All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Steiger

@Gordon Starr Thank you, we are looking forward to executing the plan. Appreciate the suggestion.  If we start looking a little further south we will definitely keep that in mind. 

@Whitney Small Thank you, we are excited! You sound like perfect individual that we needed to come in contact with, having experience with both communities.  We would love to discuss further.  I'll send you a message.  

@Nathan Slemmons Thanks for your input.  We haven't looked at any in Sidney yet, but there isn't a reason why we haven't.  Just have been focused on Piqua but from an outsiders view both towns seem to be pretty similar and size and demographic. There appears to be quite a few MFH available in Sidney compared to Piqua so I didn't know if that was a cause for concern (22 vs. 11).  Thanks for the name, we will keep him in mind. 

@Nicole Heasley Beitenman Renovate Ohio is essentially Ohio's version of the FHA 203(k). I've been told by numerous lenders and agents over the past few days that there are a lot of hoops to jump through. They say your contractors have to be on top of things, as you need multiple quotes (2-3) for each repair that you will make. You can't do any of the work yourself unless you are a licensed contractor. Also, they have to inspect each step before moving forward to the next. I was told the whole process can take months, if not years and often times the projects end up failing. I know real estate investing is not going to be easy but I'd honestly rather just raise private money or come up with the renovation money ourselves before getting into one of these, especially for our first home. Here is a link with some info. https://myohiohome.org/renovateohio.aspx 

My fiancé and I are looking to do a house hack. We are looking to buy a duplex in the next month or two to start our real-estate investing journey. We plan to probably live in one unit and rent out the other to get our feet wet and learn the business. We currently do travel healthcare, butte will probably stop shortly once we buy our first duplex. We also thought about buying and renting both units out, however, to do that we would need more capital as you need to be 25-30% down.

Right now we are trying to figure out the best neighborhood in Midwest Ohio to buy. We have looked at about 7 duplexes in Piqua, OH. We have also considered Sidney, Troy, Dayton etc. My fiancé is from Lima, OH, and I am from a little town called St. Henry, OH. For our first duplex, we want to buy relatively close to where we grew up since we will be living in one unit. Another reason we intend to buy close is that if we do decide to continue traveling, family can help out with upkeep etc. We would love some feedback from anyone who invests in any of these areas of Ohio.

Also- we are beginning to explore financing options. Has anyone had success with any of the OHFA programs on myohiohome.org? We are interested in Renovate Ohio, but we have heard it’s a pain and interest rates are bad. Another program we screened into is the “grants for grads.” If anyone has any good/bad experiences and/or success with any of these programs, we would appreciate the feedback.

Any other tips, suggestions, or advice for new real-estate investors welcome! We would love and appreciation any suggestions for our situation.

Thanks!

Britt and Jon

@Colten Adams

1. Why are you selling property?

2. Are there any known problems with the home?

3. Have there been any changes in the price of the home?

4. Average utility costs?

5. How long has the home been on the market?

6. Have there been any other offers on the home?

7. Timeline seller is aiming for?

8. How is the neighborhood?

9. Have there been any renovations or updates made to the home?

10. Rent prices? Are they at market value?

11. When do leases end? Are the leases month to month?

12. Individual meters for each utility/unit?

13. When was the roof last replaced

14. How’s the foundation look

15. When was the water heater last replaced?

16. Central air?

17. Electrical up to code?

18. What work does the property need?

@Marissa Nadeau

Thanks for the info, I never realized that it was a red flag to go from a single family to multi family home. We will definitely keep that in mind as we move forward. Were you able to get an FHA on each of your first two homes? Or did you have to refinance the first one in order to get the second one as an FHA?@Bjorn Ahlblad

@Bjorn Ahlblad

Great point you have there in getting more doors. I like your example, however I just wanted to clarify, with an FHA loan we can only get 1-4 doors correct?

@Greg Dickerson

We don't necessarily need a home base, as we currently just use our parents addresses as our permanent addresses. However, if we wanted to get started with REI using an FHA loan, wouldn't we need to occupy one of the units? But I guess you are right, in that we don't need to get started in REI with a house hack. I guess we just wanted to get our roots planted with a house hack but we have to make sure the numbers make sense first.

My fiance (25 F) and I (27 M) currently are traveling healthcare providers.  We have been doing this since I graduated in May of 2018.  We love seeing different parts of the country, that we may not have otherwise been able to visit if we were working regular jobs in one location.  Travel healthcare pays significantly more than a regular job would pay, as they are able to pay per diem money, which is non taxed money.  About 2/3 of our income is not taxed, which allows us to be in the 12% bracket.   If we were to quit travel healthcare, we would take roughly a 30% pay cut.  Long story short, we want to continue to travel for a few years after we get married (June of 2020) in order to pay off my student loans from grad school and to get ahead with investing.

We have a plan of getting started in real estate but are trying to figure out when the best time is for us to get started.  We know that everyone says the best time to get started is now.  We don't want to wait.  Over the past year or so we have talked about doing a house hack, most likely a duplex, for our first home.  We were always going to buy a duplex with 20% down after we were done traveling. 

Recently, we began to explore the idea of getting a newish duplex (20-25 years or newer) with an FHA loan before we were finished traveling . Of course we would use the BP calculator to analyze the deal, etc. Since it's an FHA, we would legally only be able to rent out one unit. We could have our half for when we come home between travel assignments, over the holidays, etc. It will also give us a place to store our new things that we get from our wedding registry. After we travel we can either live here for a while or move onto our next step, which may be a live in and flip, keeping the duplex to rent out both sides.

My question: Is it dumb to invest in a property that we can only rent out 1/2 units, while not being able to live in it?  Obviously we would also be paying rent for wherever we are traveling ($500-600/month) as well.  Should I run the numbers on the BP calculator as if we were only going to get half the rent? Is it better to get the duplex earlier rather than later down the road or should we wait until we can occupy half of the house once we are done traveling?  

Any input would be greatly appreciated, thanks!