All Forum Posts by: Brant Richardson

That mixed with some strategies from "the 4 hour work week", like having a personal assistant in India take care of all the phone calls, could be really profitable and more passive.

When you are done with your realestate license, read these books recommended repeatedly by the people interviewed in the podcasts:
http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/10/14/real-estate-books/

"keep coming back to rehab/construction type of work. I keep telling myself that this would add knowledge for future pricing and whatnot, but it's just as likely the engineer in me" Go with this. If you don't have a lot of capital then you need to buy cheaper places and put sweat equity into them.

"my local realtor who also invests in real estate" Get to know this person better.

I think it depends on the options you have available to reinvest the money in. if it is worth 240k and you rent for 1200 then your rent to price ratio is only 0.5%. If you could get 1-2% with other properties that would be substantial. You have an incredible rate on the current loan but financing is still really cheap so I would not be that afraid to sell/refi if there are more profitable properties to invest in.

First rehab I did was all me, every single scrap of spare time and very long hours, over the course of months to make it happen. My second rehab I hired a young guy who didn't have much experience but was bright and able for $15/hr as a helper. I could have found a lot cheaper if I wanted to. What a difference. I could set him up to paint while I did something else or we could work together on more complex stuff. Find cheap labor and use it. I will never do it all myself again.

Borrowing against my 401k is a good idea. At least my interest payments would go back into my own account. I was hoping to figure out a way to have my rental income be tax deferred.

Reserves? Thats what credit cards are for right? Two four plexes is a big bite for your first investment. Any way you could start off with just one of them and have some reserves?

Thanks Jeff. I have a 401k with a company where I am employed. I am trying to figure out how I can use the money in that account as capital for real estate investment. The 401k administrator for the company I am employed with says that I am not allowed to buy real estate directly but I am allowed to buy an LLC that holds real estate. So I am trying to figure out how to do that and still keep all the rental profits as deferred.

Are you saying I should make an LLC, buy real estate, buy the LLC with my 401k, then create a 401k within my LLC and stick the profits in it. Like a 401k within a 401k.

Thanks for taking the time to write this, from another person looking out of state. The Google map idea sounds excellent. I imagine there is a full spectrum of just how rehabbed a "turnkey" property really is. I'm glad you found a acceptable property, it would really be a bummer to spend all the time/money/effort to go look and decide nothing worked, hard to maintain your patience in that situation.

I am wondering if there is a program that would give me a blank map of a given area and allow me to mark addresses and leave notes about the property. Something like the Zillow map with property borders but only has my marks would be ideal.

I am currently trying to learn a new market. It would be helpful if I could take rental information from Craigslist and put it on a map. I would like to mark each address that I known the rent on, if clicked on it would give the details like beds/baths, year built, and my rating of its condition based on any pictures I found. I could then use a different icon for properties I am interested in buying to do comps on what to expect for rent. Maybe have a third icon for properties owned, hopefully lots of those. Might be helpful for knowing when to raise the rent too.

Is anything like this available? As I was typing out this question, Google Earth came to mind, I'll have to see what I can do with that.

Will an LLC owned entirely by my 401k plan have to pay income tax?