All Forum Posts by: Lance Luvaul

HI BPers, I live on the other side of the globe from my "farm", the town where my 3 current rentals are (I use a trustworthy property manager), which were all move-in-ready when purchased.  Now however I've just identified a potentially great rehab (a run down 2 bedroom I can add a 3rd bedroom to) in the same town but, since I live overseas, my question is: are remote rehabs considered too hard / difficult / risky to undertake, even for seasoned pros (which I am not); or can the risks be reasonably mitigated by hiring a good / trustworthy project manager?  I would interested to hear of others' experiences using rehab managers (if that's even a thing).  Thanks, Lance

Thanks @Dan Mahoney, that's a good tip about the recon line!  I'll give that a try (if I'm rejected), thanks.

Actually our current arrangement (in the one rental we've partnered in so far) is that we both get the cash-on-cash-rate the investment returns on our portion of the acquisition costs. He put in 10k towards acquisition, the house earns a COCR of 15%, so he gets 1.5k/yr. I get twice that as I contributed 21k.

Spot on @Dan Mahoney about my dad's account.  And as you and @Monolo D. both think card application approvals are automated and don't distinguish between Individual and Authorized User accounts, I'm going to give it a try and apply for a new card now.  I'm only trying to further improve my scores at this point, but eventually I will apply for a mortgage, and I think @Monolo D. is right again that an actual person will look at my record when that time comes.  But by then I should have enough real credit accounts that the one Authorized User account won't matter too much.  Thanks again everyone!  Good luck to all :)

Thanks @Steve Vaughan, you raise a valid point about an all absentee team, and I certainly wouldn't recommend this approach to property investing to most people: it's harder and more stressful (because you have to put in so much more due diligence) than being right there next to the property.  It works in our case only because I spent several months visiting the town we invest in, directly making contacts and setting up a "team on the ground".  Afterwards, back in Australia, I've maintained contact with that team over the intervening years and even directed them to buy additional property, all while being remote.  Still very hard though.  It would be so much easier to invest in Australia, but have you seen property prices & yields in Australia lately? :)

Thanks @Chris Mason.  Interesting to learn about overlays, thanks for the link.  So it doesn't sound like I need to let my credit record "settle" a while or anything like that... I can go ahead and apply for a new card straight away?

Quick question: won't lenders be aware of this trick?  Is there a way for them to tell this is the "authorized user" trick and discount its use, or re-compute a "better" score with data excluding the account "authorized user" account?  For example, Credit Karma shows my father's account as Responsibility = "Authorized User", whereas on my old closed accounts it shows Responsibility = "Individual"

@Brent Coombs, you sum it up quite nicely :) I think dad would be quite happy to "hand over his cash" and let me make all the investment decisions / do all the work! If I'm to be his Banker though, I'd need to skim some of his profits off the top. Maybe I should take that as my compensation rather than direct ownership of the property in my LLC? Thanks for the feedback.

Hi all, thanks for the positive feedback.  I can report that my FICO score, as calculated from my Experian data (as shown by an account I just created on experian.com) is officially 736, in the Good range.  A significant improvement from Zip/Zero!  Now to apply for my own card and continue building I guess.  Good trick to know :)

Thanks @Lawrence C., that justifies my suspicions that I shouldn't put much trust in CK scores.  I'll check out Discover as you suggest and see how CK compares to FICO.