All Forum Posts by: Jake E.

I hear you. In the past 10 years Ive done well trading stocks (and crypto currencies) and have learned technical analysis. I havent checked RE stocks lately, but several of them had peaked and while maybe going higher yet since I last looked months ago, probably didnt have a lot more room to go up. We'll be buying whenever the drop comes. The top 4 accounting firms are starting to lay off people and my wife sees it as the peak being now and the drop getting closer.

Ultimately, Im just trying to make the next best decision and be ready for it... be it to build rental units on our current property or buy/rent. I'm pretty good at a lot of things, RE isnt really one of them (yet).

Personally, I like the house. It is in a historic district and walking distance to our downtown, which was a huge reason we bought the house originally. My wife is from Europe so she had no drivers license and then realized at some point she would need to drive a car. We are now getting ready to have kids soon and a larger house makes sense. For me... I can live anywhere but she wants the big house. Im finishing up the kitchen renovation right now and we'll be ready to make moves at the beginning of the year. But we do want to keep this property to rent, even if its just the front house with no additional units.

The house was 500K in 2006, dropped down to 260K for a while and back up to 490K now. Ultimately we want to buy our "big house up the street" and be done with buying a family home. We like our city a lot and want to stay in it.

Hello there! I own some RE books and have taken some basic RE classes, but have never really jumped in. My wife is the business person & CPA, I am more on the artistic end of the stick. We own a 100 year old home which after 6 years I am finally almost done restoring. Its been a long, fun (sometimes not fun) process! It has taken me a while as I have a full time job (part owner) and on the side I run several online businesses that generate passive income. I am to the point where I would rather buy properties and rent them (or flip) to generate income instead of working with family members at my day job ;) ;) ;)

That said I am trying to hash out some ideas right now just to get my feet wet. Our goal is to move out of our main property (2ba/1ba) into a larger home, and then generate income other ways such as rentals or flips.

1) Our home is in an urban setting & zoned for additional rental units. I could probably fit in two more units and I have funds to build. Looking at comps I could probably get $1300-1500/m per unit, so $4000+/m total with current mortgage around $2300/m.

2) My other option would be to rent out our main house, and then purchase 2-4 small rental properties in a resort town 2 hours away and rent them year round.

Which options make sense? Thanks for any thoughts!

PS... Its possible I build only one extra unit on main property and get $1400 for that and $1700 for the front house. This would drop our monthly rental from $4000 to $3100, but still above our mortgage.
PPS... Im very handy and can renovate myself. 
PPPS... One of the reasons we have not already added on units to our main house is it feels expensive. In my area architects end up costing $20K-$30K when all is said and done. Seems like a lot and I want our funds to go as far as possible. I have 3 or 4 friends who own their own construction companies that I would like to work with and do my additions (and drawings) but they are all BUSY and are turning down smaller jobs like mine left and right.

Any thoughts or idea would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!