All Forum Posts by: Dennis Cobos

Hello all!

My girlfriend and I are planning on partnering to buy our first investment property in the Sacramento area in California. We understand the risks that there are in buying a property together since we are not married, and we understand that we need to protect ourselves financially in the eventuality that our relationship ends after we buy the property. We want to get together with a lawyer to create a contract for our partnership, so questions that I have for this are:

• What type of lawyer should we look for to help us create this contract? Real Estate Lawyer? Family Lawyer? Etc?
• Does anyone know of a Lawyer that could help guide us in this in the Sacramento area or East Bay of the SF Bay Area?
• Does it make sense to form an LLC or any other type of entity?
• Anything else related to partnerships that I should be aware of or need to educate myself in more?

My girlfriend found an article called “Homebuying tips for unmarried couples” that discusses some dos and don’ts about this, and I think it makes some valuable points. But I wanted to get some feedback from people who might have been through this situation or know someone who has.

Here is the article: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/real-estate/homebuying-tips-unmarried-couples.aspx

Thank you for any feedback!

Hello all!

My girlfriend and I are new to real estate investing and we know what strategy we want to follow; it’s going to be buy-and-hold in multifamily properties. We are aiming to buy a property around the middle of 2017 in the Sacramento area.

Even though we think we will have between $25k to $35k saved up between the two of us, that will still not be enough for a 20% down payment, and even if it were, we don't want to have all of our capital tied up in just the down payment and closing costs, therefore, we have been thinking about an FHA or 203k loan since they only require a minimum of 3.5% down payment. But another option I heard about in the BiggerPockets podcast, episode 90 I believe, is that one of the person's interviewed did a conventional loan for only 5% down and he was able to pay the PMI upfront, so I began considering this option as well.

Also, since we are not married and we are planning to structure a partnership.

From this I have a few questions:

• What are some key things to consider with an FHA or 203k loans?
• Has anyone done a conventional loan with less than 20% down? Did you have the option to pay the PMI upfront? If so, what did the numbers look like?
• In the conventional mortgage options, does it have to be owner-occupied like an FHA loan?
• What type of banks would typically do an FHA or 203k loans or a conventional loan with less than 20% down?
• How can I go about finding banks that have FHA or 203k loans?
• Would my girlfriend and I be able to put both of our names in the loan or does it have to be in one name if it's an FHA or 203k loan?
• Anything else related these types of financing that I should be aware of or need to educate myself in more?

Hi everyone!

My name is Dennis, I am 26 years old working in the product management and engineering side of IT in the San Francisco Bay Area. I recently became really interested in real estate and found out about BiggerPockets so I knew I had to start here. I would love to learn from everyone here and utilize the tools and resources that are available through this site. 

I know that I will learn so much more through the site, but what I am interested in currently is buying properties to rent, and flipping houses. Also, something that came into my head recently was to be able to buy a house in Guatemala City, Guatemala (I am originally from there) to rent it out, or buy a house in Antigua, Guatemala which is a really popular tourist city, and have it as a seasonal rental property, possibly utilizing Airbnb. If anyone has done such things in other countries, or even in Guatemala itself, I would love to get advice on how to go about making that possible and what I need to educate myself in (laws, etc.). 

If there are any real estate meet-ups in the East Bay of the SF Bay Area that anyone here might be a part of, I would love to join a group like this and surround myself with other like-minded people. I am very open minded and very willing to learn. 

Looking forward to meeting great people through here!