All Forum Posts by: Emanuel Toma

@Bryan O. thank you for the help; Notes & lending are not quite popular in Romania, and in investing for Buy&Hold I would also like to take advantage of the opportunity to leverage and buy bigger/more properties with my cash.

@Lumi Ispas for the last year I kept looking for deals in my City, did a lot of creating marketing but the results have been disappointing - the prices of property have gone up and yields have gone down to 6-7% / year (gross, but the maintenance costs are not to big). I am again looking to buy some property in the US. Do you still have that connection at City Bank? Do you know if they still have that option to lend if you have a 50k deposit with them? I could make a deposit anytime and try this route.

Thank you for your help!

I wanted to ask some advice on something: I have stopped our Buy-to-let investing for about >1 year now because the prices of properties in Targu Mures (ROMANIA) (the small town I live in) grew and kept growing (so are the prices in the major cities of Romania). I was looking of a yield (gross, but the maintenance costs are rather low) of ~ 10% / year for an apartment (the best housing properties to let around here). Since the prices have gone up (and they seem to keep on going up) the gross yields I can get are around 7%. So it would take 13.7 years to get back the investment if I were using only my money. and this is only the purchase price (without rehab costs - not great) and gross rent (without maintenance costs). So the real yield would be around 6% and around 15 years to return the investment (if using 100% my cash). I considered this unacceptable and refused to buy any more property; I looked into building some apartments (it is a bit difficult to accomplish) and even investing out of the country (this requires 100% our money (no leverage) and is less comfortable to manage). Recently I checked the yield rates for other countries in the EU and found that 6-7% is not so bad compared to other countries  (check this). I also looked into commercial but they are either risky (not 100% sure I can rent them in 2nd class areas) or super expensive and low yields (in prime areas like downtown).

I am interested in buying some more property now and could use your advice: should I buy now, with a 6-7% yearly yield ? Is this acceptable? (given that these are apartments and I can leverage them). Should I wait (I don't know if the prices will go down or keep going up), should I look somewhere else?

Your advice is highly appreciated.

Thank you!

@john Thank you for the encouragement. Doe the first 2 properties direct mail worked best. Do you think I should keep to direct mail or diversify my  marketing (if yes, how)? 

I am pretty far, yes, I am in Romania, in the heart of it. following the recession the mortgages became more affordable than before. The general market seems good, but my local targeted area is worming up and deals are hard to find. I would prefer not to change the area for 2 reasons: 1. It's 5 minutes from where I live; 2. It is in high demand, easy to rent, best rents in my town.

So what do you advise?

so I started investing in real estate and bought 2 properties (condos: 1 in 2014, 1 in 2015). They are in a great area and I found them trough direct mailing (I could find no good deal trough agents/online/papers; if a property is on the market it is usually to late to get a good deal in my area). The last property I just finished renovating and rented it out the next day. 

Now I seek some more properties to buy, but I can't find any good deals. I have sent more direct mail (used the same strategy), basically the same letter, but the calls have decreased in 3 months to the point that only about 2-3 people called on my last campaign (previous calls would be 20-30 after campaign). 

The area I prefer to invest in is near a big university, very limited inventory and in high demand for renting (so many investors present). 

I send a general letter to every property in the area. My plan is to keep sending a similar letter to every property every month. But I fear the very low response rate from my last campaign.

What should I do? How can I find good deals in my situation?

I wanted to ask @ville posted. I am writing from Romania, I have a few properties here and some relatives in the US that are real estate investors. I was thinking of investing in some US real estate and am willing to put my own money for a down payment of around 20-25% and would like to get a loan for the rest. 

My idea was to get employed for a few months in the states (by the way, what work experience do the banks require to qualify for a loan (6, 12 months?) and than aply for a loan.

So you are saing that US banks do not lend to non citizens? Are these the large banks or the small comunity banks as well?

Do you see different way to get a morgage if ?