All Forum Posts by: Devin Cutler

Thank you, Jack, this seems like a logical place to start! I should have thought of that lol!

Wow, Scott thank you very much! I will need to read this a few more times and listen to your podcast, you are right, I am currently house hacking my way to my second property. I did form an LLC because I thought I needed to do it for tax and liability purposes.

The location is excellent for longterm rental income. Over the last two years, I have seen a 36.8% appreciation.  But, looking at it now, I realize forming for just one house may have been a bit premature? 

My wife and I are working on scaling as quickly as possible. We are both in property management and aspire to 1031, exchange our way to owning small apartment complexes and eventually small hotels, like a Courtyard by Marriott or something on that level. Does it make sense to hold onto the LLC, I created or start fresh once I have a stronger portfolio?

Okay, I keep thinking about this, why can't you form an LLC that then leases the property from the owner, to use to rent to the tenant? If there is a liability issue wouldn't they have to sue the LLC and if the LLC doesn't own the property what is there for them to gain? It would be like if I rented a car from Uber and crashed it with passengers, Uber wouldn't be liable right? I am sure there is something I am missing here. lol

I don't think there is enough air force of pushing the heat to the rooms. By the time the air gets to the room, there is little heat flowing out.

So, my house is set up with just an oil furnace, each winter we have struggled to keep the rooms on the other side of the house warm. Now we have renters moving into those rooms, (we moved into the low portion of the house) and I am nervous about how I should heat them, I want to add electric wall heaters with thermostats to maintain 72F but I am afraid the tenants will get crazy with the heat and I will be stuck with the bill. Does anyone have some advice on an economical way to address this issue? I know that the burner in the furnace is brand new, and it does heat most of the house but not all of it.  

Thank you, this happened last summer before we got married, so we were on hold of a little while. But we ended up, finishing our Mother-in-Law in the basement, and my wife and I moved down there. After that, we rented out the guest room on the first floor to a Flight Attendant. Now later this month we are splitting the Master Bedroom upstairs turning our 3 bed 2 baths into a 4/2 then we will fill the spare two bedrooms with either more flight attendants or college kids. Then we hopefully refi next month if the Feds cut interest rates at the end of this month. Which should cut out our PMI ($130) and save us about $100 or so, on the interest rate, at that point, we should be cash flowing about $2200 a month. With a new plan of saving that until we can get into a Duplex or TriPlex to BRRRR somewhere in the US using the HELOC to complete the remodel.

I am as green as green gets, to the world of investment properties. I almost pulled the trigger with Morris Invests, I was just about to leverage my HELOC to make a move, but my gut kept saying, "If you want it, suffer for it," I want to invest and shape my future. Nothing is free. The effort is needed even if it's free. I realized what he was selling was a pipe dream, placing it into the hands who do not have my interests at heart or even mutual interests #duediligence.

My Wife and I are all in! We have decided to be committed to BRRRR Investing. I have been listening to BiggerPockets podcasts for the last four years. In 2015, I turned my credit around, paying off my bad debt. Then in 2016 my wife and I bought a house in Des Moines WA, situated next to SeaTac Airport, Highline Community College, and the Police Academy. During 2017-18 we saved our money and used that for a beautiful wedding in Jamaica last December 2018 (holding no debt).

Now we are pushing forward, hacking our home, we have completed a "livable" mother-in-law area in our basement. My wife and I moved down there we and are now working towards renting our upstairs bedrooms individually to flight attendants. We are 1/3 of the way (next week we have a contractor splitting our Master into a two bedroom) once we get the last two rooms filled we are saving about $2000 extra each month with our setup. We will than refi as a four bed two bath comp for added value for less than a $2000 cost to us.

In the fall/winter months of 2020, we want to do kick off the "real," step-off into investing we plan to use the rental income to place the 20% down for a purchase and then use our HELOC from our primary to fund the rehab. We will follow the steps of the BRRRR process focusing on multi-family 2-4 plex.

The first two years, I listened I was convinced I should and begin in Aberdeen. Now I am strongly considering starting off investing out of state. I have been looking on the MLS daily at Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, Wisconson and just today Louisiana, breaking down the deal and just preparing for the next step. Here is my question, what do you think our current plan, is sound? If you had to step off the ledge again, where would you start?

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Des Moines.

Purchase price: $284,000
Cash invested: $14,000

We are hacking our home, we have completed a "livable" mother-in-law area in our basement. My wife and have I moved downstairs and now renting our upstairs 3 bedrooms-individually to Flight Attendants, building cash reserves to fund our next deal.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

This investment was the only way that seemed do-able. My wife and I earn blue collar money, we needed a platform we could leverage to create the cash flow to fund our dream of becoming independently wealthy.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

I realized we need to buy an asset and I spent the next year convincing my now wife and fixing my bad credit. Once I hit the minimum credit score to qualify for the FHA loan I started looking. I began spending hours on the MLS looking for the right house. I found my house the 1st day it hit the MLS. That night after work I drove to the house and saw it was unoccupied, and I spent about 20 minutes at like 2 am looking it over I emailed my agent and paid the asking price.

How did you finance this deal?

First Time Home Buyer, with an FHA 3.5% down with a second position loan for the 3.5$ from the State of WA. Out of pocket total expenses were only about $2000.00 #VeryBlessed

How did you add value to the deal?

We have split the Master-bedroom into a two bedroom, turning the home into a Four bed-two bath home.

What was the outcome?

We were able to add an additional renter for about $2000 out of pocket costs.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

We are still learning but the challenge I foresee is the issue of heating the bedrooms the furnace does not get the rooms warm. I think I should give each tenant a space heater but I will need to find a better solution in the future.