All Forum Posts by: Joe Minteer

Run the numbers through the BP rental calculator and see what the numbers look like.  It's always best to leverage the deal and preserve your capital for more purchases. 

Last year I started my investing and my credit took a 60 point hit and still hasn't fully recovered with one of the credit rating companies. Mine was the same as yours. It's best to look at all of them and see if its across the board. Mine was low with one, but the others were fine. I'm about to see what mine will look like since I'm attempting to increase my HELOC to 150k, using a hard money lender the first time and increasing my Home depot card to cover a new heat pump. I've made 3 inquiries in a week, so I'll let you know where mine ends up.

Quote from @Jessica Lambert:

Thanks! A year ago she got behind on her rent so I did give her a “notice to vacate” but she caught up before the deadline. This time she gave me 30 days notice, so I was hoping she would be a problem of the past. At this point I’m convinced she’s abandoned the property. The neighbor said she hasn’t stayed there in weeks. This has definitely been a learning process. I appreciate the input! 

If she's abandoned the rental, that could give you immediate access.  I have a clause in my contracts that deals with abandoning. Make sure your rental contracts cover it too.  I got mine from eForms.com and was money well spent.

Quote from @Sam Bhattacharya:

I am looking to expand my rental property portfolio.  I would like to use the help of private lenders to do this.

Is it common in the industry for realtors to help you find a private lender?  Or is this something investors are expected to do themselves and bring to the table even before they begin?

 I've bought homes conventional and i have to say very few will ever give you that option. I've only had 1 lender advise is on using our 401k to buy our home. Our situation was that we couldn't sell our house and our realtor gave no options, but our lender threw out using our 401k for the down payment.  

Just the other day input a contract on a place and told my realtor,  who says she's an investor,  that I was using hard money on the loan and she thought that meant cash.  She didnt know that it is non-conventional financing.  

Best thing to do is get all the financing knowledge from the experts here and arm yourself in your deals. Get your financing on your own before you get the contract signed. 

Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

I wouldn't pick either of them.

Is the property in a low-class neighborhood? Is this the only kind of applicant you can get? Most Landlords want Tenants making 3x the rent, a 650 credit score, no bankruptcies in the last 5+ years, 

Same thought here.  They both will cost you money and grief in the long term.  It's best to keep searching for someone with a better credit rating and rental history.  Zillow's rental manager has a great resource in checking tenants rental qualifications. 

I ran into the same issue here in Mechanicsburg.   You should of given her a 15 or 30 day notice to vacate, since it's a law in PA. The time is calculated by the lease.  Monthly is 15 days, yearly is 30 days. You have no right to touch anything, regardless.  The notice is the 1st step,  after the notice you can file a complaint and get a court date in front of a judge.  Right now, you dont have much recourse other than giving her the notice and hope it works on getting her to leave.  Mine drug it out for two months, so it wasnt too bad for me since we didnt go court.  Read up on the PA eviction process to save you the grief.

Every one of us who do the same daily grind and work our REI 24x7 feel the same way. A lot of advise out there about getting help, which is great for building your team. Work smarter and don't try doing it all. Find the realtors and contractors that make your business grow in the comfort of your daily job until you have the inventory and cash flow to bag the job.

Quote from @Becca Flim:

Hey BP community! 

We are in the process of purchasing our first rental property in PA and looking at opening up a separate bank account in order to track our expenses. At this time we are not looking at setting up an LLC as we only have one property, although we may in the future once we have acquired more properties. I have a couple of questions:

1) Are there advantages/disadvantages of opening a business bank account vs a personal account?

2) Does anyone know if PA has a law as to where the security deposit needs to be placed or can we just keep it in a savings account?

3) Is it best to open up both a savings and checking account or should we stick to one?

4) Should we do the down payment and closing costs from the new account?

Thanks in advance for your help!

BeccaI 

I too live in PA and just opened a business account since I'm starting to purchase homes every few months. I had to give them all kinds of info on my LLC in order to open the account. I'm not sure if you can open a business account account like a personal account. You may have to use a federal ID to open the business account, other than that, you may need to open a personal account. Best to check their requirements.

I wish every military veteran knew of the power of using their VA benefits. Use it to the fullest extent to get started building your inventory. Good luck!

Sounds like you've built up a good bit of equity in it. Also, the Mechanicsburg market has gone parabolic the past two years, so it's undoubtedly worth more. Have you run any numbers on an HELOC? I'm in the process of upgrading an old one I had on my previous primary home, so I'm planning on leveraging that for deals along with a house I just sold. I just started working with a hard money lender, so that itself is an interesting experiment in leveraging homes.

I found the market here to expensive, so I've been doing deals down south in the gulf of AL & MS. Lots of places under $80k that make great BRRR projects. PM me if you want to hear anything more about it.