All Forum Posts by: Jesse Scroggins

Will as many "blue staters" still be needing to itemize property/state/local tax with the standard deduction being doubled ?

The standard deduction being doubled will undoubtedly be a win for mid to lower income families.

@Gerard Gonzalez

I had a conversation with my CPA about this and he said I shouldn't have a problem claiming a lawn mower, weed eater ect... for the rental business. I just have a single LLC for the properties.

I would have to agree with Natalie, if your asking if you should default then 100% no way.

What is your rate?

Term?

Amount still owed?

At 500 a month you shouldn't be upside down unless your rate is really high. If you have equity in the car just sale it. Pay off loan and there you go, buy a dependable but easier on the budget car.

I literally had a home inspection yesterday on a home my wife and I are purchasing as a primary. House was build in late 2014. It has some cracks in the brick; Per inspector it was due to run off washing away around the foundation, causing slight settling. Was very disturbing at first with the home being so new !

@Evangeline Palmerton

Nice !!! Time for the next one ??

@David Dachtera

yes we offered the mobile application. The particular bank I worked for Bank of Oklahoma did have a merchant account with a account manager assigned to you. We had a monthly fee but banks generally will have lower transactions fee's for teir 1, 2 and 3 transactions. So it would almost always outweigh the fee. We would do an extensive comparison over the clients last few months statements. Comparing which option would be best our service or their current merchant.

I've always thought there was less red tape at the smaller or mid-sized banks. Bank of Oklahoma was a mid-sized to large bank in the south with branches in 7 states. Largest bank in the country that didn't receive any TARP money :). 

TBH from bank to bank all this is going to change dramatically. Also if you are going to pass on the transaction fee to the tennant then a free monthly service might be more advantageous for you.

I would make sure and talk to the merchant about their policy if (when) a charge gets disputed.

VISA, MC, AMEX agreements are strongly in favor of the consumer. I would assume they would eat the charge in most cases. But worth a conversation with the merchant you choose.

Might be worth checking with local banks as well, at my bank we would beat square fee's even with our monthly service charge. If the client would be charging 1,000 or more a month due to our transaction fee's being lower.

Depending on your merchant you might be able to take payments over the phone, would be at a higher transaction fee, but again i would be passing it on to the tenant.

@Larry Turowski

I guess to keep it simple. Why not purchase a new home if we can rent current home out for the new MTG?

To answer your question:

The big issue with selling the house is we have a Farm loan on 50 acres. Being a farm GOV loan they put a 2nd MTG on current house. LOC being the first. So no its not paid off, and the rent from current home would simply cover new home MTG not LOC or Land Payment.

A somewhat simple question, but should my wife and I buy a new home simply to rent out our current home. Currently rent two duplexes. We are wanting to get out of our current town to a nearby suburb. Unable to sell current home to fund new house as we do have a LOC tied to the house for student loans. DTI isn't an issue at this point. But i'm looking to grow RE hold properties during this time as well.

We have two options; 

buy a home 150k and rent our current home out, it would all but cover the mortgage. save up for 3 or 5 years and build on acreage and sell/rent the new 150k home to fund the the new home. looking to build a home for about 250k 

just stay in our current home without a mtg payment and save more from W-2's until we have enough to build on the acreage, we would be about 2 or 3 years away from this.

My dilemma is during this time i would be trying to triple my RE portfolio and that is priority #1, our W-2's currently and wont be funding the RE growth however. 

I just feel if we could rent current home out to cover new mortgage it would be a smart investment. I know most of the payment would simply be covering the interest with a FHA loan but would still be money from collected rent.

@Rosston Smith

Man i've always loved finance and investing. Growing up you always heard invest early so you can retire. You know the "every 7 years it will double" thing.  So that has always been something i researched. So for years searching for ideas and strategy's to make my money work for me. Buy and hold RE was by far the one that makes the most sense not to mention the safest.  Even starting out your not risking much money if you go into the deal right. I originally thought buy one let it pay itself down and save up to buy the next one with cash. Long process but great !  New plan is to leverage equity and BUY BUY BUY !!! 

Plus i think everyone has the desire to be successful and live a certain lifestyle. Even at the bank the plan was maybe go back get my MBA have a good career bla bla... boring and after uncle sam I would never have enough to really accomplish what i wanted in life. So that was the biggest motivator. 

I was really sold on the process for about 2 years. Reading everything i could watching BP podcast's and playing with the numbers mapping out my next 30 years to riches haha. To be honest I hadn't started actively searching for rentals at that time, didn't have any money saved up but i was extremely eager.  So when this guy showed me a list of properties and the quad's numbers were so good I jumped on it. Even looking back i'm like dang that happened fast. With him financing the deal it was literally a conversation at Braums, and agreeing to the terms. Few days later we sign papers and it was ours.   He originally wanted 10% down (6,700) and 5% interest.  I asked if a larger down payment of 10k would be enough to get 0% interest and he was fine with it. With the 6 year note the 5% wasn't much but saved me saved 9,500+ over the term.  I had to do an equity loan on my truck for 10k for the down payment. So the property was bought with virtually none of my money and was 100% financed.