All Forum Posts by: Kenneth Swartz

Hey Jessica, welcome to BP. Richmond is a great and improving city. Lots going on, and it’s changed so much (for the better) in the past 7-10 years. It’s a strong rental market because there are tons of millennials moving into the city who have student loan debt and don’t want the commitment of a mortgage. As a native Richmonder, my sense is there are way more SFRs around here than multifamily opportunities. Multifamily properties are in short supply. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but they’re scarce.

Wow, lots of good information and lots of food for thought. No doubt there is an emotional component to wanting our debt gone. I despise it hanging over our heads and love the idea of having a “clean” balance sheet. And I do worry it would be a risk to keep it around as we start investing - the monthly payment between my wife’s loans and mine is around $1,200 a month. That’s a significant monthly expense to maintain if things went off the rails and we hit an emergency as we started investing (job loss, etc...). But...on the other hand, the interest rates are only in the 6’s, so...it’s not crazy expensive as debt goes. Shouldn’t be too hard to beat that rate by investing. 

One thing I was considering was using this year to build up our savings to the level of our student loan debt (ie, put the money in Betterment as we go rather than paying off the loans as we go). If a deal comes along that’s too good to pass up, and we can swing it with what we’ve got saved up at that time, we use the money to jump on it. Conversely, if we get to the end of that time and haven’t found a deal, we decide then whether to just keep looking for a property with that money or pay off the loans and then start saving again. A side benefit of this plan is that as we go through the year, the amount we’ll have saved will earn returns as it sits in our investment account (which over the past year has done amazingly well, north of 30%). 

Just an idea though. Comments/critiques are certainly welcomed. 

Jonathan Smith I see you’re right nearby in Moseley, you do anything with the local REIA or any other meetups around here? Always looking for more opportunities to get out and meet other investors around here.

Thanks for the responses everyone. That makes a lot of sense - weighing which option is going to let our money work the hardest for us by comparing the interest rate of the loans with the likely return rate of our potential investments. To me, it would certainly seem that analysis leans toward the decision of putting the money into real estate investments. 

Hello everyone - My wife and I are looking to get started in RE investing by flipping a house. We have sizable student loan debt, but we have good jobs and income. As such, we are in a position for 2018 where we should be able to save up enough money to pay off our student loans by the end of the year. However, the amount that will cost would probably cover at least a down payment plus rehab costs on an investment property, and potentially the entire purchase price plus rehab costs if we found a good enough deal. So my question is: do we use that chunk of money we save to pay off our student loans? Or do we just accept that student loans are a fact of life right now and use that chunk of money to get started investing in real estate? Thanks all.

Thanks guys! BiggerPockets has been a huge resource already, with the articles and podcasts. So much to learn. Chad, lunch or coffee would be awesome. I will message you to see about setting something up.

Hello everyone! My name is Bryn. I'm an attorney in Richmond, Virginia. I practice in the field of Workers' Compensation. I am in the "learning phase" of getting into real estate investing. I am interested in starting off with flipping single-family homes, with an eventual transition into buy and hold landlording, probably with small multi-family properties. At least that's the plan as of now!

I have no pretenses of knowing what I'm doing yet, and every conversation is a learning opportunity. I'm looking forward to connecting with and learning from real estate investors and anyone else here on BP!