All Forum Posts by: Michael Lucero

Willie, it seems like you could benefit from learning how to find some answers yourself. Someone told you to house hack and you asked what it is, when a simple google search would have given you a link and description, probably to a related bigger pockets forum no less. In this business it's sometimes cost effective and necessary to know how find solutions to your questions. 

I think you need to read some of the beginner guides on Bigger pockets to find what is interesting to you. Phil pustejovsky has a good intro to real estate investing that is free on his site as well.

Of course owning free and clear is less risky from the standpoint of foreclosure and *losing the house since tou dont have a mortgage payment ro make. However, its way riskier from a growth and opportunity cost standpoint. Why tie up all the cash in a single house id you can buy 5 with the same cash using leverage.

Interesting situation and sounds like a good problem to have. Have you tried simply talking to the owner to see if he wants to come clear it out. Normally you would assume 2-3 year old stuff they wouldnt care but a hoarder might get emotional and take retributive action, so i see your point. Talk to the guy and tell him that there is still stuff in the house that appears to be garbage/moldy and you will do him the favor of throwing it away. Get him to sign off on that if you want to. If he wants it, tell him he can come get it.

Don't bother using zillow or redfin estimates, they can be inaccurate. More accurate of you are looking at cookie cutter houses with tons or local comps, but still can be wrong because at the end of the day its a formula.

What i really suggest doing is using redfins search to look at recently sold houses in the area. This will give you the actual going rate for a type of property in a givem area.

As other said, use google, youtube, or other resources on this site to teach yourself. You also havent specified what kind of numbers or deals you are talking about. What exactly are you trying to run the numbers for?

@Tony Castronovo love it, good luck!

Sometimes this isnt enforced, and your interest and monthly payment is good enough. Have you tried to counter and say no, we just want the loan. If not try it and see what they say. My brother recently got a loan and the bank told him the same thing and he never opened one and the bank did nothing. They are typically trying to just get easy money from you to lend out to other people. Banks are in the business of lending out other peoples money so they have two desires, 1) lend out based on peoples checking balances at the bank and 2) get more money in checking accounts to lend out. Of course they are going to try and get both those desires met with each person, but do you think they are going to say no to one of those desires if the alternative is you walk and they dont get the loan with you? Unless there is an internal company policy saying they cant do it, they will let that slide if you threaten the deal on that issue. They are selling to you, not the other way around. Think of car salesman and negotiating.

This is sort of impossible to responsibly answer with no financial data provided, how are we to calculate the financial return under both scenarios? What is your choice that you said you already knew and what is it based on?

Are you interacting with the prospects, maybe something you are doing/saying is turning people off. Is there a property management company or are you telling prople you self manage which can be riskier to a tenant, they may not trust you to fix stuff as quickly. It could also be that the entire market of similar houses is priced too high and you all need to come down which is simple supply/demand economics; are there cheaper options nearby that arent significantly worse than your place, are their enough jobs in the area to support income that fan sufficiently pay your rent prices.

Im not sure about all these acronyms and verbiage you used but if you take the rent data against the zillow estimated value(which im assuming that is what zhvi stands for) in theory it would be good, but is entirely subjective based on the quality of the zillow estimate, which typically isnt very reliable. The calculation is really the actual rent vs actual market value or selling price of the properties. Zillow rent info is very reliable because thats currently whats being marketed and relatively what rent is going for. People dont screw around with rent listing prices as much as selling list prices, they typically want to rent the place asap. The estimates can vary by as much as 40% from true market value, depending on the city. In some cities with a lot of cookie cutter houses and sales info, the estimstes are probably more reliable. If you can get actual selling info in cities, it will greatly help your analysis, though zillow estimates are a decent starting point, maybe...

I also believe there are sites and other posts with the rent to value ratio already calculated for you. I realize the treasure hunt can be fun to try and find an untapped market, it just may be hard to get reliable data on your own.