All Forum Posts by: Juan F. Saa

Has anyone used house hacking for parents to live in instead of yourself? I am looking for something like that in Central FL, preferably around Kissimmee. My mom is looking for assisted living in places like Good Samaritan. Any tips or alternatives?

Thanks in advance for your help.

@Chad U. I have contacted Norada RE for opportunities in FL and they have pointed me out to a couple. In general, however, the numbers have not worked for me as I am looking for a balance between CF and appreciation, leaning more towards CF. The numbers look nice from an appreciation standpoint, though.

Thank you all so much for your valuable and thoughtful response; your experience and suggestions really show how much I was off the mark. I was considering having a Wyoming LLC and one for each pair of LLCs as I'd heard Garret Sutton recommend but it might probably be overkill to start.

@Jill F., your numbers are really encouraging, although the 59 units to 2 LLCs ratio seems a little high; but I am speaking only based on Mr. Sutton's recommendation above. On the other end, @Jonathan R McLaughlin, I think the nature of your transactions are way complex when compared to my humble upcoming start in turnkey rentals, but I get your point.

Great recommendations @Lynnette E.; I don't mind (and actually like) keeping records on my own so I expect this to help a lot in reducing the fees, but the approach @Susan M. has taken in pulling and categorizing everything at the end of the year is very appealing; I will add that $100 per door you tipped me on as a rule of thumb to triage bad cash flow deals.

@Jeff Stein, you are right, unfortunately some companies/professionals do scare novices like me into getting services that may not be needed instead of providing the advice we need. Thanks for offering to help, will keep it in mind.

That's exactly what I think got me here, @Mark Fries,  over-analyzing; I am struggling to find the proper balance between careful analysis and analysis paralysis :)

@Kenneth Garrett, I just bought a couple of books on real estate-related tax strategies that I already started reading.

Again, thank you all for helping me get my head back in the game.

I recently got started with great excitement in RE investing in single family turnkey properties, have spent a lot of time learning about the wonders of cash flow, and just refinanced my primary residence to cash out and invest in two new construction properties with good numbers. I have been very conservative factoring my expenses and determined that my cash flow for each would be close to $300 per unit. Pretty good from my rookie perspective.

Only after I began researching more closely have I come to find that CPA services that include tax advise starting at $150 per month plus return filing fees around $1000 per form are not uncommon. Some "nice" packages like silver, gold, and platinum offered by a firm run from $3000 to $9000 per year for just three properties.

In all my learning the suggestion of using CPAs and attorneys came up occasionally, sometimes as an afterthought, and only a couple of times I saw them used in examples with numbers that had no major impact (e.g. $27/month on a proforma... really!!?!??). At this point I am wondering whether I have started backwards and the whole CPA/attorney factor has even a bigger impact than the typical taxes and insurance on a proforma to influence the decision of whether to get in the passive investment business or not, and not necessarily for the bright side of the tax deductions.

My question is: am I missing something or can I truly expect to give up most, if not all (probably to a loss) my cash flow just for financial advice and its related “advantages” or “protection”? Would I be passively investing only for actively feeding my advisors and have almost nothing left to show in my monthly income? I know I could opt for doing much or most of the work myself but that would defeat my goal of independence by unwittingly getting into a second and less-enjoyable job, besides my current full time which I do still love.

Please excuse the rant but today I feel very much down after several months of continuous highs, to the point that I am even reconsidering the mess I might be getting into. I sincerely hope someone can reply showing me how I am wrong in all this and provide the much needed insight to rekindle the fire :).

God bless.