All Forum Posts by: Joseph Medina

@Daniel Nobile, NOOOO the Coasties have infiltrated us here LOL JK! 

thanks a million for the info, because this has been a major question of mine for the longest time. 

@Ethan Brown, no worries bud like i said i am looking at doing this myself, but i am waiting to see what universities do because of the "-VID" 

@Kamran Rahman, yeah that's because i was quoting the whole post LOL 

this sounds a lot like a "her" problem and not a "you" problem. look up your municipality landlord laws and read on what you can do to either sell the house with her still in it or get her out! but it all starts with you reading about what your ordinances allow.

Oh, I hope someone is able to answer this, because i want to use my VA home loan to do the same. What i do know is that its very similar to an FHA loan and you're only allowed 1 at a time, but what i don't know is if it recycles. Life must be good at Lewis, must be nice LOL

@Ethan Brown, hey bud congratulations! Let me start off by saying this is a market i am considering heavily. i am waiting to see what Schools o first regarding covid.  

first I would go to your university's website and find out how much student housing cost. (ill provide an example of this here in a sec.) 

When you find your price you're gonna have to calculate much more vacancy like 50% (because 2 90 day semesters equals 180 and divide that 365 lands around 49.3%), because university students leave on holiday and summer breaks. 

Now, when you're leasing get the parents to co-sign the lease (almost should be a must) that way if the student trashes your unit the parents are on the hook, or if they skip town or don't pay you can hit up moms and pops. 

then you might want to set aside more for maintenance and stuff, kids are just harder on things than adults. Not saying they're gonna party, but just rougher. 

then everything is the same. make sure you have rules and etc for fridge space, food, and etc. 

Also, a major piece of advice is set aside days for laundry room use. while in the Army when i lived in the barracks there was 1 laundry room for like 100 of us. So each day of the week was assigned to a certain hall and the upstairs COULD NOT use our stuff. Also, have a hygiene clause in your lease, not everyone has the same bathing standards as you. 

EXAMPLE

I found a duplex near Texas A&M it was a 4x 2 each side. 

So i went to this website https://reslife.tamu.edu/apply...

found a random hall that kinda fit a 1 room living situation. for this example i will use fowler hall (FHR) it is roughly 3500/ semester. so, 3500/ 3 each semester is around 3/ 4 months you choose your rate. you're looking at roughly 1166/ month. 

so now you have the university's rate. You cant charge that because housing is ON campus and that convivence is very very valuable. 

So, what I wound up doing was i was gonna charge 900$ for 3 months for one room OR 600$ for the year, so you dont have to worry about vacancy as much! 

@Seedo Dvon, no worries! well if you have one year left finish. that HS Diploma or GED  will help you get that dreadful 9-5 for you to leverage to get some type of funding for the deal you want now or the deal you want in the future. 

If you're wanting to know where the best market is, then you need to find out where people are moving from, AND where they are moving to. If you don't know how to do that then ask yourself when i move, how am i going to get there, and if you use a moving company *wink wink* check their website to see if they track this migration pattern another *wink wink*. this information should give you enough to go on and make an informed decision about which state and then you make your mind up from there. 

it should scare you bud. there is a good scare because it could potentially change your life for good, and then there are the bad things. 

I mean if you look at the grand scheme of things bud when you're 40 or 50 and you look back will a few months or a year be detrimental to your overall success? hopefully not.  

the time is going to go by anyway, how you spend it is totally up to you! 

So, week two what has happened... 

Well, I have been studying how to pour concrete. Why? Because the house my wife and I (the second pair of shoes in my profile pic) put in an offer to the owner of the house i discussed last week and part of the pool decking needs to be filled in with concrete. We currently live in there now, and as time goes on I feel silly we didn't do a Lease Option, but live and let live. 

We put down our earnest money and now we are in the next part of the process. there is a real good chance that i will push for us to refinance our loan as it is a great loan and terms, but its NOT FIXED. And as an investor that worries me. i think the ceiling is 4.25 % for the loan. I mean its not a bad loan considering we are borrowing the money for free given that the national inflation rate is in the mid to upper 5's, and in Houston, Tx our inflation rate according to the Chapwood index is the high 8s and low 9s. 

My wife told me she has been talking about REI to her co-workers while at work, and it makes me smile a little. I am not a rule follower and I am a maverick, mustang, renegade what ever you wanna say at heart, but my wife is, and she balances us out perfect as i am quick to give someone the proverbial middle finger and speak what i want, while she approaches things much different.

I scare her a lot because i do a lot of my work in silence, and to her it looks like i bounce from one thing to another thing to another. But, i take my time and study what i am doing. She sees me reading a ton of stuff on my phone (as i am a huge reader now) and what I was reading was/ were e-books. 

Now, i might be using my education in an unethical way, but i decided to buy paperback versions of the books i have read and i leave them all together (10 total) on the living room coffee table. she hasn't asked me what they are for, but when she does i will tell her this is what i have read so far on REI. Over 2000-3000 pages of reading about REI... it sounds like a lot and when you look at it; it is a lot. I sleep easy at night because i am not forcing her or trying to influence her on getting on this sailing ship, but what i am doing is showing her that i am not taking this lightly, and i am doing my homework, and that this is a well thought out decision.

So something really cool happened today, and i must get this out on "paper". A year and a half ago i was talking to this super smart older guy. Much older than i was. Come to find out he is an accredited investor that used to be some programmer or software engineer for Exxon mobile and is only working so he can spend more time with his wife. She, from what he told me, is a strong independent lady that doesn't want to depend on anyone ;). i was talking with him about my stock and forex trading, and i was telling him about a business model i had in mind. I eventually told him my #1 concern was taxes, and his ears perked up almost instantly. he said one comment to me that changed my life and set me down this rabbit hole of REI. "find a way to show a loss on your money."

Understanding the basics of it, and knowing that businesses if they report a loss on net profit for the year they can roll over any loss to the following year. So, I sat there pondering how i could do this. I wasn't trading enough volume for me to record a loss that would make a difference, and i wasn't losing much when i did lose. So, a year goes by and at that point i read rich dad poor dad and i read tax free wealth. i re-approached him and asked him if he had any books in mind for me to read about REI and he said "ill send you something" well he is busy i assume and i never got the recommendation. Now many might think "wow what a d***" but i am glad he didn't send me anything. See, I somewhat subscribe to John Locke's Tabla Rasa which means blank tablet. So what i learned was etched by my own learning and desire and was not influenced by anyone.

I correlate my desire to be successful in my endeavors to being like a little kid playing in the pool and getting held underwater. Anyone reading this can relate. there becomes a point where you need to come up for air so you push up and they push back down to hold you under, and there becomes a point at which you actively start fighting back, scratching, swinging, biting or whatever you must do to come up because you need to breathe. this is how i approach my success. If you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe you will become successful. So, you will not wait around for answers, you will go out and seek them, pursue them, and then and only then will  movement, and just movement, toward success begin. 

So I amazon-ed "real estate investing books" and David Greene's book on BRRRR investing came up. i looked at the one star reviews first and i didn't see anything about the book being inaccurate, out of date, or misleading so i bought the e-book and found BP. Started to listen to the Podcast and a few books later and countless hours later here i am...

So about 7 months has gone by since i last asked him about the books, now this past weekend i sent him the following deal...https://www.biggerpockets.com/... a few days go by and i scripted what i was gonna say to him the next time i saw him "it was just a deal i thought you would like to pursue, because I'm not in a spot in my life financially to move on anything at the moment i would of liked to see it go to a friend" 

I was at the gym today and out of nowhere i got a text from him saying 

B: "Hmmm... seems like a good deal what's your plan for it" 

Me:" Nothing, i cant move on it, but i would not fix and flip anything, not even a wrench with Biden's new Cap Gain taxes, but if i was to move on it i would buy/hold/ rent. 

B: "You should get something for finding this deal this is how it works, i sent it to my partners, and if we move on it you will get something for the efforts." 

and of course this is all paraphrased.  

A lot has happened in 7 days. cant wait to see what this coming week brings. we do have an appraisal scheduled by the mortgage company Thursday!  

PS the agent on our house SUCKS!!! Trying to communicate with the guy is like trying to use sign language to speak hieroglyph. and he is not some sort of Rockstar either that's just too busy, because the title company doesn't even know who the guy is LOL. almost over! 

@Seedo Dvon, hey bud i hear you wanting to "burn the boats" and go all in REI, but I would slow down and at least graduate high school first. Reasoning is bud, is that if you don't the cards really start stacking against you in life. And if the cards are stacked against you now, its best not to add more against you and dig yourself in a bigger hole.

As I learned being a stock and forex trader, there will ALWAYS be another good deal down the road, someone's always gonna cheat, someone's always gonna default on property taxes/ mortgage, someone is always gonna die and leave an estate. take your time now to learn the basics get an okay-ish job to save up money and then go or it. I'm not saying go to college or whatever but i am saying is get at least a HS Diploma. 

Miami is one of those areas too that you cross over one street and you're in the slums. not every part of Miami is like South Beach. there is a reason it was called Miami Vice back in the day. and they even made Cocaine Cowboys which is a true story out of Miami. i would suggest is that if Miami is your target market study up on it. 

Hello All, 

So, in the 4-horsemen discussion I discuss that if left unchecked, then the affordability crisis will be part of the reason, out of 4, for the collapse of the US economy if not the world economy. Now, what are some solutions? 

Well, lets hash it out. In the US Hawaii is known as being the most expensive market in the US RE market. Why? Its an island plain and simple (not including its democratic policies, not meaning to be a political jab). You can only build out so far before you're eating cake by the ocean. 

So, what has the HI government done in response to its unique problem of its state having 700 Sq. Ft. studios for $1M+ it has provided leniency in its ADU laws. Providing its citizens the easier ability to add Additional Dwelling Units on properties to provide "affordable" housing.

So, can this model work everywhere? I am not sure, and if you're reading this and have an opinion either way share. 

Another one (and my least favorite)... A UBI!! A universal base income. Everything in my being hates every bit of this thought! But lets touch on it. The US spends 1/2 a TRILLION on social welfare programs. If the US decides a UBI then it would need to cut out all of the Social Programs  like welfare, social security, and more. I like it in a way that it would force those whom abuse the system to find work, but those that really need the programs would severely be hindered. its a win lose situation and so not so good... even though this is the system we are moving to. 

Probably my favorite... If anyone here has any experience in healthcare at all you are well versed with CMS. Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services. Now, I bring this up because I I think... again just me and may opinions. is that if the US government were to, instead of stimulating citizens, stimulate business by encourage (force) them to pay employees more and make them report how they are spending the money, and some regulating entity inspect and survey the locations, one you would be creating tons of federal jobs and force income wages in a indirect way up. Now, how does this work without causing massive amounts of inflation, well the company still hires out their positions as same rate, then the US government steps in and supplements the income VIA stimulus for an employee that makes under a certain amount, because lets face it a CEO making 500K does not need a pay increase. The people must work for this stimulus, so no more sitting at home not producing. So, therefore the more the company is able to produce more, so they should be taxed more. 

Theoretically it sounds good to me LOL. it truly stimulates the economy, because some if not most of that money that was printed and divided out went into savings account. But, if a consumer minded employee earned it, then it truly goes back into the economy as CapGain tax from the business and Earned Income Tax on the employee. 

I know this sounds like a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation, but we are in a very interesting situation where the stimulus thing is NOT working, people are not wanting to go back to work, and inflation is on the tipping point of spiraling out of control. because the problem with this raising the minimum wage bit, is that that money is coming out of the bottom line of the business, and the only person who absorbs more cost is the consumer. But, if the employer already budgeted for 10/hour and the government adds an extra 5/ hr then the business' bottom line is not affected, so therefore the price should not have to raise unless to do so due to "natural" occurring inflation. 

So, the consumer can go out and spend their hard "earned" dollars on more housing or rent. I think in this model it could potentially close the gap A LITTLE between the lower and middle class and the middle and upper class. lower income housing will be back where it should for those that really need it, lower income wage earners now can afford to move out of the slums if they wanted to by being able to afford better housing. And we could potently see less of this civil unrest, because facing facts as facts are, It is no secret that the minority population is the majority stake holder in the lower class. And I'm not talking about the special onesies and twosies that are the exception. I am talking about the vast majority;

Because, whether its legitimately a racial thing or not, which expands further than this post is intended, but like it or not this "racial divide and protest" that has been created is unrest. Civil Unrest is a symptom of a failing government, because going back in history looking at failing governments Civil Unrest was ALWAYS in the mix because the "Gestalt Principle" no longer applies and the whole is no longer greater than the sum of its parts. Supplementing the income I think can get people into better housing and spread the crime out a little, where we don't have as much crime because there wouldn't be such (not eliminated) a divide in the wealth which could lower the need to commit "survival crimes" 

Again this is one person's idea and theory of how to slow down a major problem. I am open to hear other peoples great suggestions and or criticisms. 

If you like the read or wanting to read the original post that spurred this discussion follow the link...https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Inflation is next week's Horseman.