All Forum Posts by: Kevin S.

Vacancy is too low, should be around 8% so you save up one month's rent each year (1/12 = 8.33%), CapX is WAY too low, should be around 10%, repairs should be around 5%, and you also left out budgeting for insurance.

@Kay March I'm not an expert in VA financing, but I believe that they are allowed to get up to 100% financing with those types of mortgages. As for the closing costs, if you pay the $6k in closing costs/prepaids, that's $6k less he has to pay upfront. However if you just reduce the price by $6k he still has to come up with a bunch of money to close, my guess is either he's trying to save his capital or has little cash to cover closing costs.

@David Jackson sorry to hear that happened to you, but like @Patricia Steiner said, you really should submit your offers and receive counter offers in written contract form. I'd let your realtor know that going forward that's what you want to do to avoid this in the future.

@Kelly McBride you've already got new tenants in, and since you didn't mention it I assume there hasn't been any complaints from your new tenants about the state of the cabinets. It sounds like a fairly minor issue as far as wear and tear goes, especially from renters there for 4 years. I'd just move on and not worry about it if it were me.

@Chris Mason Pretty sure they don't have income tax in TX (yet), which is why property taxes are so high

@Voltaire Almeda the first thing you'll want to do is make sure your 403b plan allows for loans, retirement plans are not required to allow loans so ask HR or check with your TPA to make sure they are allowed. Second, you'll want to compute what the payback is, depending on how your plan is written you could only have 5 years to pay back the loan, though some plans allow for longer periods of time if it's for a home purchase (i.e. not for a non-owner occupant investment property).

@Account Closed I'd say this is a "it depends" statement, at least in my opinion. Yes, there are a lot of majors out there that people can pursue that cost a lot and don't lead to jobs that pay all that well. For example teaching (though many teachers I know aren't in it for the money, which is why teacher's are so awesome) doesn't give a great return on investment, at least not here in Oklahoma. On the other hand, my degrees in accounting have allowed me to get a position/pay that I doubt I would have been able to attain without them. Overall I'd say that it's worth it (from a ROI standpoint) if you do the research and pick a degree/major that has good pay and plenty of job growth rather than just picking something you think/know you'd enjoy doing.

@Chris Seveney in regards to your comment #2, many who follow the Islamic faith believe that paying interest is against their religion, so I would be careful making a blanket characterization of "that would lend me to believe these people will be trouble." Here's some quick reading from Wikipedia on the subject or you can just google it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba

@Andrew Yu I'd just reverse the entire entry, and then re-book the months that the "buyer" owned the property as rent.

@Nick Brubaker I know you mentioned having a Roth IRA, but do you also have 401k contributions from you're current employer? Be prepared for several "if" statements: if you have a 401k, and if you transfer it over to your new employer (assuming they have a 401k plan as well), and if their 401k plan allows for loans, then you can take up to 50% of your vested balance or $50k (whichever is the smaller amount) as a loan from the 401k. The benefit here is that, while you're paying interest on that loan, you're paying it to yourself and the fees for 401k loans are typically very low ($100-$200 depending on the plan and vendor)