All Forum Posts by: Harrison Liu

@Anthony Varela it's not a one size fits all answer. it depends your overall financial situation. you will not want have negative cash flow for sure even though it's in a class A neighborhood with tons of appreciation potential. a lot of investors got burned play this game in the last crash. a $500 vs $100 cash flow ($50 is too low in my opinion) really doesn't make much difference remember your end game is appreciation, cash flow is really icing on the cake. but it will make a big difference depends on how much reserve you have and how much other income you have when raining day comes. the key is to be hold it minimum 10 years by then both rent and property value will go up substantially yes they do go up hand in hand you will be in the position I am in today. i don't plan on ever selling my properties, but I may take cash out to buy other property.

@Ralph R. in my neck of the woods Seattle as well as Portland it is very common to rent 400k house, actually more like 600k to 700k in Seattle and normally you get better renters as price goes up. this one is an appreciation play and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you are not getting into a negative cash flow situation which I don't think is the case. actually SFH is more of an appreciation play than cash flow anyway. for pure cash flow, apartment is the way to go. as far as down payment I would take the heloc from the condo as down payment and keep both if your income to debt ratio is Ok.

you are not going to get it for $250k. so focus on the rehab cost and work the number backwards. if it rents for $2k, how much do you need to buy plus rehab cost to make it cash flow? sounds like it's in a very good location so it's a long-term hold. you can afford to pay a little more because 10 years from now even if you over paid $10k now it is insignificant. that's the main difference between flip and buy and hold. this one sounds like a really nice buy and hold because it has good school and also close to freeway.

hindsight is 20/20, but why did you buy it if you knew that was an issue or why didn't you buy it cheaper? You make or lose money when you buy, that's so true.

we may hit a price plateau short term. but long term we still have room to grow just look at Vancouver in the north and SF in the south. we are not even half of their price, more like one third. if you are cash flowing, then hold them for long-term. you can always refi to get some equity out. if you are struggling with cashflow, then now might be a good time to unload.

@Tim Simmons if you do plan on coming here, check out Renton highlands. because of it's good location, city spent a lot of money in the area. it's definitely an up and coming area to invest.

@Dan K. how did jv turn out for the TDR and MB? I know it's been a year and I am really interested in the outcome of the discussion about TDR and MB. thank you.

I think to come up with an idea it's not that hard, the difficult part is the execution. that's where a lot of the people hit a wall.

@Cory Binsfield I guessed you would say mid west. it's hard to believe rent never dropped during the great recession of 2008 in the mid west. I remembered @Jay Hinrichs mentioned he was a private lender in the mid west when the market crashed, all his investors walked away because tenants stopped paying. but somehow you were able to increase the rent and people kept paying in 2008? come on get real. there are people here who have been through the last crash.

@Cory Binsfield where in the country in 2008 that property value dropped 10-15% and rent kept "raising" not falling? I'd love to know and invest there.