All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

Yes, but just call your lender and ask them what you have to get to in order to get rid of your PMI.

Just focusing on the passive income you want to achieve will leave you chasing cash flow which will have you buying properties in worse areas with harder tenancies that seem to cash flow better, but will have large cap ex.

Any time someone asks a question about where to invest and it can be anywhere, they aren't ready to invest and are opening themselves up to every pitch in the world on an area. You have to do some more research.

Are you saying 200k in cash so you could spread that out among multiple downpayments or 200k via a loan?

These are good questions, but keep in mind that a month of obsessive research is still the absolute tip of the iceberg. Here are my best answers:

1. I would focus on a duplex first so you learn house hacking and management of one tenant. If you are single, look for uneven multis where you can live in a small unit and rent out the bigger one (e.g. - 1/1 and a 3/2 instead of 2/1 and 2/1)

2. Yes, the more units you go up, generally the less players in the game so there is some advantage in purchase competition as you go up, but also more management scale and cap ex for someone who is new.

3. Do not focus on the best price for properties when you are new. That will get you looking at cash flow and end up in a lower rated area than you think. You want the price that works for you in the best appreciation potential area possible. Your relationship with an investor-friendly realtor will be crucial here.

4. If you are house hacking, you wouldn't use a HELOC, you would just refinance. You could use a HELOC, but with VA loans you have an allotment so you can get loans on more than one home depending on how much bandwidth they give you.

How far away from the property will you be? I would say definitely do not in almost all cases because it's very easy to manage one property. Is it a single-family home or condo? Why spend 12% for someone to manage a property in good shape where you just collect rent and respond to an occasional need? Just make sure everything is updated and you will be able to manage it easily.

You have done your research from afar, just crunching numbers. That is how you lose your money and make terrible investments. You want to do your first BRRRR in a town where you know no one (if you don't live there) and have to trust brand new contractors and sub-contractors? You need to work on this for about a year before you try to buy anything if you want to have a better chance of success.

Take it from somebody who loved Strawberry Mansion for a long time. It's still a needle in a haystack area. You can make money there, but it's hard money, and it's not forgiving if you get it wrong. The best opportunities in the Mansion are the parts where it borders an area that is at higher scale in my opinion.

Where is the benefit to the end buyer here? All end buyers can see it on the market now and can buy it direct so what would the point be of you locking it up on assignment and then asking people to come back and buy it when they already could have bought it without paying you spread in the middle.

If you "need" to get five listings, you won't get them. The secret to getting listings is not needing them. People can smell commission breath. Good listings are a people game, not anything you have at the bottom of your post. Those are spray and pray techniques that don't fit with sellers right now because sellers/owners are sitting on a very low rate and don't want to move to go up 4-5 points on their rate.

Listings aren't a start now thing as well. Listings come from nurturing your database for years, so if you are new, you have to pick a niche or an area that you have a competitive advantage in. Why would someone want to list with you when there are a million other realtors? If you know that, you have a start.

When you make a post like this, you are going to get a lot of pitches and that means many fake gurus. Mentors are found by going to real estate investor meetups for six months to a year without an ask and seeing who you get along with and want to learn from. You also need to identify what you have to offer to the equation. The best mentors aren't paid (coaches are paid), they are people who want to help you because you are interested in them and have something you can do for them that they can't do themselves.

Have you ever hosted or co-hosted a property? It sounds like you haven't and if that's so, what is your pitch to an investor? It can't be low price because that means low service. It's very hard to learn on the fly without the experience and also ask people to trust you before you have proof of concept. I think it's because you are looking at the hosting business as the catalyst to make money to invest. That's a poor why. To be a good co-host, you have to be focused on the person you are co-hosting for and firstly, the guests.