All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Excuse my beer math:

2.5 hours = 150 miles-ish
Say 300 miles each day
avg 30mph = 10 gallons of gas each day
$22 gas/day 
22 working days/mo = $484/mo in gas

Oil changes at 3k miles = 2 oil changes/mo= $160/mo

You're almost at $650/mo in additional expenses each month, not including add'l wear and tear and accelerated depreciation on the vehicle. 

My biggest question is, what would be more important? Getting this ONE property, or living closer to work and saving yourself $650 dollars and 110 hours of time each month?

Honest question: What do you think you could get accomplished in your investing career if you spent that $650/mo on marketing, and 110 hours a month on learning, networking, and finding deals? :)

Either way, good luck to you!

it is a family common situation and you don"t have to commute every day or you can stay with a friend near work some days The letter is the key  The lender should be able to help you  Here is a quick thread

https://www.ovmfinancial.com/va-mortgage-guidelines-for-determining-if-primary-residence-is-within-a-reasonable-commute-to-work/

In the Bay Area, people commute 2+ hour one way easily if work and home are in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. And people are getting conventional loan fine here. So I'd find different lender who can help you with your situation.

Is there a specific reason your so dead set on getting this property? Even if the projected returns are 5% better than something local, is it really worth the extra time and effort of that commute?

 A co-worker of mine did a 2-1/2  plus commute from Philadelphia to NYC everyday. I didn't know him that well and I was even shocked that he did it for 30 years. He did it by bus though. Says he gets up 4:00am and in the office by 9:00am. I learned this at his retirement party.

I thought no one else does that till my wife had a co-worker that bought a house in Philadelphia, and commuted to downtown Manhattan every day. We were house hunting in NYC, and in the early 80's, a SFR in good areas go for 150K in the high interest environment of over 15% for mortgages.

I got invited to the co-worker's house in Philly. They got the house for around 40K, a mansion that needs a little work on it's own lot. The had three times the room for a third of the price in NYC. He tells me they ran across a number of others doing the same since he moved there. So for them, the commute was worth it.

Back then, Philly prices were ridiculous low compared to NYC and even thought of doing the commute ourselves. Unfortunately all the good paying jobs are in NYC, such as finance and IT. My wife's friend in Philly got a $20,000 inheritance, bought a duplex for $40K, the tenant rent covered the mortgage and she lived rent free from day one. She was 27 years old just out of college a few years at the time. She was fortunate to be stock broker for Dean Witter, made enough to pay the mortgage off in 4 years.

Having considered it, we house hunted ourselves in Philly for a while, it's a choice of getting and keeping a good paying job, maintain a career path and live in a dump, or have the same good paying job, and living somewhere you rather be but enduring a long commute. Yes, we took choice one, we stayed in NYC, and the place we got was a dump compared to Philly.

I am assuming you are active duty military ?  Does unit unit allow that ?  I was required to be within 30 minutes without special permission from the Battalion Commander

 This one might come down to how it's packaged/presented. I'm not licensed in Alabama, but with a good letter from you I feel that I could sell this to underwriting.

Something that might help would be a history of long commutes. If your current commute is 2 hours each way, and this is bumping it to 2.5 hours, document that to make it easier to sell. If your current commute is a 5 minute walk and you're bumping it to 2.5 hours, that would be harder to sell.

This one is up to the humans. The human LO you work with who packages it, your human story, and the human underwriter. There's no hard-and-fast explicit rule in the guidelines that I've ever seen.