All Forum Posts by: Judy J.

I've got a LLC to hold a property I'm closing on next week. I talked to people and they were split on whether I should do it or not, but I want to have multiple properties, so I went for the safety of it.

Is there anything you wish you'd known when you did your first LLC and property? Any resources out there? I've got a good lawyer doing it, a realtor who's family, and the Nolo books about LLC, and some real estate investing books, but not any good ones about holding properties in an LLC.

I've heard that it's hard to get lenders to refi on a LLC-owned property. What do you do when you want to pull money out?

I'm closing next week, and I have never taken over a unit with tenants and leases before. It's a 3 unit in the town where I grew up. One unit is partially paid for a low income tenant. My realtor is helping me, but I want to ask if there are any other resources out there for beginning landlords. I have rented out rooms in a house before, and rented out an entire house before, but we didn't use leases. 

I will send a letter to the tenants to introduce the LLC/myself, with new address for checks, phone for problems, etc.

Beyond that, I'm in new territory. Do I write new leases or keep the old ones?  

My realtor has done this before and will help me property manage it for a year so that I can decide if I want to hire a company or keep doing it myself.

I also have a LLC that I've started for this and future properties, but I'll ask about that in another posting.

I second redfin.com, but you are right, it's not in Pittsburgh yet. I'm hoping that it will be soon.

 Ali,

  South Bay meaning the southern part of the San Francisco Bay area. Santa Cruz is small enough that San Jose in the South SF Bay is where a lot of people here go. Glad you like Santa Cruz! If you are in the area again, let me know and we can chat in person.

-Judy

I like the way you think. :-) How do you find the owner financed deals? I've joined all of the investor meetups in Pittsburgh and will try to attend several while I'm there. I've found a few real estate businesses there (Aurora, etc) who were posting on BiggerPockets offering turnkey. I also have a realtor who is my stepmom there who's been sending me MLS listings. She said she will manage the property for me for free. And I've run the bigger pockets analyzer on one of them that I'm interested in so far. I suppose I could ask her to ask them about owner financing.

 Elizabeth, 

    Thanks for your good advice about the blogs and making connections. I've already learned about mobile home investing, Dodd Frank and SAFE Act, and that's just this morning! This site is great!

    It's my long term dream to get another huge house and rent rooms. But I can't qualify for any loans now, as I'm not working due to health issues. I was able to purchase the house I had (7 bedrooms, 5 baths) because my ex and I were both working in software at the time. Now it's just me, I have time and cash, and good credit, but no income for a few months or more. I will go back to some kind of work eventually, but I would like to make the move to part-time work now if I can do it by supplementing with investments. 

New investor based in sunny Santa Cruz, CA.  Anyone else here? I'm interested in cashflow opportunities primarily. I'm also interested in house hacking or investing in Santa Cruz but I'm priced out of the market here as far as I can tell.

I just recently received an inheritance, so I have about 100K to invest. I'd love to work up to making 2-3K/month. I recently attended J. Martin's excellent real estate summit and discovered notes and lending. I'm on the learning curve now and trying to figure out my strategy.

In the past I've co-owned a large house and rented extra bedrooms to students. I wanted to keep that property, but my partner needed to sell. I was able to upgrade it and sell it at a nice profit. I found that I loved getting the renovations done but I think the risk in flipping is too high for me now. I will be leaving my current job as an academic for personal reasons so I'm looking for cashflow with less risk to supplement my income until I decide what to do next. I'm motivated to get out from under the $1800 rent here, so will likely be buying something in my area soon for myself.

Those who have been there, any advice? Can you recommend anything else to do other than what I'm already doing? I'm scanning the intro postings now to see what has been recommended in the past and finding lots of great info. I've gone to a Santa Cruz meetup for investing and I'm going to a South Bay one soon. I'm talking to out of state investors. Thanks for any advice you can give me,

-Judy Jackson