All Forum Posts by: Farrukh Amini

 Hi Jayanti,

At this point I’d suggest mostly looking in Greenville, Bergen Lafayette, and sometimes West Side might work. Even these neighborhoods are tough to get a deal in in this market but I’d keep looking, analyzing and making offers. 
Near LSC is a hotter market being close to DT and with so much development and a big funding approved for LCS expansion I’d say it’s overpriced at this point. But doesn’t hurt looking and analyzing deals. You might get lucky. 

Not familiar with LA specifically, but I can tell you that generally if the property went through the probate process and beneficiary assumed the mortgage then yes you can definitely take it over sub2 because they now assumed the mortgage. 

You’re welcome! Good luck with your endeavors. Feel free to ask questions pertaining to JC neighborhoods as you go  

Greenville is pretty rough. The quality of tenants is lower and needs high maintenance, so these are my main cons. Of course there are some neighborhoods within Greenville that are better than others but you have to do your homework. 
the pro is that you can find deals that still make financial sense, especially since COVID started it hit some landlords hard, so there are some motivated owners out there 

If you already have the basics, then the best way to learn would be to JV with someone who's already doing creative deals.
I’m open to JV partnership as I do creative deals in most states. Or get in touch with someone in your own network that has experience in creative deals to JV - Bring them a deal and let them show you how to structure, walk you through the entire process, and share their documents with you. 

@Jeff Rappaport has a great podcast on creative financing. Start there. 
Podcast is called The Creative Financing Podcast  

From my experience, I can tell you that unless the seller has real motivation (by motivation I mean a distressed situation that forces them to act soon, for example in pre foreclosure or has no equity on the property to sell on market and pay closing costs, etc) convincing them to sell with no money down is going to be a big challenge. 
I’d pull lists and go after sellers that would fit the “motivated” criteria to pull this off. Once you find someone, you can find out what their problem is and based on that open up a conversation around creative deal structuring. You can structure something with subject-to or wrap if there’s underlying loan, propose owner financing if no mortgage, do a lease with option to purchase, etc. 

It was a live-in house hack. We actually started with a partial rehab in our own unit to make one side livable and ensure the plumbing and heat and electrical were taken care of. Then we paused it and worked on the second unit to get it rent-ready asap. as soon as we finished that and placed a tenant then we finished our own unit. We also did about 60% of the work ourselves (my wife and I). Bit ticket items were updating almost the entire plumbing in one unit, fully updating two bathrooms, putting in a new water heater, some electrical work, and updating the roof all of which were done GCs. 

Hi!

I’m in Jersey City. Started my RE investing journey here in 2014 with my first 2 family house hack. Bought with conventional loan with 20% down. It was in a bad shape so I put in another 40-50k to rehab it. I was living in one unit and renting another which was covering my mortgage payments almost fully. 2014 was a good time to buy because the market was started appreciating fast right after and on top of that a lot of development money started coming in because Brooklyn was getting too expensive. So by 2016 the value of my 1st house doubled and I was able to cash out refi and pull out all of my initial cash investments out of it and buy another beat up duplex in a rougher neighborhood. Rehabbed it and rented it out. Since I bought it for a good price coupled with appreciating rents I was cash flowing really well. My total cash flow between the two properties was covering both mortgages, plus netting me a good chunk of cash every month, plus I was living rent free in one of the units. I know this is pretty much impossible to achieve in today’s JC market, but what I’m implying is that I always tried to identify a neighborhood that was not as developed and was less desirable but had the signs of soon to come development (in path of progress, like a big luxury apartment development being approved by the city, a new light rail stop being planned, etc). 

I was hooked on RE investing, but my main road block to growth was not having enough money for down payment. In 2018 I discovered BP and learned about leveraging debt to make money, leveraging other people's money, and leveraging other people's debt. I realized that buying with FHA was not such a bad idea as long as my cash on cash is good. So I bought my first FHA house, added a unit and house hacked that for a year. Then I moved out and now renting both units. I started networking and partnered up with capital partners to buy bigger deals. I also started utilizing creative financing to buy with no or low money down.

Nowadays, you can definitely find a multi unit building like a duplex with a bonus unit to house hack and at a minimum cover your mortgage and live rent free, or even cash flow a little. I helped my friend acquire a two family with a bonus at the beginning of this year to do exactly that. But keep in mind a couple things* in this market to be able to achieve that you’d have to be willing to live in a less desirable neighborhood, maybe wait a little longer to be able to cash out refi because most neighborhoods have appreciated a lot and any future appreciation is gonna be small. 
Hope I answered your questions and provided some insight. 

I use one that I made very specific to my own needs (I buy and sell on terms). Happy to share with you. Not sure if you’ll like it because it doesn’t provide some of your criteria.