All Forum Posts by: Jon Reed

It is $800 bucks... It is not worth the headache and lawyer fees trying to go to court.

Move on with your life and considered it a life lesson to do walk through right before heading to the closing office. 

Make sure you have an LLC, realtor, banker, and contractors lined up for when you buy that first property.

Dive on in and have fun!

All depends on what your investment goals are. If you are flipper you will look at different metrics compared to buy and hold investors. Personally, I don't look at any metrics to figure out the market trend. I am a buy and hold investor so I just continue to buy a property every 6 months.

There is no right or wrong answer. Do you need all the cash out of the property to buy your next property? Does just 80% of ARV provided enough cash to buy your next property? Does leasing it out making a solid yearly return? Do you know a good property management company that you want to use? Does selling or holding the property help you reach your goals?

Answer those questions and you will answer your own question.

I would suggest doing a quick search... 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/search/topics?utf8=%E2%9C%93&term=LLC

You will be able to read through hundreds of posts about LLCs. 

Start networking with realtors in the different areas. A good realtor can help guide you to areas where it would be best to invest in their city.

If you are going to live in the unit then you can do the 3% down strategy.. however if this an actual investment property, and you just want to do traditional financing, then you will need ~20% down. 

Either way... if you only have $3,500 saved up then I would say hold off. Not to have a bigger down payment but to have a cash safety fund. Also, lenders usually want to see that you have 3-6 months of mortgage payments in cash reserves after purchase before they will approve you for the loan.

@David K. That is a big question! 

My wife and I have a simple philosophy that serves us well, and it helps us answer the "should we renovate/update XX".

Would we be happy moving into our rental?

If the answer is no because of __(bank)___ then we need to improve that thing. 

As far as hardening against tenants... we just use nice quality materials that we would enjoy having in our own home. Then screening tenants is where we put a lot of effort into... because you can not 'harden' your property against a bad tenant.

This is a hot topic that is asked all the time. You are going to get a 50/50 split between people who say you don't need an LLC until XX amount of properties... then others who say you need one before you buy your first property.

I am in the camp of having all your properties in an LLC even if you just have one. An LLC is super cheap to create and it offers HUGE protections from liabilities. I am also a huge fan of getting an umbrella insurance policy even if just have one property.

Both a LLC and an umbrella policy are super cheap and they help me sleep at night.

@David K. When you say harden your rentals are you talking about what kind of repair work to do on a rental? Or hardening rentals from the elements to decrease utility cost? Or hardening rentals from tenant abuse?