All Forum Posts by: Gloria Sheridan

I would agree that IRA Financial's fees have been climbing over the last couple years. I don't love it, but really do not want to incur all the efforts and frictional costs to make a migration to a different company.

I'm still with IRA Financial Trust and feel like they are doing a good job. Once I got the LLC set up (I had them execute it and do all the accompanying documents for ease of execution and to leverage their expertise), there really isn't much for them to actually do, but you still get charged their fees every year. I'm satisfied with their support. They have been adding new features like enabling crypto purchases directly from their platform, but again - I'd already set up an LLC with my self-directed IRA funds, so they don't need to be involved every time I need to make a transaction. I'd definitely recommend their services.

Why do you feel compelled to remove the siding? Couldn't you just cover it with, say: Vinyl siding? 

@Mitch Messer: Hmm. Perhaps I've been unclear in my original post. I'm not looking for someone to do **any** of the work for me. I'm not looking for "turnkey" anything. I'm currently doing all the property-finding, rehabbing, financing, contractor management, and property management activities myself. What I'm looking for is a financial advisor who is real estate savvy, who knows about the full spectrum of financing options available to me (given my available resources), who can help me review my current portfolio and decide which are the smartest directions to pursue in the future. That is why I posted this thread in a Finance & Lending sub-forum.

As far as a team, I feel like I've made good progress on that: Great RE agent, insurance guy, skilled trades, contractor, CPA, self-direct IRA provider, etc. The member of my team I'm looking to add is RE Financial Advisor. Thanks for your feedback, though, Mitch.

I've started this real estate journey (buy-and-hold multi-family, 12 doors now), and I want to take next steps to continue to grow and use leverage and my resources as smartly as possible. I'd like to find someone I can show my portfolio, my finances, etc., and get advice as to the smartest next steps. I'm sure there are opportunities to leverage my W-2 income, my rental income, and my qualified IRA funds in ways that I hadn't thought of, since I'm still early stages in my experience level. Anyone out there hired an experienced RE advisor like this and had a great experience?

In the spirit of sharing back with this community, I'm sharing the contents of a summary document I've created for each of my rental properties that gathers in one place, on 1-2 pages, all the crucial details to know to manage each property and keep them functioning. I currently self-manage all of our rental properties, so if something happens to me, that would be a major problem. In case I get run over by a dump truck, my husband can simply walk into my office, look for each of these forms, and take it from there as needed, or punt it to a management company if that is the decision.

Since it appears that I cannot upload an attachment to this post, I'll just show the contents/fields and then you can copy paste into your own document and adjust it as you require:

Make sure you also document the "Last Updated Date" for your form, so you know when you last maintained the information. As things change with the property, just keep this form up to date (digitally and then have a printed copy easy to access for your back-up person, as need be. I hope you find this idea useful!

Very positive experience with IRA Financial Trust. I did a decent amount of research in advance, but you still never know how it's going to go. I think a key success factor was that IRA Financial Trust assigned me a specific real-life person to walk me through all the steps. Every form, every wire, every document, she knew what was needed and and what was next and kept the process moving. I had a hard-stop date because I needed to use the IRA funds for a real estate purchase, so she was super helpful to keep the process moving to completion. There are a LOT of steps. End to end it took 3 weeks, but I was working on some aspect of it practically every day. If you aren't in a rush, that is probably better/safer, but having that IRA Financial Trust rep assigned made a huge difference. I was going from a standard IRA with stocks/bonds to an LLC-held business bank account holding my IRA funds. My startup costs included ~$1250 for the creation of the LLC and Operating Agreement (special for an LLC holding IRA funds). All costs to wire money or overnight documents were incremental. Let me know how yours goes, regardless of what company you decide to use. Good luck! Gloria

@Jaysen MedhurstThis is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for! Thanks so much!

My goal is to calculate how much of my W-2 income I've replaced so far with my real estate efforts. I've set up an Excel tracker to assess this and I'd like your validation of my approach. I'm already 5 buy-and-hold multi-family properties (with strong CoC returns) into my efforts, but so far my calculation is telling me I've only replaced 19% of my income. :-( Can that be right? Seems terribly low. Here's my calculation (and I'm using the same data I've used in the Bigger Pockets calculators, so it's thorough and complete):

Annual Rental Income <minus> Annual Budgeted Expenses = Annual Earnings Before Income Taxes (assume result is $19K).

I'm comparing this figure to my W-2 income (also before Income Taxes). Let's say that number is $100K.

So, $19K/$100K = 19%.

Am I missing something? Is this the comparison I should be making? Because this figure feels super-low for all the effort it's taken to get these properties in place. I've ignored taxes because I don't really know what they are going to be for my real estate business. Is that where there is some advantage? E.g. taxes on wage earnings vs. taxes on business earnings? From what I've researched, it's going to be about the same % that I'll end up paying.

Even when I look at this on a per-hour basis (assuming 10-hr work week vs. 50-hr work week), my earnings per hour doing real estate is not better than my earnings per hour from a W-2 generating "real job."

Has anyone out there made this calculation for themselves? Am I looking at this right? What am I not considering?

Thanks in advance.

Definitely sounds like you need an inspector. I bought a place recently for BRRRR purposes. Turns out a DIY added-on bedroom was sitting on solely wood walls! There was no footer around the edges. So the add-on had to be completely removed and rebuilt (I didn't want to lose this 3rd bedroom off the house). There was no way, without pulling up floors and removing drywall that I'd have been able to know this before the purchase--Concrete had been poured as part of the floor, so it appeared as though the whole bedroom was on a slab, but it actually wasn't, which we discovered once the work started. Long story short - If you at any point will be doing enough rehab to require inspections, there is no way an all-wood foundation (even if pressure-treated) will get past inspection.

With regard to metal roofs, I like them a lot. I think the newer ones give a very modern look to the house, IMHO. Note that if you have a lot of trees hanging above the house, a repair to a metal roof will be much more expensive than a repair to a shingled roof. Tree branches can absolutely puncture through a metal roof. (Had to replace a section on the same house discussed above due to tree damage!) I had all the trees and limbs hanging over the house removed.

Good luck with your project!