All Forum Posts by: Louis Aller

Well the investment property would be here in NY, based on the assumption that management would be easier. I plan on waiting until winter when prices seem to decline a bit then placing offers. This also allows me to build some reserves.

My family owns a house free and clear in Florida, but we live in NY. Based on Zillow the house is worth 200k. Because my grandfather lives in the house, we cannot sell it, however we would like to use the equity to invest in an income producing property. Is this a good idea? And how would you go about doing this in my situation?

I live within the circled area above and thought I'd drop my two cents: I'd describe the neighborhood as C overall, maybe C+. Predominantly older (early 1900s) two family homes typical of downtown Albany. The Western side of the map you put up is mostly student renters. We have Albany med, law and pharmacy school in addition to the College of Saint Rose all in a very close proximity who rent on those streets. Because of this most of the leases run on a June 1st rotation. Heading towards the East is a little different in feel because there you'd see more Albany locals and less students.

I'm in Albany NY, and I too am looking into the program. Surely there is a catch though because it seems like they're just giving away 7500 dollars to me?

Those are all very valid points. Especially about the exit strategy. I need to wait a long time until I save up the money to make down payment and repairs. @Shane Mahar do you want to give me a quick rundown on how owner financing works? Won't it have a balloon payment of some kind?

Yes, a couple were in Arbor Hill, some in the poor part of West Hill, and some in the poor part of South End. My main problem is that even though I am about to start a new job, before this I've basically only worked off the books, and have no W2 earnings.

I am new to real estate investing, so this is probably a newbie question. So where I live in Albany you can buy duplexes for 30k-50k. Granted these are in some of the rougher residential neighborhoods, not quite war-zones, but very very close. Personally I've lived in worse neighborhoods so fear for my own safety is not the primary issue. Currently I rent, have four roommates and we pay 2.3k+ monthly so 583 each. This includes all utilities.

It seems to me that if my brother and I just bought one of the duplexes, we could live in one of the units and rent out the other to help pay expenses. As far as I can tell even if we didn't rent out the second unit, the mortgage on a 50k property would be less than what were currently paying, even when you account for tax and insurance. The main thing preventing us from doing this is that were both full time students and only part time employed so we couldn't get a mortgage when we called banks.

1.) Other than having a cosigner, do we have any options for financing?

2.) Or should we not seek financing and just save up our money for later?

Thanks guys! At the moment I'm a student full time and only employed part time, plus I have no savings to speak of, so that prevents me from trying to buy property or do anything like that at the moment. So in the meantime I'm just here learning, but when I have a specific question I'll be sure to ask.

Hello BP,

My name is Louis, I live in Albany NY, have been reading Bigger Pockets articles for several weeks now. I am a PharmD student here, currently renting, but am interested in finding out how to get started. To this date I've only ever held assorted summer jobs while in college and have no real estate experience whatsoever. Eventually I would like to build a buy and hold rental portfolio. I look forward to learning from you guys and your experiences, and being a part of the BP community!