All Forum Posts by: Grant Berthold

Like @Jonathan Smalls said, there's many aspects to real estate. There's wholesaling, flipping, buy and hold, property management, short term/vacation rentals (airbnb and others), tax liens, notes, etc... I also agree with his advice of finding a mentor. I have a couple guys I would consider mentors, and they've been invaluable.

So my two questions would be, what type of real estate investing do you want to do? And, do you have cash saved up to invest in real estate? Those two factors play a big role in how you move forward. 

If you have little cash, I would look into wholesaling, finding good deals and partnering with investors who put down the money, property management, or house hacking. If you have a decent amount of cash you could do those and also flips and buy and holds. 

Well the first thing I can see that you need to do, is become inspired. You've had some rough years here, and it can be easy to let life's disappointments hold you back. Don't ever let your bankruptcy, sicknesses, accident, etc... define who you are. You are destined for greatness because you are God's son, and He has great plans for you. You have to focus on your mind and heart before you focus on the action. 

Some of the things I use to get inspired is listening to Zig Ziglar and other motivational speakers (plenty on youtube), reading books (Rich Dad Poor Dad, 4 Hour Work Week, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Bible, etc...), and just reading about real estate success stories on BiggerPockets. 

Once you've become inspired, then I would jump into real estate investing, devouring as much knowledge as you can from BiggerPockets and other sources, and learning the market you want to invest in. But real estate investing isn't easy, so don't just go out and buy a property and hope things will work out. PLAN to succeed by working on your mind and will first. Those are your greatest assets, not your properties/bank account. 

That's correct. The pre-approval simply shows you are approved to buy a property at a certain price point. You're under no obligation to use that lender. But it'd be a good idea to start shopping if you think you'll buy a house soon.

I would also look at the skill level you both bring to the table. If he has more experience rehabbing, his value per hour is worth more than yours. Say you have the experience of a laborer, and he's been a general contractor for 20 years, your hour of work is worth $10/hour, where his would be worth $50+/hour. Expertise demands a premium.

If you're both the same skill level, then yes your reasoning makes sense. But there's a reason CEO's make more than entry level workers, if you know what I mean.

Why'd you buy it in the first place? 

Options I see are:

Sell it for more.

Build something on it and rent/sell it.

See if someone in the neighborhood wants to rent it out (I have no clue why someone would but you never know). 

If it's not a good neighborhood, and isn't seeing any type of renovation going on, I'd just sell it. Unless you see long term that area becoming more desirable. But personally I like to have my cash work for me now. 

Higher- where I'm at it's roughly 1-1.5% higher

Personally, I use an insurance agent who shops a bunch of different insurance companies and brings me back the best quotes. I went with a smaller insurance company that offered a better rate because he said that they've paid out claims to other customers of his without any problems. That was enough to ease my mind to go with a lesser known company. If the company were to go under while you had an outstanding claim, I believe your state would have a guarantee to cover the costs. Where I live it's called the Iowa Insurance Guarantee Association. Best of luck!

Wow it looks phenomenal, and those numbers are great! Congrats!!

Who's they? I wouldn't trust zillow's rental estimate. Like J. Martin said, you need to look around the area to see what other houses of similiar size, bedrooms, area are renting for. If in fact you can rent it out for $1025 and make your tenants pay the utilities, and your payment is $500-600 (I'm guessing), then it seems like it would it would cash flow well. But if it would only rent for $600-$700, it doesn't seem like it's worth renting, and maybe you might be better off selling as long as you could get a decent price. 

You could possibly get an FHA loan if you and your girlfriend moved into the next house you bought. They allow for a credit score as low as 580. FHA loans also allow you buy multi-family properties, so you could live in one unit and rent out the other units.

My advice would be to do everything you could to not file for bankruptcy, and work on building your credit. Once you get your credit score to 580, you could qualify for an FHA 3.5% down loan. $10,000 would be more than enough for a down payment on a duplex or a triplex. I would move into that, and rent out the other units and start saving the cash from the other units as a down payment for future rental properties. That's what I did for my first property. Was I nervous? Definitely. Was it worth it. Totally.

Unless your debt is crazy high and you can't afford to pay them down, filing for bankruptcy will only delay you being able to buy property.