All Forum Posts by: Jim S.

Tax records - in many cases your town/county will have an online search you can use.

Having lived in Binghamton for 4 years and witnessed the vacancy there you probably won't see great appreciation (in the short or long term). You will however have one of the best price:rent ratio markets in the US. Focus on that, any appreciation you eventually may get is just a bonus.

First - congrats on finding real estate investing at an early age! I wish I had started looking into this 10 yrs ago. Honestly I'd start off by picking up a few books and reading the forums here at BP. Would recommend listening to 1 BP podcast per day so you can start to get a feel for how successful investors have built their empires. I'd look at Scott Trench's new book Set for Life. The most important thing at your age is to find as many ways to be frugal and scrape together savings while you start building your income. You won't be able to get loans until you have 1) decent credit 2) stable income so make sure to open a credit card if you haven't already. Never leave a balance on it, pay it in full each month. Discover It is a great card if you have a source of income but limited credit, had my little brother get it when he turned 18. I use it myself as well when the 5% category is useful like with restaurants last quarter. Good luck!

If you believe they won't vacate (sounds likely) you might want to just start the eviction process and issue a 20-day notice to terminate and see where it leads. I'd recommend contacting a local attorney that has eviction experience to guide you through the process. Will be well worth the money to get rid of this headache. Honestly the argument of "they might trash the place" applies regardless of whether you kick them out now or months from now. The sooner the better it sounds like to me. Will be a huge value add to the property once you are able to get solid tenants in there. Good luck with it all!

Personally I do the exact opposite. I take out a loan with the highest possible ltv and find a property that cashflows. If it's making me money I don't care if there is a loan - let the tenants pay that off for me. Any time I get too much equity in a house I'll use a heloc/cash out refi to get money to buy more properties. You should always think of your ROI per dollar invested. Paying down your loan will give you a 4% ROI (or whatever your interest rate is). The stock market will give you 8% typically. Leveraged real estate (continually buying cash flowing properties using loans) is closer to 20-25% CoC depending on the properties you buy. **Quick description of your ROI after 10 years in each of those 3 scenarios assuming the $6k in contributions per year: Pay down mortgage (4% ROI): 60k principal + $12k interest = $72k saved, all as equity tied up in home No extra payment, invest in stock market (8%): 60k principal + $27k interest = $87k, all as liquid assets No principal payment, buy more proprieties with mortgages (20%): 60k principal + $95k interest = 155k, paid as monthly income via rent As others have said it depends on your risk tolerance but personally I'm going to take advantage of the cheap bank/govt money and grow my wealth at as fast a rate as possible. So far my two properties are each yielding >25% ROI. I was doing the same thing as you two years ago until I realized I could get a better return in the market. This year I realized I could get a far better return in REI. I'm 28 now, I'm just investing from my salary - I intend to retire in 5 yrs.

A friend: "I'm going to buy a 2bd apt in SF for $1.3M" Me: is that a good investment? "Even if the market doesn't go up it's not going down here any time soon." Me, not vocalized quite as strong: Until the startup bubble bursts and your salary decreases by $75k + housing prices tank. Even if it doesn't your entire living savings have now been used to purchase a massive liability that you need to put more much more money than rent into each month.

It helped that I grew up in Albany (which is where I invested) but realistically I lived in the suburbs and knew little about the downtown area of Albany, Troy, or Schenectady. I knew generally where the bad areas were but that's about it. Looking at active rental listings I got an idea for rental prices in a given area. I tried to find multi family properties right on the border of a good/bad area which yields a great price:rent + appreciation chance. My realtor I found by going online, looking at re/max and picking the youngest looking realtor I could. I knew I'd be having him go look at a large number of $100k properties (low commission) in sketchy areas while doing it all remotely via FaceTime. Totally worth it as a new realtor building up your business, maybe not as much for a seasoned vet. Put in offers on 4 places before I finally got an accepted offer. I had been calling property managers throughout the process but 3 didn't want to service that location. Settled on my current property manager as he had 22 5-star ratings on thumbtack (although I'll be looking for a new one next year). I'd recommend asking for referrals on BiggerPockets + referrals from your team as it starts to build. The great thing about investing out of area is that you're forced to build a scalable business. It's harder to start out but you will end up with a full team to manage your existing property + acquire others.

I agree with @larry.t - try looking upstate if you're looking for cashflow. Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany all have mfrs that will cashflow. If I can manage my upstate investment from CO you can from in-state, just find a good property manager.

Great post! Reminds me of my landlord when I was in college who was actually the first person to tell me I should think of getting into real estate. I was the point of contact for my frat (read: 16 people living in one larger SFR), so we spoke pretty regularly and had a great relationship since I helped keep things in order. At one point I realized we were paying this guy $4200/mo for a property that I could see on the MLS he bought for something like $180k. I tried to get him to sell (using alumni as our backing investors) but he came back with a price in the $400 range and said he had no real need to sell.

Awesome! I'd recommend you keep cashflow in mind - if you can find a property there that cash flows then great. If not - look to out of state investing as many of your fellow CA'ers do. Most financed CA properties won't cashflow, middle of the country has hundreds of towns/cities that will however.