All Forum Posts by: Kyle Lane

The podcasts are full of knowledge on house hacking. If your current house is big enough you could air bnb a room. I wouldn't want people in my house though. If that's the case you could buy a duplex, live in a unit and rent the other one and put the house you just bought on vrbo or air bnb. That would be a hybrid strategy but would, in theory, accelerate your investment trajectory. I say in theory because a lot would have to go right. And I would suggest having at least 6 months of expenses in cash or cash equivalents like t-bonds or a money market account.

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment in Mansfield.

Purchase price: $170,000

2 duplexes

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

reduced risk of loosing rental income

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Real estate agent.

How did you finance this deal?

creatively

Lessons learned? Challenges?

There were a few things wrong that I didn't see when I looked at them originally. In the future I will at least hire a contractor to take a look at the structure and mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

Best way I've come up with to find contractors is to ask other investors who they use. Or property management companies. I'm sure there are several RIA's in STL. If your not a member of one already, I would go to some of the meetings and network and ask questions. The closest one to me has an annual membership for unlimited events or you can pay xx amount for each meeting. Since I can only go every couple months, I just pay per event. It usually comes to $10 - $25 depending on what they have going on.

I'm only about 3 hours from you. I'd be interested in connecting and checking STL out sometime. Best of luck. PM if you would like to connect.

Your banker can help you with that. Use a small regional or local bank. Tell them you want to use some of the equity in the property you live in as a down payment on an investment property. I would ask them to establish a line of credit at that point, for whatever is left. That way you aren't paying interest on money that isn't doing any work.

I am trying to learn some tried and true old school methods for manually managing paper rental property and business records. I can't believe how difficult it is to learn about old fashioned record keeping methods. I know there are effective ways of doing it because it was done for hundreds of years before computers. 

I am actively shopping for 2 - 4 units to house hack with an FHA loan. I like the Bigger Pockets calculator but I can't justify paying for a pro membership to get unlimited use right now. does anyone have experience with the Vertex42 Rental Property Calculator https://docs.google.com/spread... or something else that might be a better solution?

I hope this is the correct place to ask if anyone has any experience with the Vertex42 Rental Property Cash Flow spreadsheet. I like the Bigger Pockets Calculator but I'm not paying what they want for a pro membership these days. At least not right now. Any experience you have with this or recommendations for other spreadsheets would be appreciated. 

No I never really got an answer directly. If the numbers work and it's a good area with demand for rentals then its a good deal. I have been continuing to learn about and study real estate and other financial markets. I am specifically focused on real estate investing but I took a break from that for a while and learned about stocks and the stock market. I still haven't been able to secure any private money and my credit is not good enough to borrow from a bank. I have improved it dramatically over the last year, however. I will just continue learning until I am able to do my first deal.

More great advice. Thanks Anthony Angotti

That's awesome. I'm not much of a sports person. Great advice. Makes complete sense. So do all of the other replies.