All Forum Posts by: Justin Teal

@Sam Torvinen

Thanks Sam, I appreciate all the tips! I had a lousy experience with finding a good realtor when we were securing our residential property, I'll be sure to hit you up when it comes time to move.

@Sam Torvinen

Thank you so much I appreciate that! That's quite a good deal you've got going. We've tossed around the idea of having them pay utilities I'll play around with some numbers and see what we could work out. 

@Marc Winter

It's a 2 bed 2 bath. 2 bedrooms on the second floor, with the main bathroom and just an oddly placed bathroom in the basement with the water heater and such. 

I haven't had the appraisal yet, but I did not think to ask about if it's zoned for houses! Thank you for that tip! 

Also the current tenant is paying all the utilities, I just asked what they were paying for calculating what we could rent it for, I was thinking about a $1,000 would be fair just based on other rentals in the area. It won't cashflow like crazy, but given I won't be using management and I don't actually expect maintenance costs to be that high I think it should do fair? 

Double checked and it's showing correctly. Perhaps it's the taxes? They are pretty high for the size of the property, but I believe you can get do an appeal. The heat is also included under water&sewer and the windows are not great, so I'm assuming that's why that bill is high. That's our first capital expenditure we are investing in so that should help with the utilities. 

Duluth MN 1,400 square foot. 2 bedroom, 2 bath (although 1 of the bathrooms is in the basement and very gross) Renter has been there 13 years. The trulia estimate for the property is $116,000 but:

A: Property is pretty run down appearance wise, good bones though. Rewired 2 years ago, roof 6 years old, water heater and furance less than 3 years old. We are getting this before it hits the market as we know the seller who was double homesteading and has to sell the property due to that, she just wants to get rid of it ASAP. She initially said 70k and we said nothing over 50k and that's where we've settled until we see an appraisal. 

B: I'm not huge on trusting that estimate. We are just in the beginning stages of getting the purchase agreement drawn up by an attorney.

It also comes with a 2 door garage (filled with junk and broken windows). The nice thing is it is technically 3 lots. The one the house is on and the garage is across the ally with an additional empty lot behind it. (could possibly take down garage and sell the whole 2 lots together as well)

Anything I'm missing? This is more of an appreciation purchase than a cash flow one (I mean three lots with a house and a solid renter for $50,000 in a good neighborhood seems no brainer.)I was conservative with the numbers, not using a realtor on our side and I calculated property management in there but we won't be doing that either. Any extra tips for a first timer who's been lurking on the forums for a year or so?

I currently deposit 12% of my paycheck into my employer 401(k) and they put 50% up to a max of 6%. I also put $500 a month into a mutual fund (currently at 4k). When it reaches 5k I planned to put it in a ROTH, however, since I'm not planning on getting into real estate investing I'm really rethinking my contributions. Would it be wise to drop down to 6% 401(k) and 0 into my mutual/roth in order to save up for real estate earlier? I realize my taxes will be a bit more due to this, trying to see if the benefits outweigh the costs?

Thanks

@Travis Wright

I haven’t seen in any but I’ve only been in BP for a few months. If not it seems like there are enough people in the area to get one started. I’d be interested!

@Michael Schraepfer Hey Michael just saw this post now! Thanks for the tips! We ended up purchase a single family for now and are working on getting some equity in it to BRRR when we move into our next home. We have even looked into using Heirloom to manage it once we make that move!

My girlfriend and I recently purchased our first home (I planned to house hack but honestly couldn't find a good multifamily in the area for our current price range due to time constraints of saving for our down payment) and are wondering if we should be paying down some debt before saving for our first rental property. She is in deferment so we aren't worried about that for the next 4 years, however, I've got about 30k of 4-5% interest rate student debt and 12k 5.2% car loan debt. Since those are lower interest rates we are considering just saving up for our next property (while keeping a safety net of course) instead of paying down debt. 

Thanks for any advise in advance!