All Forum Posts by: Lauren Daly

Hey Tammy! I'm an investor located in Tyler with a slowly growing portfolio. Right now my husband and I own one rental and have fully renovated home which will eventually become a rental. We will be looking for our next investment, probably single family, this winter, in the next few years we may be interested in multi-family investing!

Hey Joleen! I don't know the answers to 1 & 2, but if you can get a title loan for a car, I imagine you can get a line of credit for your land, too! As to 3, you might be able to refinance/take a Home equity line of credit on the condo or your primary residence to get the cash down payment. Also, depending on your debt to income ratio, a bank may pre-approve you for a no/low money down loan. If your equity positions and debt to income isn't in a position to do either of these, you could look for a partner who could front the cash and split the profit or find a hard money lender who would lend you cash at some sort of interest term. Brandon Turner wrote the Book on Investing with Low or No Money down, which seems like it needs to make your reading list :)! As to 4, for my family, (we also rent out our condo and own our primary SFH residence) we do try to save the down payment from our W2 income and do our lending through a traditional mortgages. It's a slower but less risky play than 0-down loans, plus we only answer to ourselves. Our next buy will probably be the last that they allow us on our debt to income, so I will be looking for partners or portfolio lenders in the coming months!

Welcome to BP and to Texas!!

My husband and I are almost ready to buy our next buy and hold investment-- we will have enough for the down payment and cash reserves in a month or two. I figure that's good because in Texas the real estate prices tend to be lower in the fall/winter, when we will be ready to buy. I just need one deal-- my husband is risk averse so I promised home just 1 this year, and next year we will buy 2 around the same time frame. We both work full time, I'm salary and he is hourly, we don't mind rehabs but I'm just not sure if the payoff and risk is worth the potential reward. I'm entertaining two schools of thought: 1) Invest in a small direct mail campaign and investing my time in driving for dollars to sniff out some non-advertised FSBO and try to find a great deal, something that might meet the 1.5-2% rule. We find homes in massive disrepair at 50% of their ARV occasionally on the MLS and have been beaten by other investors to a few less massive rehabs that we found off market. These deals come back with about a 10% cash on cash return. The total dollars invested would be higher, so if I only get one deal this year, at least I get more out of it. 2) I can find listings on the MLS that meet the 1% rule all day, every day. These houses are 15-20 years old and really don't need more than the popcorn ceilings scraped in terms of rehab. My math on these properties puts me somewhere in the 7% Cash on cash ROI which, in my mind, is acceptable for something that I literally buy and rent immediately, no renovations required. So the conundrum-- do I go easy mode, or do I buy myself a project?

I've been reading other posts and wanted to add a few facts about my mortgage: It's a conventional 30 year loan, originated in October 2015. All payments are on auto draft and on time. I think I remember receiving some paperwork saying my loan was bought by Fannie or Freddie. If this strategy to take PMI off our payments doesn't work, my husband wants to pay down the loan balance so that we can get out from the PMI, and he doesn't seem negotiable on doing that before we can buy our next rental. So, I calculated it out, if we are really careful, we could pay down the $20k to get to 78% equity by the end of the year, but I would rather use the cash on purchasing another rental.

We bought our home for $150k last year and put about $40K in renovations in and overhauled the entire home. The house is about 1,800 sq ft. Brand new homes in the area sell for up to $150/sqft but renovated homes sell for about $105/sqft. We knew we weren't building a ton of equity when we did the renovations (we spent extra on some niceties because we will live in it for a few years until we want to rent it). The balance on the mortgage is for $140k, and I think our house should appraise for at least $180k. In that case we would have ~23% equity, if I'm doing the math right. We have a PMI payment each month of $63, that I would like to get rid of if possible. What would I need to do to show the bank our updated equity position & get the PMI removed?

I personally like white appliances, just because it's keeps kitchens brighter, but it depends on the rest of your kitchen, like flooring and cabinetry. I feel like a high quality tenant might want matching appliances, but that's just based on my personal preferences for matching appliances vs matching décor.

One thing you could look at is getting a stainless steel conversion kits for the range, I think it's just a sheet of stainless that sticks to the front, and you can replace the handle with a black one. A stainless range hood is $100. Then if you bought a stainless fridge and dishwasher, all of the appliances would match.

Overall, I think you're making the right choice replace the fridge and dishwasher, because replacing them once you have a renter in will be more of a pain.

My husband met a laid off oil worker at a restaurant on Friday who needs to sell his house ASAP. The property is close to a junior college and in a very rentable neighborhood. I looked at the Google images before we went, and when we arrived at the house, I noticed 1-car garage had been enclosed to become a dining area and a separate laundry room. I checked Zillow's tax records and it shows 1,100 sq ft, which seems like it might be the square footage of the home not including the garage, once the garage becomes part of the home, it's probably closer to 1,400 sq ft. My suspicion is that the garage conversion wasn't permitted, so now we're trying to figure out our risks.

I have a few questions:

1) Are garage conversion permits required? Or, how can I look up that regulation in my local area of Tyler, Tx?

2) If garage conversion permits are required, how do I check if the conversion was permitted?

3) What happens if I buy a house where the garage conversion wasn't permitted? Do I have to get it inspected and fix any structural issues?

We hired a tile company to retire our bathroom showers and floors. The guy was very nice and mostly professional, except he just kept delaying my job because he was busy on other projects and mine was small. Originally when we bought the house he gave us a quote for redoing all 1600 sq ft of the floors and the 2 showers. On the quote, which was explained to me, my fiancé and my realtor, he charged $665 to install 266 sq ft in tile in the kitchen, bath and utility, $600 to remove the tile in the kitchen bath and utility and $300 to remove the shower in the master (which was plastic) and put up backer board for the new shower. At the bottom of the quote he wrote "LABOR ONLY". It's all pretty clearly written on the quote, and all 3 witnesses remember the explanation the same way. Now, after 2 weeks of waiting for this guy to come out, he finally did. He brought 2 guys, and they removed the tile surround in the guest bath tub and the shower. It took them less than 2 hours and then they left because we needed some framing repairs from some previous water damage. We fixed the framing the same day they were out, but the guy couldn't "fit us in his schedule" for 2 more weeks. We have a tenant who wants to move into our condo in 1 week, so we found someone who could fit us in sooner, and fired the original tile company. Basically at this point, I owe him for removing 1 plastic shower and 1 tile surround in a bathtub. Yesterday, this guy calls and tells me my bill is $600 from the "remove tile" line item, and says he will give me a discount to $500 because we had our own dumpster. I tell him I will pay him $300 which is pretty much his shower removal + backer board line, but I calculated the prorated tile removal and $200 for removing the shower but not installing the backer board. He says that the $300 was for his material cost for waterproofing my new shower, and it's $500 or he will file a lien on my house. Now, I'm pretty sure he's posturing, but I don't want that headache... I let it go for an hour and he responded that he would take $400. So I told him to pick up his check today. All of this may be completely irrelevant because I never signed a work order of any sort, so I'm not sure he could even file the lien. I'm pretty sure he is just pissed he lost the job, and it's the time of year when people start to try to figure out how to pay their Christmas bills... 1st question: (I need this answered more than anything) My quote and dealings have been through this guys LLC. I will ask him to sign a lien waiver today when we give him his (extortion) money. Do I need to ask him to bring the waivers for the 2 labor guys he brought to my house? 2nd question: what did I do wrong, and what's the better way to handle contractors? I know the list will be long, so please be gentle!

I'm buying a 3/2 in a neighborhood right next to the hottest neighborhood in town. The house is truly a gem, we picked it up for $150k when the majority of houses around it sell upwards of $250k. This particular street is slightly lower for renovated homes because we back up to a rental townhome complex, I think fully renovated we could get $200k. We are planning on living in the house while we fix it up, then we want to rent it out when we can acquire our next property. The house has 5 different types of flooring and its 1,600 sq ft. We are going to open up the floor plan and I feel like a continuous flooring will make the living area feel spacious. Houses that are upgraded in our neighborhood command $150+/mo more in rent and sell $40k+ premium over non upgraded homes. We had 2 flooring contractors stop by during our option period and the quotes they gave us I am having trouble with because they are not apples to apples: Vendor 1) 1,300 sqft Engineered hardwood $10k Tile in the bathrooms, kitchen, breakfast nook, laundry (300 sq feet) $3k Tub tile surround and 1 shower $2k Total: $15,000 Vendor 2) Labor including demo and install $5k 1,300 sqft engineered hardwood $5k Tile surround & shower tile $2k Kitchen and bath floor tile $2k Now, I can do the math and see that one is cheaper in total. Option one is full service, option two in have a labor quote and a material quote that I pieced together. Is there something missing in the pieced together option that I should look for? After we got all these quotes, my fiancé talked to his friend who told us that he puts tile or vinyl plank in ALL of his rentals and that we were crazy to do engineered hardwood because we would run out of our extra boxes and end up replacing the whole thing in 3 years. In have quotes on Vinyl plank from vendor 1 for $2/sqft and from vendor 2 at $1.79/sqft. I hate the idea of tile, I think just because of it starts to look out of date it is HARD to replace it, plus it's hard and cold looking. I price out the wood look tile because it's a little less harsh, and it's about $1.99/sqft. Basically, my questions are: Am I getting insanely high quotes? And what material should I use for a "renovated" rental so that I can command the highest rent?