All Forum Posts by: Kevin S.

Hello BP members,

Have any of you been there and done that?  Left the market, completely or partially, and had to choose between using funds from either accounts? Which did you choose to dip in first and why?  Looking back would you do it differently/change the sequence of which account to draw from first?  I know the question doesn't involve tax bracket, age etc.  I want to hear your experience/journey.  Thanks for sharing.

 Permitting has to do with me having ZERO knowledge in 'construction' and not knowing if the contractor is doing something correctly or not.  I depend on city inspectors to tell me if something is not done right.  Government involvement in this case is actually favored, at least for me.  Many other things, not so much.    

 You are welcome.  In our case the contractor said that it's better for home owner to get permit but because we wanted to move in by certain date he suggested we may have to skip it. It was our choice.  Now if a contractor suggest skipping permit right off the bat, it may be a bad sign IMO.  Regardless, it's still a risk without permit.  

I can tell you as the end user why I did it. TIME. Re modelled almost the entire house before we moved in. The cost was the cost and the contractor let me chose to permit or not to permit. We choose to skip permit only because we wanted to move in before the holidays! Choosing permit route would have caused delay. I don't think the quality of work would have been different with permitting. Would I have preferred to go the permitting route? Yes. Sometimes the reason(s) lies outside of rational or logic. As for the quality, it depends on company. The contractor we used had renovated bigger homes than ours. We took the chance. I think if a contractor 'suggest' to skip permit then I would stay away. The renovations was not ADU type work just to be clear.

@Adam Bartomeo

How's the rental market in Ft Myers/Cape Coral area?  Seem saturated?

 Census.gov will give you (for any city/state) the population, median home value, median household income, median age, racial distribution and more.

 Good advice.  That's not the way to do especially if you are newbie, less informed and inexperienced.  Familiar response from my teenagers growing up.  Fortunately not anymore.

@Corby Goade

Hello Corby, doing a quick search on Zillow it seem the rent cannot support the purchase price in Boise.  Typical 3/2 range from 400K-600K while rent is 2K-3K.  Can you really do a 20%DP and cash flow neutral or better as you suggested?  Also, has Boise come to an end of it's appreciation climb?  What will support further growth now that people moving from California likely plateaued?   

 I agree.  So much for his post...

Eric compared the tax and insurance from state to state.  I know property taxes and insurance in Florida differ vastly between coastal and inland cities.  Eric probably took the average or mean for the entire state in his comparison chart.  I was just wondering if he had an appreciation source/comparison chart the way he did with tax and insurance, is all.  Because that will tell a better story.