All Forum Posts by: Ivan A. Luciano

@Corey Lyons We house hacked a townhouse. Rented out the basement for about a year. 

After our tenant left you let a friend stay for free, just two weeks as he was getting on his feet and that was a bit of as mistake. He became to comfortable and kept showing up on the upper half of the property, so we ended it real quick. I definitely suggest keeping friends/family out of the situation unless you know for certain, or have incredibly high chances of it working out!

@Corey Lyons At the moment we're looking at a complete rebuild property at $299k (plus rebuild costs) in a neighborhood of $700k homes. If we went with traditional investor financing were probably looking at tying up at least 60k just to purchase the property, not to mention the rebuild costs. The caveat is that two weeks ago I started looking at two other properties in other neighborhoods (one at 175k and the other at 219k) and these two seem more "simple." They just need slight upgrades and small rehabs instead of a full rebuild. 

So, After reading and learning about the BRRRR (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) strategy I think its time to jump in with private money and start making something happen!

Also, I wanted to mention that my wife and I actually spent a year renting a spare bedroom in an apartment we rented in Alexandria Virginia. We were over paying and he needed a place to stay until he went into he civilian world. Ironically, this, we learned, was kind of like house hacking. So maybe you can consider something like that to save up some money! But again, that may come with difficulties. We had no issues and house hacked on our first property as well. I highly recommend it, as its a great way to save money!

@Corey Lyons

Hey Corey! Active duty here too! Our market in the Dc area is out of this world at the moment soooo I understand where you’re coming from.

Fortunately for My wife and I we used a VA loan on a underpriced property which we now have as a rental four years later! The VA Lon is a great resource to use! If it's a first property! Look for a livable/underpriced property with minor upgrade/repairs and you'll have no issues keeping it as a rental and establishing good cash flow.

Save money And then keep an eye open for a similar property!

Side note: we are currently looking to purchase our third and are looking into hard money lending because the properties out here are so high priced! So don’t cross that out! This just requires a lot more homework!

Good luck to you!

@Kris Laku

Hey! New investor here too! For us the easiest way was to buy a home to live in that needed very small or close to no major repairs and was underpriced in our area! The underpriced part wasn’t a deal breaker at all so I wouldn’t focus so much on that, but it did help us a lot when we bought our second home.

We purchased another home, again underpriced in the same neighborhood a year ago and began renting out our first property! It’s been a little over tarea and we’re looking for our third property now!

I would say stick with what you know! Maybe your neighborhood is growing and you have history there. Or maybe you know the prices in your neighbor because you’ve lived there so long. Start stacking properties close to home!

Good luck to you!

I often listen to bigger pockets and other investment platforms where investors are able to purchase single family homes for $100k, or $90k. It appears this Is sure shot way of staking up on properties! Unfortunately, the DC, Maryland Virginia area doesn't host many properties in this price range that are easy to grab hold of. Are there any investors out there in similar high priced markets that have been able to stay consistent in their investing even at these higher prices? our is the key to move the radius out and move away from the city areas? 

Id love to hear the different perspective on this one as I'm looking to purchase our third rental property in southern maryland now.