All Forum Posts by: Justin W.

Mostly looking at single family homes that are anywhere from $50K to $150K.  I'm getting more and more comfortable with the "deal" aspect of it, especially for my market.  

There are similar questions all over the forums, but I'd like other's perspectives if anyone is interested in sharing.  I've been acquiring buy and hold properties for a little over 3 years now.  I've always been interested in rental properties but never pulled the trigger.  My company ended up moving headquarters and I was asked to relocate.  My family decided not to relocate because of deep family roots in our area. This pushed me into action.  I've been commuting for 3 years as I've tried to accelerate buying properties.  I come at this from a little different angle that many people on here.  I've had the fortune of a great corporate job in IT for 17 years but am tired of corporate america.  Previously, all of my investing was in the market and cash.  I now have 16 residential units and one commercial unit.  4 of my residential (plus my home mortgage) units and the commercial building are paid off.  At this point I've been trying to pay down properties for cash flow in order to have an option to quit my full time job.  I'm getting close.  Now I'm thinking on the decision to continue to buy more properties or just pay down the ones they have.  I've always been risk tolerant generally speaking but always very debt adverse.  I'm curious as to how others come to a number they feel like they are comfortable with in terms of leverage.  To this point my personal stance had been don't borrow more than I could pay off with other investments or 401k in an emergency.  Lately, I've been considering going a bit higher with the leverage.  Would love to here from others, especially any attorneys / accountants as to where the risk lies in going higher. Is the risk basically attached to individual properties?  In other words, if things went south for a property, is worse case scenario you lose that property?  Thanks guys.. looking forward to input from others.

I'm looking at a potential deal where I would be the buyer in an owner financing situation.  Are there any potential gotcha's from the buyer perspective?  We're discussing things like no early payoff for 5 years, etc. and I can get comfortable with some of those depending on the deal but I'm just curious if there's anything specific I should watch for and / or try to include in the deal on my side.

Hi all.  I'm looking at a couple properties that have multiple houses on the same.  The only options with my banker are to do that as a commercial loan with a variable rate (fixed for 3-5 years) and then adjusts.  They say you can't do secondary market loans unless it's one building per property.  Any thoughts on financing options or other things I should consider?

It is completely commercial property.  She is using it for here business (it's a tax prep company).  The property is in Texas.

I don't have a ton of info yet.  Haven't probed for her financial info.  She just asked if I'd consider it.  @Joel, not familiar with SBA.  How does that help?

I was approached by the renter of a commercial property I own about my willingness to sell the property.  It's a nice commercial building that I bought for $80,000. I put about $40,000 in it.  I was originally going to use it as a business venture and when I decided not to do that I kept it as an investment property.  She's renting it from me for $1650 a month currently with 2 years left on the lease.  I told her it's not "for sale" but that I would sell anything for the right price.  I shot a number out of $290,000 and she didn't freak out.  The one catch is that she would only be interested in owner financing.  Curious what people think about doing deals that way and whether it would be worth it.  She indicated 5% down would be the best she could do.  To me that would indicate I need a higher interest rate but I don't have a good gut feel for whether owner financing something is a good strategy.  Any general thoughts?

I'm playing around with iOS development and wondering what folks would think about an app to run their real estate business.  One that would handle accounting, calculations, etc.  Based on what I've found there's not a one stop shop for all software needs.  Thoughts?

anyone know of Quickbooks tutorials for managing your own properties?  Everything I'm finding is for managing other people's properties. Maybe it still applies. I had 4 semesters of accounting once upon a time but it's been a while. 

I recently purchase a property that has 2 single family houses on it. It has a spare lot that is 50 ft wide by 140 deep. I've search the forums here and Google for some spec duplex plans. Not finding much. I want to build this fairly cheap (in terms of design, not quality). No fancy angles, rooflines, etc. Any suggestions on where to find some stock plans?