All Forum Posts by: Dan Guenther

Hey @Devin Cordell - welcome to the community and congrats on your progress so far! 

My first thought when reading your post was the opportunity you have to leverage your current properties that are paid off. Have you thought of pulling from the equity you have currently to continue to grow the portfolio? With all of those properties being paid off (which is great!) are you getting the highest return on equity? 

I'd be happy to chat with you more about your investing side and also becoming an agent if you have any questions on that! Reach out anytime. 

Hey @Tina Felix - welcome to the community and congrats on the first house hack! 

This is a common problem that investors face when working on deal number two (myself included). How many lenders have you talked to? I'd recommend connecting with as many investor-friendly lenders as possible. Every lender has different programs available and an investor-friendly lender that understands your situation is more likely to have some options for you to make things work. 

Reach out if you want to talk more about some options/ideas to make #2 work! 

Hey @Khoa Nguyen - welcome to the community! 

One of the best parts of house hacking is the ability to use a low down payment option to secure that first deal (0-5% down). It's also important to understand that cash flow is only one part of building wealth in real estate. You should also consider these factors: 

1) Loan Paydown - Every month a portion of your mortgage is going towards principal paydown (building equity). Whether you are paying it or your tenants are paying it, you are essentially paying yourself for future equity. 

2) Tax Benefits - This one is commonly overlooked. There are multiple tax benefits to owning vs renting, especially when a portion of the home is rented. You will be able to write off a portion of your house as business use which will allow you to deduct various expenses when it comes to tax time. 

3) Appreciation - This isn't one that I recommend making any purchasing decisions on however it's a bonus for investors and historically prices have only gone up even in the case of major market crashes. 

4) Rent Savings - I know you aren't paying much for rent but even with the $500/month rent, you would still be paying yourself $6000/year to own vs renting. This adds up in the grand scheme. 

5) Building credibility as an investor: Getting started sooner rather than later will allow you to build credibility as an investor. Once you have a few years of rental income on your taxes, your lending options will open up. You can also leverage your rental income and home equity to increase your buying power. 

Let me know if you want to talk more in-depth about the pros/cons of your situation! 

Hey @Jon Sabino - welcome to the community! You've already found one of the best spots for education right here at BP. Take some time to browse the forums and check out the "learn" tab up top for guides on getting started. 

Another great resource for educational content is YouTube. You can find videos on pretty much every real estate strategy out there. 

Reach out if you want to connect and talk a bit more about getting started. Happy to walk you through some goal setting. 

@Jack Hamm - welcome to the BP community! 

If you have the time, then learning how to find off-market deals yourself will pay off big time. Cold calling, door knocking, and direct mailers are some of the most common routes people take to find these deals. If you can master this skill then you will not only find good deals for yourself but also have the opportunity for making money via wholesaling. There are always buyers looking for discounted deals! 

I'd also recommend connecting with investor-friendly agents who should have access to off-market opportunities. This will save you time for the first deal as sourcing off-market deal yourself will likely take some time to figure out.

Reach out if you want to talk more about how I source off-market deals!  

@Edward Zachary Samperio - welcome to the BP community! 

San Antonio has some great investment opportunities. If you're not on the Meetup App yet I'd suggest downloading that and getting out to some local meetups, I know there are a few in the San Antonio area. You should reach out to my friend @Pablo Cuevas who's an investor down there. I know he's always down to talk real estate :)

@Gary Neely - welcome to the community! 

Your answer will vary from city to city quite a bit. In general, the main issues that come up with city regs are adding a full kitchen (stove/cook=top), completely separating the units with a wall vs a door, and not having egress windows (big safety/liability hazard). When you put a wall up (not a door) to split your upstairs and downstairs, you are creating two fully separate units and most cities will consider this the same thing as a traditional duplex. 

I'd dig into your local laws a bit more and reach out to other investors and agents in those specific markets to see what they are doing to make deals happen. 

Hey @Cody M Byre - here's a great tool for researching demand in a given market. 

https://www.furnishedfinder.com/stats

The stats page on furnishedfinder.com will let you put in the city and then give you the number of searches or housing requests plus the number of property listing page visits in that are for the last 12 months. 

Denver for example:

Map Searches and Housing Requests for the Denver area (last 12 months): 327,125
Map and Property Listing Page Views for the Denver area (last 12 months): 1,997,673

While this is one of the many steps you should take to analyze an area, it can be a quick way to determine if it's even worth it to continue doing further research. 

Reach out if there is anything I can do to help you out on the journey and good luck to you! 

@Steven Nieves - welcome to the community! 

There are a lot of different factors involved here to consider. I'm not sure where you are interested in investing but here in Denver it looks like this. 

1) Location: What is the demand for STR in the target location? Is it close to frequently visited spots (hospitals, national parks, stadiums, convention centers etc.).

2) STR Regulation: Is it even legal to run as STR in the desired location? Can you run the STR as non-owner occupied aka when you move onto your next house hack can you still run the place as STR. A lot of areas restrict STR to strictly owner occupied properties meaning you have to live there to run it. This is a big factor to consider when thinking long term goals.

3) Property type: Here in Colorado we have a lot of single-family properties that can be easily split into two units making a non-conforming duplex. This is a great way to start house hacking as you can still have some privacy while bringing in income from a separate unit. This will also allow for a low-down payment option to get started (3%-5% down for owner-occupied loans). 

Reach out if you want to dig deeper into all of this!

Hey @Bella Batal - Welcome to the community! I'm very interested in hearing more about this one. I'll message you!