All Forum Posts by: Steve S.

Newbie house purchaser here.  I'm trying to compile a checklist of the things I need to do to buy a house to determine my all in costs.  Here's a list I have so far and general costs for buying a house in Texas.

1) Who is going to ask for these things from me?

2) how do I go about finding someone to do each of these things for me?  Is my realtor supposed to help or do I google each of these things separately to find someone to do it?

Never bought a house before.  My lender's wife is a realtor so he sent me a standard state of Texas real estate contract.  Is there any reason to be concerned about using this?

Yes

So your suggestion is to not pay my own cash?

My parents are willing to sell me a property below market cost to help me jump start my rental portfolio.  While I could write them a $100k check for the full purchase of the house, my concern is that will minimize the amount of other properties I could acquire with the cash in the bank for further leverage.

On the flip side, not paying cash is going to require outlay of several expenses that will probably cost me $5,000 or more I otherwise wouldn't have to pay if I paid cash.

How do y'all go about making this decision?  Is it an obvious answer to those out there with more experience?

I did a fair amount of reading and binging / googling and couldn't find a specific answer to this question.

If after reducing my gross rents by all allowable deductibles, I have $10,000 in remaining profit for the year (to use a biggish round number), do I pay taxes on that $10,000 as if it was additional income and therefore pay it in my AGI tax bracket?  (i.e. if Im in the 31% tax bracket, would Schedule E of my Tax Return ultimately require that I pay 31% of the $10,000 profit in taxes?

Does this chage at all if the house is owned by my LLC?

I assume there's some good ones that have been on this message board for a while beyond the tools that are provided by Bigger Pockets for limited use.

Thanks in advance for any qualified suggestions beyond just googling.

I'm looking at acquiring my first rental property.  Is there a typical way one goes about determining if there's demand for your rental?

The numbers on this single family property look to be pretty good if I can just get a good tenant in it.

How does one go about determining demand?  Should I post a craigslist ad?  Is that illegal if I don't own the property?

I could talk to a realtor, but I'm also looking for something more empirical than a realtor's opinion.

Any suggestions?