All Forum Posts by: David Mirza

I am going to start a marketing campaign sending letters to potential sellers indicating that I would be interested in buying their home.  The letters will be targeted to absentee owners.  The question I have is should I use my personal name in the letters or use a company name with logo and website?  

What do you think would help the seller remember me best? 

 Why is that a better option than a cash out refi?

 When you say "leave some equity for the next buyer", do you mean you are not going to sell them for the highest offer?

I have 11 properties and am a full time software engineer.  What i do is

1.) record all expenses on a spreadsheet as soon as they occur so I don't have to worry about it

2.) autopay all bills

3.) appartments.com to track rent collection

4.) own quality SFH homes in B class neighborhoods to minimize turnover.

5.) have a couple of handymen that can fix small stuff, AC guy, Roofer, and water heater/plumber guys

I could probably scale up to 20 before I would need to hire a property manager.  A lot of people say to hire a property manager when you're still small but the truth is if you look at what they are paid for the amount of work they do it would probably come out to somewhere around $200 to $300 per hour.

@Dorothy Butala hmm thanks for pointing that out to me.  I guess each 401k is free to impose additional rules.  When I borrowed from my fidelity 401k about 8 years ago, both myself and my employer were allowed to continue to contribute.  I guess the lesson here is to call each individual plan and see if they have more strict rules.

@Dorothy Butala the part about not being able to "make contribution (neither can your employer)...".  From the article it states

"

You can keep contributing to your 401(k) while you pay the loan back—an option that may not be available if you take a hardship withdrawal.

"

 I don't think that's true https://www.forbes.com/advisor....

Sounds like we have one vote for yes it's counted as her debt even though she's not on the mortgage and one count for no it isn't counted as her debt.  Anybody want to be the tie breaker :-)

I own a SFR rental property where I am the only one on the mortgage but title is held Jointly with my wife. My wife would now like to get a mortgage of her own :-). For the purposes of DTI calculations, will the mortgage that is in my name be counted as her debt too?

@Joe Villeneuve, I understand what you are saying but I would rather do a cash out refi and use the funds from the refi to purchase more properties.  In your example you forget to add paydown of principal to the equity in scenario 3a.  For scenario 3b you forget to include capital gains taxes and real estate agent fees.

Each scenario is different but each time you sell a house and buy a new one you have the following expenses:

1.) capital gains/recaptured depreciation

2.) 5% payment to real estate agent

3.) Title/Closing cost

4.) In california your property taxes on the new house would go up unless you do a 1031 exchange