All Forum Posts by: Kathryn Daniel

Thank you, Umar!

Thank you Tristan!

Hi everyone,

I've been a member for a few years but am now actively using BP and am working on my second home purchase.  I started out wanting to purchase a foreclosure in a good school district which I could live in for a year to secure the loan I wanted and then rent out.  We ended up getting too comfortable, taking too long to do the repairs and stuck around two years longer than anticipated.  Now we are about to close on a larger house in the same neighborhood (current house is too small for all of us and our family is still growing) which we are getting for a good deal in my opinion but it needs a lot of cosmetic work.  We plan to keep this house as our primary residence for the foreseeable future.  We've got a lease signed on our current house and the tenants move in mid August.  Now I'm pumped to continue purchasing properties and renting them out.  I'm a property manager for a large apartment complex by day so I'm familiar with the landlord deal and am excited about it.

I've been listening to the BP podcasts daily while commuting and they've got me excited for everything we can do with real estate now that we've taken that step to purchase a second home, finally.  I look forward to participating in these discussions and learning as much as possible!  Thanks for reading.

Hi everyone,
I stumbled upon this site while searching for info on real estate investing and saw so many helpful posts from various people that I had to join! I work in property management currently at a luxury apartment community and would love to start my own business by investing in and leasing single family homes. I do not have a lot of liquid assets but do have enough to purchase a lower-end home (under 100k, preferably closer to 50k!) and put some work into it. I am a bit concerned about being able to rent out a home in areas that are not the greatest (areas where one can find houses for under 100k). I see that quite a few people here do just that, and my fear might just be due to the fact that I work with a completely different type of clientele at my current job. I guess my main question here is this: should I wait and save up enough money to buy a home in a "nice" area, or put down what I can now to take advantage of the low finance rates now and start to build my portfolio? I don't want to lose out on the great rates; at the same time, I do not want to go broke by making bad decisions.
I'm going to start reading books on Illinois Landlord/Tenant laws in addition to general real estate investment. Is there anything else I should delve into first? BTW, I will be investing in real estate in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Any and all responses are greatly appreciated - I could use a lot of direction at this point!
Another question I have: Do you pay particular attention to the school district in the homes that you purchase? I've been doing that so far and wondered if it really makes that much of a difference. I know it would for me if I were looking for a rental.

Thanks!
Kathryn