, you need to have your Realtor reach out to the other side to see if they're ok with delaying closing potentially. If they're not because it was a competitive situation and they have other offers to fall back on, you may be stuck. 

Otherwise, I'm in the Local Lender boat (for Single Family), in that if you have a lender from the area you're looking in, listing agents and owner-occupant sellers are more willing to "trust" your offer. A lot of people have been burned by the "Out of State Buyer", who comes in with a high offer with financing from an out of town lender nobody has heard of, only to have them ask for tons of money off after inspection and/or the lender isn't able to close for some reason. If you have a local lender and a local Realtor of course, the listing agent knows who they are, Title knows who they are, etc. With the slowdown, this may not apply as much anymore, but it was definitely a thing the past couple years. If you're looking for Multifamily/Commercial (or the Single Family is already a rental), then @James Wise is correct in that they don't care about where your financing is from, so it may be worth the effort to look nationally for the best terms that apply to you and your investing. 

I will also vouch for First Ohio, many of my clients use them up here in Toledo and they do work all over Ohio. Sorry your offer didn't get accepted, but there's tons of properties out there. Good luck!

These are attorney questions. Best and easiest solution is to find an Estate Planning attorney out there and follow their guidance. 

LaPlante Real Estate is a full-service PM here in Toledo. Let me know if you have any questions. 

That's crazy. I use Natasha Reinhart at RBI Insurance as well as @Jackelyn Lee with Comparion Insurance, both of them are local and will take care of you. 

If you don't have time to dedicate to being an Investor, I would recommend passively investing in a REIT, Syndication, etc.

Yes, a Realtor can help you find a property, but you have to educate yourself on the area, prices, rents, etc. If you can find a Realtor that's willing to spoon-feed you investment properties, that's great. You also need a property manager of course, which I'm sure there are plenty to choose from in the Knoxville area. But overall, if you're going to invest in properties yourself, you can't treat it as a hobby. Good investors know their market like the back of their hand, and that takes time and dedication on the front end. Once you figure out what your criteria are, the areas you want to look in (actually seeing properties if you're local), etc, then you can put things on auto-pilot and know if a property is worth checking out or passing on based on some basic information in a listing. 

But, you're in the right place here on BP to start figuring all of this out. Best of luck!

@Sam Bhattacharya I agree with @Matthew Crivelli, you can find many houses for under $100k in decent neighborhoods in Toledo, especially ones that need work. Here's the thing though: everybody wants a BRRRR. But how are you going to Rehab it out of state? Try to find a contractor that won't gouge you the second they learn you're not local, or let a PM do it for a markup? Also, to get that kind of "Perfect" BRRRR is really difficult to do. There are investors in every market that have their mail/cold call teams working to find these perfect deals off-market, and many of them are local. Realtors typically won't help with that, because it's simply not what they do.

Now, since rates have gone up and the market is skidding to a major slowdown, the opportunity is getting better, even on the MLS as people who have to sell don't have 14 offers coming at them for anything that has 4 walls and a roof. If you don't want to do a mail/cold call campaign, you can find houses on the MLS that you can buy for $70k, put the $10-15k into it, and it will be worth $80-90k pretty easily, so you can get some of your money back. But to find the Home Run in your example on the MLS is really difficult. The biggest thing though is to get going doing something. If you can get into a nice, fixed up rental property and have minimal money in the project in the end, that's still a win. It all depends on how you want to proceed. Let me know if you have any other questions about Toledo, and best of luck to you!