All Forum Posts by: Jason Hendrickson

Purchase as owner occupied because you'll get a lower interest rate. You won't be there long enough (2 years) to get the capital gains tax exemption on primary residence. You can't use 1031 on primary residence, nor for a flip. Your profit will be treated as short term cap gains.

Did you look at the homes *sold* during the same period? Conclusions drawn from partial data sets will usually be flawed. In this case, I think you're looking at the loser properties (because all the winners were sold quickly and often for list or more) and trying to draw sweeping conclusions about the state of a very complicated market.

"Right tenant" = most qualified applicant.

Of course (unless your state has some weird law saying you can’t, but I’ve never heard of that).

Sign leases with rent + utilities. All of my units are like this - $500/mo rent + $75/mo utilities +$35/mo pet fee (etc). 

Run comps, show them the numbers. Explain you're just keeping rent inline with the market and adjusting for any increases in tax, upkeep, whatever. Then write into your lease that price will be evaluated at some interval (yearly, whatever) and adjusted for increases in market rate as well as taxes, insurance, whatever.

Property number and property type, i.e., 854 Fourplex, LLC

"Broke and busy" isn't a great combination of hurdles to bring to real estate investing. Focus on your education, don't acquire debt if you can avoid it, read as much about finances and investing as you can and then you'll be prepared when the time comes and you're better able to do something.

Because it tells you how much you're making with the money you've invested. It's important because you need to know how one investment compares to another in order to pick the best one. If you can put $100 cash in the stock market and make 6%, or you can put $100 cash in the real estate market (usually in the form of a down payment on a loan) and make 7% then obviously the real estate market gives you a better cash-on-cash return for your $100.

Everyone's definition of "decent cash flow" is going to be different based on a lot of things. What's normal for the market? What's your time worth? How much return do you need to offset the hassle and risk factors of owning investment property? What other non-real estate investment options do you have and how do they compare? Is cash-flow the most important factor? Maybe you're willing to take a lower cash flow in exchange for higher appreciation? In the Wasatch Front where the market is really hot, finding an MLS property with a CAP rate > 5% is really tough, so, ignoring all of the above, anything above that could be considered "decent" I suppose.