All Forum Posts by: Kelsey Illuzzi

Hello! Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read, respond and offer some helpful advice! My fiance and I are newbies at real estate investing. We started small by purchasing a duplex for 55K last summer with an FHA loan. At that time, my fiance was full-time as a mailman and I was a part time admin at a home nursing agency. As of September 2019, my fiance quit his full-time job to fully pursue our online Amazon business. I now act as an Amazon consultant full time as well as assist in managing our own business. As of April 1st, 2020, I was laid off my part time job due to COVID. We have 10K set aside strictly for our next real estate investment down payment that we wanted to purchase within 18 months of the last one. We found a duplex we want to move forward with, but our lender is telling us we won't be able to make any new purchases until we have been self-employed for two years and able to provide two years worth of tax returns.

Is this legit? Is there something we can do to get around this? It's not like we don't have income... We have our current rental income of $450/month plus we would then rent out the side we current live in. Then move to one side of the new one while also renting the other side. I'm assuming we need to get creative, so if anyone has experience with something similar, I would tremendously appreciate any input! Please let me know if you need any other info!

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

@anthony wick 

We asked for whatever info was on record, but apparently there wasn't any since it was a family friend... smh... 

Thank you for the input! That is very helpful. We did have an inspection on both sides. How do we go about doing the credit, criminal and eviction checks?

Hi there. I'm new here and new to the world of of real estate. We are very excited to learn as much as we can! My fiance and I purchased our first house last Friday. It is a duplex that is currently occupied on one side (we will be living on the other for awhile). The previous owner was initially  "renting" the home out to his sons, so it appears no real legal documents or anything are in place. Friends of his sons are living there now I think. The only info we received upon closing was that there are 3 tenants on the other side. There was no lease agreement in place. Honestly, we don't even know their names. We met them briefly when we initially viewed the house, but haven't really seen them since. We want to increase the rent about $150 because they were paying less than the nearby average. We've now owned the house for four days and are unsure how to move forward with the whole rental process. From what we understand, the tenants were just sending the owner a check once a month. Our plan at this time is to introduce ourselves in person and give them a letter noting the rent increase, but we are unsure what other information we should get from them! Any guidance on this topic would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!