All Forum Posts by: Jason Lee

There's a lot of rental inventory in upper Manhattan but this usually isn't an advertising (reach) problem. If it's listed anywhere online with an agent then people will find it. If it's been listed online for 40 days then the price is still too high or the apartment isn't being marketed properly. Is there professional photography? Let's start there. Would virtual staging help? A floor plan? Video? 3D tour? If it doesn't show well online then people won't want to visit no matter how great it is in person.

Let me guess, searching on Zillow? You're probably looking at co-ops that come up in a condo/co-op search. You either can't buy these as investment properties, or if you can it has to be all-cash or non-warrantable. There is no such thing as a $300K 1 bed condo in Yorkville.

Land leases often have all the down sides of renting and none of the up side of owning, and converting to condo is probably not going to be the goldmine you think it will be. Where do you think the money to buy the land comes from?

@Tina Lee Curious where your apartment is located? Rents are increasing because there are too many qualified tenants. Vacancy rate is just above 1%. Every apartment I list gets multiple qualified applications offering over the asking price. I wish I had more apartments to rent out.

Definitely not ideal. Prices are high and construction costs are high. It's going to be very very difficult. Most would use 70% of ARV minus renovations costs as the metric. Show me something that trades at a 40% discount. Your best bet is to find a single family that can be converted to 2 or 3 units but renovation costs are high and the in and out transaction costs are high as well. In most cases there's not enough meat on the bone.

Who in the US Government is trying to make it illegal to use Bitcoin as legal tender? They (US Senators on both sides of the aisle) are doing the exact opposite. The Lummis Bill, which has very wide bipartisan support, is looking to make it (and other crypto currencies) legal tender for purchases under $600.

How much will Bitcoin be worth when the US Government makes it legal tender?

 This is funny. Bitcoin has the 9th largest market cap of any asset just above Berkshire Hathaway and just behind Tesla.

It seems like you could be borderline. For the most part, lenders are only going to look at your housing debt-to-income. Unless you have a signed lease on your Brooklyn apartment, they'll add those carrying costs to your new total. You'd be at about 40% DTI on a $2MM purchase. If you're going to start shopping around for a townhouse you'll need a pre-approval anyways so reach out to a banker/mortgage broker now and they'll tell you exactly what's possible. Let me know if you need any referrals.

You're going to have a hard time pulling equity out of an investment co-op because most lenders will not do HELOCs on them and the co-op board will have to approve your new debt-to-income on that or a cash out refi. 

There are only a handful of co-ops in Manhattan that will allow investors and those aren't warrantable. Not sure what you're looking at but most condos won't cash flow until you put 50% or more down payment. There is historically low sales inventory now and the vacancy rate for rentals was 1.32% in Feb. There are tons of people moving into Manhattan now. Not out.