All Forum Posts by: Michael Lucero

you can do it by yourself online, it's quite simple

u should have nothing to worry about. Youve got to be making a killing with these rent rates vs what u invested in each property, seems like good roi as long as your maintenance and repair costs are low. Sure u could worry about the market falling and losing equity, but that doesnt really matter because its all on paper until you sell. What i suggest is using that equity via a HELOC or cash out refinance and buying more cash flow properties like the above to make even more monthly cash flow.

30k is a complete waste of money and it won't actually even push you to action most of the time. teach yourself, take a chance, make mistakes, and you will be much better off.

When you invest the decision is almost always dependent on the % return on your money. So you just have to look at the rate on your loans, rate you think you could earn investing, and the numbers sort of make the decision for you. This is hard to answer without you stating the interest rates on your loans. If its 1% dont pay it off fast. If its 10%+ pay it off fast. Depending on the interest rate, what you should at least look into a HELOC with all that equity to pay down the loans, if the HELOC rate is lower than the rate on the loans.

Or to answer yes to your question, yes you could take the equity out for a down payment either via a cash out refinance or HELOC.

The answer is is undoubtedly yes that some people started investing in real estate while in debt, it just depends on the situation and the wants and desires of the person.

Sure it can be used to buy a home, just because it's not in their predetermined list of suggested uses, doesn't mean you can't use it. They don't care what you do as long as you pay them their monthly installment. Isn't that obvious when they list the purchase of a time share or RV/boat lol :). They don't even ask to be put as a lender when you buy a car, they don't want collateral. Just say you're buying a car and use it for a down payment on a house. 

I have a 2.49% rate on like $20K for a car over 3 years i think. My debt to income ratio is low and my credit score is high, that probably impacts it. Not sure if it matters, but maybe putting debt consolidation makes the rate go up, play around and see if the uses of the funds changes the rate.

Depending on your financial situation, you could probably get $100K from them, and of the course the rate may increase as your get higher.

It's reserved for people with really good credit and income. I just borrowed money for a car, it does seem too good to be true, but it's legit. The bank basically has a big pool of funds they are only allowed to lend out to premium candidates and earn a small %, as opposed to holding that cash without earning at all. Diversifying their risk.

Why don't you just get an unsecured personal loan, such as from Lightstream. If you have decent to good income and decent to good credit score, you will qualify. Applying takes 5 minutes and money in a few days, not secured by anything and no documentation needed. Literally no questions asked, you qualify, you get cash, you can use it however, whenever you want, and just have a monthly payment, interest rates as low as 2.19% and 2-7 repayment years.

So there are a lot of things to say in response to your post. First, you sound like you dont know enough about anything in real estate to know what you want much less what you should do. You should do more studying, networking, and research. 

To guage what the market rate for a property is in your market look at recent sales of comparable properties such as by contacting a real estate agent and ask for sales comps or do it urself by looking at recent sales on redfin. Its really not that difficult. 

Next, u dont need any money to be a real estate investor, but having some provides easier and more opportunities and avenues. For example, Its more easy to fund a $1m project if you had $1m in cash but if you had $0 and you had experience, sales ability, risk taking friends and family, etc you could raise a pool of money to fund the project possibly. So in response to your question about if 20k is enough, yes.  you can do anything you want, in rei and in life. Steve jobs didnt have 20k when he started apple, i know its a bit extreme but you get my point, dont discount yourself, 20k is a good enuf chunk of change to do something. The question is what is that something.

Also note that while people make real estate investing to be super complex, buying a property and renting it out is really simple. 

Within the realm of usual and more likely to do with 20k, depending on the price range of your market you could househack and get a 2-4 unit and live in one of the rooms. Managing that will teach you landlording, contracts, tenants etc. just make sure to look at the numbers, while it would be nice to cash flow it can be hard to do so if ur living in one of the units. So as long as your monthly loss is less than what you would pay for rent somewhere else you are effectively making money equal to the difference between the loss and the rent you would pay elsewhere. that doesnt even count equity paydowns and tax benefits of interest deduction. 

Funny how people either forget or ignore due to money being involved, that you're probably going to struggle or at least hit road bumps along the way, especially when you get started, and that is something you have to be willing to sign up for. When you learned to swim, ride a bike, drive, I'm sure you couldn't swim like you do after years of practice, no matter how many books and videos you watched to prep and perfect your game. You don't learn the act of being an investor by reading books, get out there and learn. The only mistakes you make are the ones you don't learn from. I love the fact that your helped mentor this guy and he took action, awesome, love it.

So I've been thinking of bidding on a few auction properties and I wanted to hear the what the community has to say about online title searches and if you need or can get title insurance before purchasing. I basically just dont want to get stuck with a gotcha situation after winning where there are any other liens  or financial encumbrances/outflows against the property, besides for repairs. This is a county tax auction and the auction site says there are no IRS liens, but i'd like to hear the other types of liens that are out there and how I would know if im bidding on the senior lien or not. Are the online title searches complete enough and do you recommend any sites specifically. Any other sage advice is welcomed. Thanks