All Forum Posts by: Demetria Hall

Hello Dave, Brandon and Rufus,

Thanks for welcoming me to BP!  I am happy to be here and I have already purchased The Book on Flipping Houses and in the educational phase.

Hi Dmitriy,

Thanks for the welcome and encouragement!  See you around the BP site.

Malone and Devan, thanks for the welcome! 

Devan, yes, holding on to our regular jobs have benefited us tremendously in obtaining financing from lenders.  It makes us look better on paper.  Honestly, it was a lot of sweat equity in the beginning physically working on the houses every weekend.  We bought 8 houses in one calendar year, so you could imagine how busy we were.  However, we were driven and kept reminding ourselves of the bigger picture and goal.  There were days I wanted to give up, but having a supportive partner/husband really helped us both stay sane.  As I look back on it now, it was all so worth it!  Our business now almost runs itself and we spend very few hours a week on it.  If I could give one best tip in managing property and tenants, it would be to learn how to properly screen tenants.  This was a challenge initially, but the key is finding a tenant who will pay on time every time and who will take care of the property.  We tend to have very long term tenants because we take care of repairs promptly and keep the rents slightly below market value.  This strategy has really worked well in keeping a good tenants longer which cuts down on refurbishing cost and vacancy rates.  If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask me.  I am here to also give back as we have been tremendously blessed and grateful to do so. 

Hello Lyandrea & Charmaine, thank you for the warm welcome! Glad to be here and see you around the BP site.

Hi Jerry,

Thank you for your ideas! Our homes do have some equity in them now and we considered the blanket mortgage, but was a little concerned that if we ever had to sell one or two of the properties at a later date, the mortgage payment would not be readjusted the reflect the homes left over under the blanket. We would lose cash flow after the sale of those couple homes. I do realize that the homes could be sold as a package deal to another investor at a latter time, but we feel like it would reduce the number of potential buyers and would be harder to sell. We also thought about refinancing the properties in our individual names, but many banks we talked to would not allow us to do it unless we divorced. Not sure how true that is, but that's what I was told. Also, we were told that the max mortgage cap number is now 4 houses for a refi., so I'm not sure how that could work for us holding 10 properties. However, we are excited about the flipping houses strategy to obtain cash quicker, so that's the direction we plan to take for now. Plus, we just refnanced 7 of of the 10 houses under the HARP program. There are no restrictions regarding the number of houses you own. The homes just need to have been purchased via Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae during a certain period of time. We have significantly increased our cash flow on those and are very happy with it. Thanks again for your response and ideas! I really appreciate it.

Hello Hattie D.,

Yes, we looked at several banks and finally found a local community bank (portfolio lender) in our area to work with us, but they wanted 25% down on deals. Even though we had enough to put down plus reserves, we just didn't want to tie up that much money in the deal. We were used to doing deals with very little to nothing down that positively cash flowed immediately. So, we decided not move in that direction. Recently, we shifted our ideas to flipping houses to build up the cash for down payment for a bigger property like apartments. I hope to learn all about it here on BP.

Hello Winston, Elizabeth, Marlon, James, Jerry, Hattie, and Jojo. Thank you so much for the warm welcome and congrats. I'm very grateful to be here and have already learned so much within 3 days through BP Pocasts. I've listened to 5 so far and wish I had this type of resource 10 years ago when I first got started.

My name is Demetria Hall and I have been a real estate investor in the DFW area for the past 10 years alongside my husband. We both are engineers and work full time jobs while managing a small successful rental property business (10 Single Family Homes). We purchased 8 eight of our houses in 2007. Our original goal was to purchase 30 SF houses within 5 years, however the mortgage cap rules with conventional lending prevented us from moving forward. So we took some time to improve our property management skills in holding our 10 properties. We are now looking to flip properties in the Dallas, TX area to gain more cash to ultimately put a down payment on an apartment complex.