All Forum Posts by: Donny Trana

Since you're young, I like the idea of house hacking if you can find the right deal. It seems like a great way to break into investing if you can do it right.

As far as purchasing a single family house or condo, I guess a lot of it comes down to the rent to value ratio in the area you're looking. If house prices are crazy high, I would probably just continue to rent. On the other hand, if you can pick something up for a good price where your payment would be substantially lower than the rent you would pay for that same property, then that might be the best move.

Welcome to BP. This is definitely a good place to start if your wanting to learn more. There's some really great blog posts here that outline general RE investing concepts. Sometimes the deep discussions can be a little overwhelming to begin with.

Good luck buying your first home.

@Jim Viens

That all makes sense. Thanks for your help!

Some good advice so far. Thanks guys.

I talked with the attorney I'd be using for closing. He agreed a lease with option to purchase would be the best route if I want to pursue this. He said I need to figure out what I want for the option amount and the monthly lease.

I'd be selling the house for $95k. So what do you guys recommend the appropriate amounts be to protect myself. I know $5-10k lease payments were suggested above. Does that seem appropriate. Also, what about the amount for the option?

Also, should I do like a full credit and background check, etc on this person to verify everything their saying?

Here's the situation: 

I have a house for sale. A woman contacted me today and said she found the house I have for sale online. She is very interested because of the location and price point of the house. 

Her situation is that she is being transferred for her job (with the department of transportation) to the area where I have the house for sale. She needs to be here within the next 30 days for her new job. The problem is, although her employer has agreed to purchase her existing house, the closing won't happen for 60 days. She's wondering if there's a way for them to move into my house within the next 30 days. She says they have been prequalifed with a letter from Quicken Loans and that when their existing house closes, they plan on putting more than 50% down on their new house (apparently they have decent equity in their current house)

My question is.. what kind of contract or things can I do to help make this deal happen but still protect myself in case things do go wrong. She seems very honest and legitimate but obviously I'm not just going to take her word for it, heh.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This is the first time I've come up against a situation like this. 

This blog post approaches bird dogging as being a scam. Check it out and see what you think.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/07/19...

I agree with some things in the post but I don't really think it's a scam. I think the key is actually being out in the field or, at least, talking to people who are. If you're just looking on MLS or some other online database, your looking at all the same stuff everyone else is.

Also, unless you know your area like the back of your hand, I think physically driving neighborhoods can be a great way to get to know the different areas. Things like types of houses, age, size, people, amenities (parks, trails, etc). I think bird dogging can be a decent starting point. But the point is, you shouldn't be looking to make a killing.. or really anything doing it. It should be done with the intent of learning about your area and getting some feedback from other experienced investors. Then transitioning yourself to more of a wholesaler or maybe going for your first rental property and moving on from there. Just my opinion.

Welcome to BP. It's the real deal :)

Make sure to check out the podcast too if you haven't yet. 

Good luck on your first deal.

I think in the last BP podcast they were talking some about making the transition from landlording to flipping. They were talking about how flipping can be a lot more risk. Although there is opportunity for large chunks of money which is nice. You may have come across it already but you might find the following book useful.

http://get.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook/

What is Google Works? Unless I know it by a different name, I'm not sure I've heard of it.

@Joel Owens After the listing expired the first time, I met with two agents who both independently agreed the appropriate price they thought it should be listed at was $105k. We had previously looked into doing a refinance and trying to rent it. You are right that we would not be able to get the 1% which doesn't make it a great investment. On top of that, after figuring for maintenance, vacancy, etc, it would leave us cashflowing about $90 a month. Which, if we're wanting to move out of state, would coincidentally be equal to what we would have to pay a property management company. That would leave us exactly breaking even. Obviously, we're not going to do that.