All Forum Posts by: Elizabeth Colegrove

 I just wanted to say congratulations! That is super exciting.

Great to connect! I see you are in Lemoore, Ca. My husband is active duty navy and we are stationed out here. We have 4 soon to be 5 rentals in the hanford/lemoore area. I also manage my parents 4 house sour here. I absolutely LOVE this area, appreciating and great rental area. 

We have bought 5 houses this way all through the short sale process. As to the forgiveness, depending on the tax year and the owners circumstances, depends on if they have to pay tax on the forgiven amount (income).

I have an undergraduates degree and masters degree and it has been the best thing I did. I did not get an expensive degree, my masters was 8k from Texas A &M Corpus Christi. My degree got me a foot in the door at a real estate company and I have worked my way up. I have used the knowledge gained at my day job to invest my W2 and grow my real estate empire. Best the decision I made (thank you parents).

Good luck!

LOVE this game! My mom a teacher by trade, used it to teach my brother and I business principles. It started my love for money and investment principles. 

I can qualify a tenant in 4 hours or less. I have found that when you take too long you lose amazing tenants. That being said, I always put them through my entire process, credit/background check through my program (don't trust others, too easy to fake with photoshop etc), 3 x rent, license, and than my 18 page lease .

That's awesome that you were able to get them to go so low. Congratulations!

We have done well in Hanford California. The biggest issue is that even highly leverage prices has gone way up. So the house we bought for 163k in 2012 is now $225,000. Still you can find great deals the deals aren't as great even though the appreciation and cash flow is still there. I know our area hasn't fully recovered since the crash and many houses are still upside down even though this is rapidly changing.

Everyone has a very different opinion and honestly it is whatever your preference and comfort zone. I personally had no desire to wholesale. While we could have flipped any of our houses for a profit. The 30-60k profit would have had significantly less long term value than preserving the gains, along with getting principle pay down, cash flow and also slowly build up more annuities. For us house hacking or buying at every duty station and renting them out once we were transferred made the most sense. It allowed us to work towards our rental empire when we had very little starting capital.

Hoep that helps!

We are buy and hold investors. I had wanted to buy for years but it hadn't made sense as we were young and poor ensigns. We bought a house when we were going to be a place for 15 month (active duty military) when it was cheaper to buy than rent and we were more financially stable. I had finished my masters degree and he made a pay raise. While I wish we had gotten started sooner, at the end of the day you have to be ready for spending your first day replumbing the laundry room, and the other other responsibilities of home ownership.