All Forum Posts by: Michael Thach

 No, there is no way to change that. Is registered with the city and tax assessor. We got the same problem in Las Vegas Nevada. New regulation is you can not do short-term with multifamily. You can only do Short-term rentals when your home is fully home owner occupied and you don't exceed 3 bedrooms ( which kills 95% of all short-terms here in Vegas ). 

Do you plan to do this under the table ? If you are adding 1300 sqft of livable house to your 1700 sqft you better make sure your contractor team knows what they are doing. If you add 1300 sqft without permit... this will be an issue when you sell / refinance later because this is not registered.

If you plan to do it with permits then the contractor will take care of it to pass the inspections. 1300 would most likely also require an engineer or architect. This is a massive project and shouldn't be done not according to codes. 

If you plan to do with permits and do it yourself then you need to know the codes and need to have a license in most state. 

 Good credit score. The first thing is accomplished. But you need a sizable income too to qualify for loans. Your Income needs to be 3x the amount of the mortgage + tax + insurance you want to buy. 

The answer about timing is this. Have micro urgency and macro patience. Means what you can do today to today and becoming a millionaire be patient on that because if you have micro urgency you will become one by 25-28. So be patient on that regard.

1. Important for me is that my SFH rental comps is higher than my mortgage + tax + Insurance. If the rent can not cover those, there is no need to look into it. When I put 20% down, I want that this is covered and cashflow for around 200usd per month on top if possible. If not it's not a dealbreaker however most important is that I need to see that there is 10% appreciation a year in the property. So location is key. I don't want the nicest home in a shady area. I want the ugliest house in the best neighborhood. The heavy lifting is done by other properties, not by me.

2.For long-term I try to stay in the 3bed 2bath and 4bed 3bath range. Looking for stable incomes from families who care about the school, their work and consistency. Looking for median home prices and average american. 

For MTR / STR looking for multifamily or a house which I can room hacked the most, so a large bedroom where I can build a kitchennette is optimal and a en-suite bathroom is what I look for. Should be located closer to CITY Center, or places which attracts tourist, travel nurses or anything which make sense for MTR or STR.

3. Newer homes, usually don't have the backyard done, yours has it, so this is very welcomed. Newer homes are up to date in building codes and usually don't need repairs but the problem with new builds are, usually higher price and locations are less desirable. 

4. It's either very affordable housing in high rent areas for long term rentals. So if the area rent is 2k / month and if I can buy the house for 240k, this would interest me. Hopefully property tax is not crazy. 

If MTR and STR.... I look for floorplans which I easily can convert into 4-5 units with minimal maintance requirement.

5. If you target investors than you should. If your business model is building the products investors want, than of course you need to advertise it towards investors but if you do a middle thing and want normal buyers to buy the property as a backup plan... then it's up to you. 

6. MTR / STR are becoming more popular among investors and society. If builder can build homes which help a family to make a side income, help travelers have more options, increase number of units to fight housing shortage, help investors to make more money with RE than the builder will become succesful. The more problem your property can solve and the more income/ROI your property can generate the better. If you can make an investor happy , you will have endless business. Just focus how you can make an investor money and build your homes around that.

You need to make research on Freehold and Leasehold and you need to make research if you can invest in Thailand when you are a foreigner. There are special programs for foreigner who seek to retire in Thailand but is not very investor friendly and you most likely need to team up with some locals to make deals happen. Is a risky investment but is cheap and the Airbnb income are ok. 

You can also look into Bali , is overpriced but regulations are clearer. 

Another alternative is Malaysia but you can only buy luxury apartments but is difficult to compete vs locals because they can leverage way higher than you. Less downpayment, rebate programs from lenders and so on.

Hi Jeff, 

can you check if your property is registered as multi family 2 units or as a single family ? 

I think it's because the way your property is registered with the city which limits you on the renewal. Regulations did change over time and your property might be effected.

You need to tell us what your " Rockstar Realtor " suggest. There are ways to leverage but without credit score and without capital the only way is a track record and experience in real estate related trade.

1. Build your credit score - learn how to use it

2. live frugally and save every dollar

3. Get a real estate related job, become an agent / wholesaler if you like talking to people and don't mind that the first years will be though and rejections are the norm, mortgage loan officer if you like numbers and like to be in an office enviroment, become a contractor if you like to be hands on. Electrician, Plumber, general contractor ... you get the idea.

4. Depending on your saving and job , start with 1 property which you either flip, rent out, airbnb or whatever you want. The most important is that you don't buy the first property for yourself because it will kill your credit score, your income, your savings and your future income. If you buy a property for yourself , the property owns you, not you owning the property. If you get this right you will power charge your later steps. 

5. Rinse and repeat the process above but keep learning other ways to invest, you can not do all flips because this will be taxed heavily, if you build to many airbnbs you will run out of cash, despite having good cashflows, if you do to many single family houses for regular rents, you have to wait few years to get a big payday and you barely cashflow. 

There is no quick way to make money in real estate. Even getting ready to flip, the experience behind a flipper is at least few years in real estate before someone can flip properties in 2-3months timeframe. So it's good to ambitous but be patient. Real estate is build over long time.

There is a new fannie mae programm where you can put 5% down if you " plan " to use 1 of the units as primary resident. Many lenders did add this product into their offers. You can ask any lenders. This would be the lowest cash amount to get into SMF.

Otherwise you need to get into it in a conventional way with 20% and a strong 2 years tax-return. This might work when your income is 3-4x the mortgage payment. 

If you you don't qualify on income based then you need to do a DSCR program. The lender will check if the property rental income are enough to cover the mortgage payment, tax, HOA and insurance. They will usually only count 75-80% of the rent income because of potential vacancy. Usually program like this starts with 25% down and if the rental income is not enough you can stock it up until it does. So oftentimes it means 30-35% down.

You would assume the remaining 265k with the same interest rate. You need to put down the 45k. 

You need seasoned money to put down, which means money which was in your bank account 2 months at time of closing. If you get a loan now to make this deal work, the deal is most likely gone. You also need to qualify on FHA terms. Since you already have a small condo, this would not be your first home, so I doubt that you would qualify.

Wow, what a blunder by rocket mortgage. Would be interesting to see what happens if you don't sign the closing docs now. I think they will try to file a lawsuit but there is not much they can do. You can ask for an attorney if you plan to keep that money.