All Forum Posts by: Dmitriy Yeshin

Hi. I will try to answer your specific question, but full disclosure that I know very little about your specific market. I am in a somewhat similar position as you except that I live in an that is even more expensive. Positive cash flow is a distant dream for folks like us. To minimize my "unforseen" expenses I invest in condos. Most of the outside maintenance is taken care by the HOA and many of the large ticket items such as roof, core plumbing, pools are also the responsibility of the HOA. I even try to avoid having a washer/dryer in the unit. That only leaves me with

Check out www.bankrate.com. They will give you rates and fees for lenders in your area. Easiest way to compare. National lenders such as Wells Fargo, Citi bank, chase etc always post rates online as well. It's easy to find if you Google ''bank name mortgage rates".

@Aaron Cullen You mentioned that your packet provided "your opinion of the ARV". I think that's what might have irked the appraiser. If you give him facts (comps, scope of renovations, purchase price etc.) it is helpful. But you have to let the appraiser come up with the number on his/her own. If you try to GIVE them the number, that might make a person uncomfortable especially if they arrived to same exact same number on their own calculations (which they should if your facts are accurate). Also, you might have just got unlucky and caught the person on a bad day.

@Stewart McMillan - Hi. Sorry to hear about your situation. Wanted to ask if you ran a background check on this tenant before signing a lease? Did they have any housing court records in the past? Did you check a reference from a previous landlord? Sounds like this is not the first time they are having a conflict with a landlord and I am curious if proper due diligence would have uncovered a problem ahead of time. Best of luck.

Some banks will let you put less than 20% as long as you satisfy other underwriting criteria (income, credit score, debt to income ratio etc.). You will likely have to pay PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) though so your payments will be slightly higher.

Have you considered replacing just the doors for the cabinets? That could be a good compromise between the keeping and getting something more modern. If the cabinets are standard sizes you should have no issues finding doors locally or from the Internet. If you decide on changing color, painting just the inside of the cabinets is a lot easier and the flaws are less visible. In my opinion, replacing entire kitchen is very costly and should be your last option if nothing else works.

@ Diane G. 

When you say A or B property,  what exactly do you mean?

Hello BP, 
I am curious about a frequently used term around BP: ''tenant class''. Is there some industry standard or is it open to interpretation. Can someone please share some guidelines on how you define class A vs B vs C Tenants in your real estate practice?

Thank you. 

@ Bryan Paul

Hi Brian, 
I like to use bankrate.com to keep track of rates. Besides generic average,  they give you rates for specific banks that work in your neighborhood. They also provide fees and modeling based on down-payment, credit score etc. 

Cheers,
Dmitriy

@ Bryan Paul

Hi Brian, 
I like to use bankrate.com to keep track of rates. Besides generic average,  they give you rates for specific banks that work in your neighborhood. They also provide fees and modeling based on down-payment, credit score etc.