All Forum Posts by: Kent Nielson

The hardest part for you is deciding whether you want to do a HELOC or cash out refi. HELOC is better if you plan on repaying it in the near future. If you don't plan on paying it back I would recommend doing a cash out refi. The difference is a HELOC will have a variable rate and who knows what it will be 20 years from now. On the other hand you probably have a pretty low rate right now and the cash out refi will probably bump it up another 1-3% Hopefully that makes sense.

As far as the appraisal, my understanding is that if you are doing a HELOC, banks and credit unions don't require an appraisal if they go off the valuation provided by the county tax assessor. A majority of the time they don't reflect the true value, so if you want to pull out more than that, you will need to get an appraisal done.

Cash out refinances will always require an appraisal. They will most likely want their own appraisal as well.  For example If you get one done and switch lenders, you will end up paying for another appraisal.

It's perfectly fine to let lender's know you are shopping around, you're right it will keep them honest and more competitive. Also get more than one quote, and I would recommend skipping banks and credit unions and go to an actual mortgage company. They know their stuff.

For the most part appraisers come up with the valuation the same way, so even if you got three different appraisals they would be pretty similar. I would concentrate more on finding a lender you feel good about. Hope that helps!

Condos are a pain and with the small loan amount your lender probably just doesn't want to have to deal with it lol. I'm not sure what financing you are doing but here is a website to see if it is warrantable by FHA standards. I can't say for sure, but you guys can confirm. Is it safe to say if FHA approves it, conventional financing should also work?

https://entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm

Never would have happened if he was a BP member :) 

Josh D. and the gang would be all

lol, noted

I know for single family you can just put 10% down and buy it as a "vacation home" You just can't use rental income to qualify. You would have to rely solely on income from your job. 

I'm not sure if that route will work on a duplex though...

Also I hear quite frequently to ask if the seller is open to seller financing.

 Gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks man!

First off well done for only having a 90$ credit card payment! It seems like most people have a stack of credit cards, multiple car payments, student loan, etc. 

Hopefully another lender can chime in. The standard amount of your rent you can claim as income is 75% of rent you collect. They estimate the other 25% will go to repairs, vacancies, etc. So if you rent a house for 1000 they only take into account 750 as income they can use.  The wild card is your #5 property. I'm guessing either you're living in it or you aren't getting rent from it. Because I did a quick calc and got 41% for your dti.

Here's where it gets a little fuzzy for me. I want to say that if these properties have been on your tax returns for a couple years and you can prove the track record of income, you can go higher than the generic 75%. So if over the last 2 years only 15% of your rental income went towards repairs, vacancies, etc. they could technically use 85% of your rental income to qualify. If this is the case though, they would want a thorough paper trail. Leases, receipts, bank statements, copies of checks, etc.

Like I said hopefully another lender can give their input on this. It's been a while since I've had to deal with this type of scenario.

Thank @Trenton Miller and @David Avetisyan !

Do drill down a little further on #2 Which one do you think is quickest to update new listings?

For investors without access to the MLS.... Which websites (Trulia, Redfin, Realtor, etc.),

are most accurate and up to date? I'm wondering expressly for these two purposes.

1. Recent home sales 

2. Speed of which new properties are listed. 

Cheers

Thanks Syed. Where did all the people go? Move out of state? Into relatives homes? cardboard boxes??