All Forum Posts by: Justin Sheley

Hi everyone, I have a partnership that we are beginning to dissolve. We have 42 properties that we are looking to sell. Mostly SFH with a couple duplexes. We are open to selling in bundles or even individual properties. Feel free to reach out through BP or email me at [email protected]

Hi Keisha, let’s definitely connect, I’ll send you a PM.

As someone who owns a handful of homes in Rockford IL, I’d say don’t sleep on all of Illinois. You just have to take Chicago out of the equation 😂

Hi Anna, I’m born and raised in Rockford and my wife and I own and operate a long term rental portfolio. With Rockford being the 3rd largest city in Illinois it’s going to come with some very diverse areas and neighborhoods. As long as you’re buying in the right area crime has been a non-factor in our personal experience. We have also seen appreciation, but not necessarily at the same rate as the rest of the country. I think the draw to Rockford for a lot of investors is the affordability/rental demand which tends to make it easier to find cashflow. 
As far as the midterm rentals, I do have a few friends in the medical field in Rockford who have told me the demand for short term housing for travel nurses is very high. My wife and I are currently in the process of renovating a house for this purpose. If there’s anything I can do to help regarding Rockford feel free to PM me anytime. 

I'd be curious to hear from someone who is currently flipping homes in that 100k price range. It certainly seems in my market in Illinois that people are paying up for properties to a point that I can't imagine that they have much profit to speak of based on the comps in the area, especially after you factor in the short term capital gains they are going to pay on that profit. Are investors just settling from much smaller gains? Or are they banking that the ARV is going to be drastically higher than the current comps due to the lack of inventory in the market.

@Brian Simental I'd have to echo the point that @John Warren brought up. An LLC definitely offers some protection, but as mentioned earlier in this conversation so does an appropriate umbrella policy. I know from our personal experience we owned our first couple duplexes in our personal name and I am happy to have them wrapped up in long term conventional financing. We later quit claimed the properties to our LLC in order to transfer the ownership. Starting out you typically want to generate as much cash flow as you can in order to roll into the next deal and start to scale, so the 30 amortization you'll be able to acquire with a conventional loan will probably outweigh the initial benefits of purchasing it in an LLC.

Hi John, welcome to the forum and congrats on taking the first steps in real estate investing. I'm pretty biased towards real estate but between house hacking and the BRRRR strategy it has absolutely shaped our lives. I operate my portfolio in Rockford, but if there's anything I can do to help along the way just let me know. The beautiful thing about this business is I've encountered way more people willing to help each other than not, and I've definitely received my fair share of help from this website and other investors along the way.

@Erika Wilson In my experience financing with an LLC has broken down to two scenarios.

- If you want to take advantage of the great 30yr amortized conventional loans you'll need to buy in your personal name and then quit claim the property to your LLC after closing. We purchased our first 7 homes in our name and then later transferred the ownership to our LLC. The concern here is the due on sale clause that could be called when the bank sees the transfer of ownership. I didn't have an issue with that, but I know it's always pointed out as a concern.

- The other scenario would be to switch to commercial lending right off the bat. It's going to be much friendlier towards working with your LLC, and overall just an easier acquisition process. What you sacrifice typically is you end up with a slightly higher interest rate and an ARM. However, we found the switch to be very advantageous for our business.

I invest in Rockford IL and would be happy to connect you with a few different commercial lenders if that would be of help.

@Matthew Lusson Congrats on even getting in the game. I'm biased, but real estate investing is the best decision my wife and I ever made. I'm also a real estate investor in Illinois. We own long term rentals in Rockford which is a great cashflow market, but w shave also been weighing our options to get a STR. The short term rental business definitely seems more intensive in day to day operations but I can see the appeal with buying higher quality homes and getting a great return. Ultimately I have determined that my LTR portfolio will continue to be my bread and butter but we may try to get a STR as a supplement. It seems the STR marker is going crazy right now and I have concerns with overpaying for a property that only makes sense at the current demand, and what happens if that demand changes due to inflation/other economic concerns.

Ultimately it really does come down to your personal goals and what you want your day to day operations to look like. I think you can’t really go wrong with owning affordable long term rentals, the need for that isn’t going anywhere. STR probably isn’t going away either, I truly think people prefer to travel that way now, but LTR would be the more conservative play.

Sounds good, I’ll check that out.