All Forum Posts by: Jimmy Hodges

@Jordan Thompson you can absolutely do that. It's called house hacking and there are lots of discussions about it here on BP. I know two people here in AZ that are doing just that right now. It's a fantastic way to start. I am actually waiting for my daughter to finish college in December and once her lease expires partner with her to get a property where she can be the owner occupant and I will be the money and help manage. She is in the medical field and we are looking at renting rooms to some of her single colleges and/or traveling nurses. It will be the best way to get her started and to help keep her expenses down. After a year we will repeat and add a second property to her portfolio. 

@Jordan Thompson In the area that you live what will $25k get you? If it were me and I was looking to move in to the place (owner occupied) then I would look to see if I could pickup a small multifamily duplex, triplex or four-plex with part of the $25k saving the rest for fix-up and cash reserves. My goal here would be to rent out the other unit(s) in the hopes of covering most if not all of the mortgage while doing a live in fix and repeating the process with the other units as tenants move. After all the units are fixed up you could then repeat the whole process with a second small multifamily deal. If that doesn't work for your area and budget then I would look at house hacking a single family place with as many bedrooms as you can afford and do the same live in fix strategy. Either way you want to by a property under market which means it will need some work so that you can get the most out of it. 

There are a lot of assumptions here like, you are handy and can do some of the rehab work yourself, or you have enough cash to hire out repairs, the area is a good rental market, etc. But as @Louis Jeffries stated, "When buying a home to live in we have different goals than buying one for investment purposes. Therefore, you must be clear on your goals." So what are your goals?

I also work in IT and wanted to add that many of the attacks that are successful come from spear phishing which is a targeted attack directly at an individual. These usually come from an account being compromised and the threat actor using the compromised user's email account to send targeted messages to all that person's contacts. The threat actor creates rules in the person's email account to hide all correspondence between them and the target. To the target the email is legitimately coming from a known and trusted person but unfortunately that person does not know their account has been compromised. The sophistication of cyber criminals has increased tenfold over the last several years so you have to be suspicious of everything. Even if you are in the middle of a transaction and something changes voice verify. This goes not only for real estate but for every aspect of your life that evolves the use of technology. Live by the adage "Trust but Verify".   

@Matthew Allen Here is a great company here in the valley I would recommend. Curtis Contracting llc

@Walter Pape most of the deals that I have been looking at are penciling out to be between a 4.8 - 5.8 CAP in the Mesa area.

@Tyler Brantley

I think you will have a great opportunity to learn even if you don’t buy a single property. Think about this... if you move around every three months there are going to be so many places you are going to get to see and get a feel for as potential future investment locations. While your not at work make it a point to drive the city and go to local meetups. You could potentially network with thousands of people over the next two years. Make it a priority to try and build as many relationships as you can while you are there and if your contract gets extended or you end up coming back you will know people you can put on your team if you do find a property. Personally, I think you have a grand opportunity that many of us never will.

Jim H.

@Arta Montero

The first thing I would do is find a new property management company. There are some really good ones out there and some really bad ones and it sounds like you simply have a bad one.

Hiring a property manager only moves your management roll from managing the property to managing the manager. With over fifteen years of experience managing people I can say with utmost confidence that the hire slow fire fast quote would certainly benefit you.

Take what you have learned from this experience and use it as part of your interview process when vetting your next management company. Also, there are some really great posts on BP about what to ask when interviewing property management companies.

Jim H.

I would also add. 

- Life and Business is a team sport. Finding good partners will super charge your success. 

@Kevin Freeman Welcome to BP. There are a lot of great people in here and lots of useful information. Good luck in your endeavors.

@David Boatman I’m 100% supportive of your decision. Sure it was your dream car but you were blessed with the opportunity to touch your dream for two years. Most people can never achieve that because they are not willing to sacrifice the immediate gratification for the future rewards. What you have done in this single action is to prepare for the possibility of tomorrow. If everything crashes or even just reduces you will be ready and if it doesn’t then I’m sure there will be another 911 out there available to purchase. If you didn’t make this sacrifice today you would be less likely to be able to tomorrow and the opportunity you hoped to take advantage of would slip through your fingers. It’s a decision of which would you regret less and I think you made the right choice.