All Forum Posts by: Elena Casey

@John Warren thank you so very much for the insight. It's invaluable. We're verifying the income and hopefully will go with our second candidate. It's a bit nerve-racking thinking about 5 kids in a relatively small 3 bedroom apartment but I am hopeful.

Good Evening BP family!  We are going through our first tenant selection process and are struggling a little bit.  We get to pick from three final applicants.  

The first is an older semi-retired couple with good income and are looking to bridge the gap between moving back into the area and buying a house.  Estimated tenancy 1 maybe 2yrs.  She has no credit history built, at almost 50yrs old.  she states that it is because everything was done through her husband who was in the military.  He has good credit and stable work. 

Option two is a divorced single mother of 5.   Income is ok, credit is superior, wants to stay local but admits the unit is smaller than what she is ideally looking for.  This hesitation makes me think tenancy would be 1-2 years, maybe a little longer.

The third option is a freshly divorced mother of 3, income is ok, and is looking for anything she can get into.  Credit is good, works local, would probably settle in a little longer than the others.

Doing this for the first time is harder than I thought.  Has anyone had issues with child support being a significant portion of the monthly income? And is a middle aged adult with no credit history a red flag?

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and recommendations!

Elena C.

@Diane G. When I was a college student living in a dorm, I had three roommates in my with another 3-roommates across the hallway. The bathroom for all 6 of us was in the middle. It was fine. We survived :-) I was just happy to live affordably.

@Drew Holland, sure thing! Will do! 

OMG!!! The sale fell through and we got it! Oh boy. Here we go....

Wonderful suggestions David! It looks like you've looked through the forums once or twice ;-) I added your suggestions to my list. I appreciate the time you took to reply! It means a lot. 

Thank you so very much for your reply! I'm added your suggestions to my list!

A wonderful evening to all of you from New England! :-)

I've posted a similar post on a different forum (probably the wrong one) and haven't gotten any feedback so I'm hoping second time is the charm.

I'm a CPA in the State of Maine with 12+ years in public and private accounting sectors. I also cannot get enough information on anything and everything real estate. So then I decided to look into the possibility of opening my own practice and specializing in Real Estate specifically. What would, in your opinion, be the optimal list of services? The 20% that would satisfy 80% of investor needs?

I hope this is an acceptable discussion topic on Bigger Pockets forums.

Thank you in advance for all of your help.

Respectfully,

Elena

@Jonathan R McLaughlin, your comment made me feel quite a bit more confident. Thank you.

I feel like the barrier to entry is quite high for Real Estate. Especially when one is young and new to the game. I could probably come up with the money for the down payment but would be sacrificing my emergency fund and retirement account. I guess I've been stashing everything away into 401k and Roth up to this point. So I'm basically left with 100% financing in a housing area that's seen insane price increases over the past 4-5 yrs. My own house value increased 81.5%. Which allows me to have access to a healthy HELOC but puts buying out of reach. I'm very hesitant to buy my first property somewhere in the Midwest where the prices are lower but I can't see it or manage it. Thank you again for your wisdom. I'll add it to my list of things to consider in my future analysis. :-)

All, 

I've been contemplating opening my business for a while now. I'm a CPA with 12+ yrs of public and private accounting experience. I've done taxes, audits, financial statement preparation, general bookkeeping. I've also worked as a controller for a fairly large company. I think I've reached a point in my career where I would like to specialize in something I'm passionate about and maybe even be brave enough to go on my own. 

So I'm here, reaching out to you wonderful folks, for a little market research. Would an accounting business specializing in Real Estate be needed and actually used? If no, why not? If yes, what do you think the 20% of topics would be that would cover 80% of the Real Estate owner needs?

I have some ideas but I would like to leave these questions open-ended to test my own theory. If this is not the right forum, could you direct me to the right one please? Thank you in advance for your time and kind input. I'm also open to criticism. 

Respectfully, 

Elena