All Forum Posts by: John Sharpe

Be careful with easy debt like car payments and credit cards that will mess up your debt-to-income ratio for your early RE deals, have tax records of your income, and don't spend your money on luxuries until later in life!  

Be careful, high HOA fees can damage your DTI (debt-to-income) ratio when looking for current or future financing.

My undergrad was in Geography and I haven't finished my master's.  I can't say Geography has been super helpful, aside from understanding some climatology or demography aspects.  Others in my program went on to study urban planning or environmental issues so those would be more useful paths.

Back to Prague, maybe Budapest.  The day-to-day quality of life is fantastic if you bring your own income with you.  

That would be a decent down payment for a modest home in the desert or mountains to use as a vacation rental.  Beware though, lots of Angelenos have the same idea right now!  

I have a similar question. I own a rental condo with no mortgage on it that rents for $630/month with an HOA fee of $177/month. I've had it for 1.5 years. I'm doing a refinance on my primary residence and I was surprised the bank calculated it as $0 monthly income from this rental and -$177 monthly debt for the HOA, basically showing this investment hurt my DTI instead of helping it. Once I've had this for more than 2 years will they show the positive cash flow when calculating my DTI in future deals?

Thank you.  

I live in a rural area of California and I'm currently in the middle of a non-cash-out refinance with Fremont Bank.  It's been pretty easy.  

I was working for a big property developer in Europe. In fact the day Lehman Brothers collapsed I was in 'the City' in London for a conference and you could hear a pin drop as people were walking around very quiet/nervous.

We knew banks were stopping lending and the market in Europe kind of froze solid rather than drop like in the US, at least at the beginning. We knew credit was very hard to get and the firm I worked for, a big developer, was very highly leveraged so things got bad. I remember many times coming into the office and people were crying. Sometime us employees would only know about our own company's unsuccessful attempts at getting a credit lifeline by reading about it in the newspaper. Lots of assets including projects under construction were taken or practically given away. Court cases and lawyers were involved with just about everything.

Most people in the firm lost their jobs and the firm lost most of its assets. I was on a sponsored work visa connected to the job, so when my position disappeared so did my visa.

I was broke, came back to the U.S. and eventually got back on my feet. The good news is, I had 2 small investment properties that I held onto and didn't sell for liquidity in the tough times. Their values more than came back up and I sold them both for a large profit during the recovery.

I think that would be my lesson: set yourself up securely so you don't have to sell in the bad times.

1999 Mercedes C230 sedan.  It's a tank.  20 years old and still going strong. 

Currently on my out-of-state watch list for long term investing:  Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and pretty areas of New Mexico.