All Forum Posts by: Grace Wang

Anthony,

Good point! I don't know the insurance premium will go up because we rent to tenants with pets. I will keep this in mind.

Thank you!

Brent,

Thank you for sharing. Your response helps.

Hi all,

I have a rental property available for rent now. Unfortunately, a lot of applicants who respond to my ad don't have good credits. When I listed my property, we didn't expect to have tenants with pets because I was afraid of the potential damage caused by the pets since we just remodeled the kitchen and bathroom and upgraded them. However, since the credit screening process may reduce the qualified applicants, I am wondering if I should compromise and consider tenants with pets because I don't want our property idle in winter. I haven't rent my property to tenants with pets before. I will appreciate if you can kindly share your experience or lesson learned with me.

Thank you,
Grace

Thanks, Mitch. I just did a research online and found the below link:
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=129631,00.html

Hi everyone,

My relative is a foreign national and would like to partner with me to get a rental property in the US. I am wondering how she has to deal with US income tax since the rent may be her only income in the US as a foreign investor. What capital gain tax rate she has to pay in case we make profit when we sell this rental property? (My relative and I haven't purchased any RE properties yet. The question is only for planning purpose.)

Thank you for your wisdom and input.

Grace

Cheryl,

No wonder I haven't heard from you lately. Have you resolved the tenant issue yet? Is everything going all right? I think that you should have the right to decide whether you want to take Section 8 or not. A similar situation happened us before, and we just rent our property to the best available tenant applicant at that time because we were afraid that Section 8 might get us into some unexpected situations. I hope you've found a new tenant for the property smoothly.

Good luck!

Grace

Marcel,

Thanks for your input. Since I am a newbie, sub-2 and wholesale are new concepts to me. I probably need to do some research to understand how these things work. Or do you mind explaining a little bit how these things work?

Hi all,

My husband and I have purchased two properties in Fairfax County as our primary residence in the past 7 years. We are making next move to find a rental property in northern VA recently although we've watched this market closely for a while. Even though the US real estate market is weak, it is totally a different story in northern VA. A $136K condo in Sterling, VA can attract more than 10 offers. I am wondering if any investors specialized in northern VA can share your wisdom how you find your deals in this area. Is it worth participating in the bidding war since the banks of REO properties intend to reduce their listing price to draw more attention? Any input will be appreciated.

I can tell that you all are working hard to come up with a good suggestion for us and I really appreciate your efforts. In fact, we've also thought about moving back to Vienna because Vienna certainly has better schools than Fair Lakes does. This is also one of the reasons we don't sell this property yet. I also thought about selling Fair Lakes to realize the gain if we can sell it at low 600s. However, this Fair Lakes property was built in 2004, so it may have more potentials to appreciate comparing with Vienna property which is 55 years old. Now you probably know what my dilimma is. Fortunately, I believe these two properties are both in good locations, so this is why I try to figure which one we should keep. Probably we just sell both and find a smaller town home and spread the remaining to some lower value rental properties? Our current home is approximately 3,300 sq ft which we may not use all of the space but pay more utility costs. However, we probably need to pay the same price for a smaller townhome in our area since Washington DC housing price is going up again. There is really no easy solution for us, isn't it?

Thank you all for your great input. The conclusion of this discussion is so clear. I am glad to have this discussion right before my re-financing case failed, so we've decided to stop right here and put no more cash in. We'll start to plan for selling this property.