All Forum Posts by: Matt T.

Great article; thanks for sharing. I started reading the comments on the article but had close it. I've never seen so many pessimistic haters. Maybe if they spent less time criticizing an article about an obviously gifted kid, and more time saving and learning, they would be further ahead in life.

Imagine what she could do with a biggerpockets account!

Good luck with your new business. I don't know what I'd do without a good property manager. That 10% a month is a fee I'm more than happy to pay. I have 8 sets of tenants and I've only met 2 of them (known from school). And none of them know my phone number. Money well spent.

I've been trying to get a buddy/worker of mine to get his license for about 18 months. I even offered to buy the study materials and give him a $1,000 bonus once it's done. No luck so far. I'll definitely get mine once I'm done working overseas. Relying on someone else to pull permits is a real pain in the neck.

I don't even allow candles. I deal with a lot of homes built in the 1920's so they all had fireplaces and one point. None have fireplaces after I remodel.

Having a shower and no tub is a better issue than having a tub and no shower (I have a couple of those and it's a pain to rent). I'd actually be happy that it cuts out families with children from wanting to rent.

Not sure how your county works but I would find it very unlikely they could come after you for any taxes before you own it. Did you get title insurance? That should keep you in the clear. We do "self inspections" to register rentals in my area. We can also choose not to let the county assessor into our house for their new assessment. They base their assessment on what they observe from the outside when that happens. It's probably different in your area but it wouldn't hurt to find out their processes. I'd probably not give them your name or address of the property when you call to get answers.

I still have a student loan lingering. My interest rate is around 4%. Since I can average a far better return than 4%, I've chosen to make the minimum payments and use my extra income for investing. You might want to do a similar comparison and see what makes sense for you.

I don't see any advantage to paying off a portion before starting to invest. If it's a fixed term student loan, your payment will still be $1,000 a month. Banks look more at payments to income rather than the loan balance.

For a rental it is probably cheaper to repair whatever is currently there. I deal with a lot of 50-80 year old homes in my market and most have plaster. Repairs can be a pain in the neck but the time and expense (not to mention mess) associated with replacing it with drywall just isn't worth it to me. Any rooms that have to be torn out are replaced with drywall. If you are starting with bare walls I'd recommend drywall all the way.

You can probably only qualify for the exemption on your primary residence. At least that's the way it is in my area. We can get military veteran and homestead exemptions. Call your County Assessor's Office to verify the rules for your area.

To answer your earlier question about insurance, I've also found my rental policies are cheaper than for my personal residence. The reasoning is that you are covering the building and liability only and not contents.

Thomas, Sorry to hear you ended up in a tough situation. The above portion makes me a little nervous. You mentioned the property was "cash flowing" $150 a month because rent was $150 ($250 actually) higher than your payment.

Are your other properties in the same situation? I'd look at unloading them if that's the case and you can sell for what you owe. There are other expenses not considered (vacancy, maintenance, etc) and those could end up being a big drain as well. While the situation is bad now, it could certainly get worse of those units have an issue.

I'm mainly a buy and hold guy as well. I've had pretty good luck picking up REO's that have high days on market. Anything 3 bedrooms or bigger I pick up gets looked at for a flip. I find as long as I keep the list price under 110k there doesn't seem to be any problem getting a buyer. That's the first time buyer sweet spot for my market. I've only flipped 3 houses but the longest I've gone is about 14 days before it's under contract.

If you end up buying in Omaha, I'd recommend staying out of the extreme Northeast. That place is a war zone and all the 14k houses in the world wouldn't make it worth the hassle for me.

The smaller banks seem to be the way to go right now. There's a great credit union in Bellevue that is relatively investor friendly. I think you would be near the edge of their territory; it's either a 60 or 100 mile range from their main branch that they will lend.