All Forum Posts by: Kenton LeVay

They are leased solar panels? Who owns them: the municipality, electric company, solar company? Regardless, I'm willing to bet there is a clause in the lease that allows the new homeowner to remove them if the house is sold. The lease shouldn't be transferred to you if you didn't enter the contract.

That then begs the question of who pays for the removal of the solar panels. It should be either the current homeowner (seller) or the solar/electric company they are leasing through. If the responsibility falls on you, I'd just ask for a credit from the seller.

All that being said, maybe the savings on the electric bill offsets the lease and lowers expenses for you! Do some research on it but if it's saving you money I say just roll with it and save the environment on your way :)

This is great as I think you're a step ahead of me. I bought my first property 2.5 years ago and have had a living nightmare of a renovation and have had to deal with some personal stuff as well. I'm recovering and am currently getting refinance to pull my cash back out but it's nice to see there is light at the end of the tunnel.

It's unclear to me if each side of the duplex has 4br or if each side is 2br/1ba. If this is for a 2br/1ba unit you would be fine without the pantry. If this unit is a 4bd/2ba then it would likely be a family staying there and they could use the extra food storage. I'm not sure why installing a pantry cabinet would be that expensive but in the grand scheme of things, if your property still cash flows who cares?

So I don't know what your financial situation is outside of these two properties and that will for sure impact your ability to get a loan, so make sure you have a strong position there. I'm also assuming you would rent out your current property when you move. If that's the case, present a signed lease when you apply for your re-fi. This will show the lender that it will be an income-producing property when you leave. Also, if you're not approved, just call on different lenders until you get one to approve you.

Following this thread...

Congrats on ditching the excuses and putting yourself out there!

Many investors will avoid the permitting process because it costs money and time (time is money, especially with expensive holding costs). My advice is to go ahead and get the permit. If you sell the house and the buyer sees work has been done they will look up permits. If there are no permits on the bathroom remodel, how can the buyer know the pipes aren't leaking behind the walls? It's always best to just go ahead and get the permit. Can't put a price on doing the right thing.

If you have absolutely 0 interest in self-managing I'd say you just hire it out. But if you're open minded about it (sounds like you are), I'd try to manage it yourself. There are hundreds of books written on the topic that could serve as education for ya. You can always try to do it yourself and if you end up not liking it you could hire it out or sell the property.

None of us have a crystal ball. The reason the market crashed last time is because banks got way too lenient on their lending requirements and then would package up those mortgages and sell them to investors. When unqualified borrows started not being able to pay their mortgages, the whole market burst into flames and everything grinded to a hault.

The only thing I can see as similar to 2007 is that real estate has reached an all-time high. This time it's for a different reason. Increased demand (COVID forcing people to WFH, more disposable income, stimulus checks, historically low interest rates) and decreased supply (historically low inventory) have caused home prices to skyrocket. Couple that supply/demand curve with the historically high cost of materials and you get a market that can be very intimidating to enter.

From my perspective, I think the fundamentals of the current market are much stronger than that of 2007, but hindsight is always 20/20 so I probably would have said the same thing back then. I think it's more likely that things will plateau off as we reach normal again (raising interest rates, lower unemployment, etc.), it may even dip in some markets depending on the metric....but I don't see a full-fledged crash coming similar to 2008. That being said, I'm no professional economist.

I'd say private money and hard money is the way to go for someone like you. Keep calling lenders, put your best foot forward. Be direct and clear. All it takes is one lender to fund a deal and if you have the right numbers, you'll easily be able to find a lender for it.