All Forum Posts by: Michelle Watt

Hi All,

Apologies if this topic has been discussed before, but I can't seem to find such threads when I do a search. I am a newbie investor looking at buying my first multi-family properties (meeting with lenders, brokers, etc right now). I am also currently renting my residence while keeping one eye open to eventually buy, and I have to ask - do investors run into problems on getting a personal home loan if they have outstanding debt on investment properties?

I have a strong credit score, but am guessing if I buy investment properties first, the debt on those investment properties will be a big factor in the bank's consideration of my personal home loan...is that correct?

Thank you in advance!

Michelle

@Missy H.- thanks for bringing this to my attention, I hadn't been keeping track of this thread! And you are spot on with explaining where I was coming from. Thank you!

@Tiger M. and @Phillip Dwyer - perhaps I should've been more clear, I wasn't speaking about dealing with Section 8 in Vegas in particular, just Section 8 in general since he asked. Will leave the market expertise to you guys, was just relaying the advice of some experienced investors I know who have had success with Section 8. Completely for general discussion.

Hope that clears it up, thanks guys!

Thanks @Donovan Plummer! Also, I made a typo the author's last name is Warr (thanks, autocorrect!). 

Completely agreed about needing a strong team - honing in on markets currently, but as I will definitely have to go out of state, a great team is paramount. Thanks and good luck to you, keep us posted!

Hi Donovan, I'm a newbie as well from Southern California (and looking at vegas too). I recently finished "Make More Money Investing In Multi Units" by Gregory D. Ware which I think is pretty good (high level but still has some insightful stuff). It was unexpectedly about working with a section 8 tenant base, which peaked my curiosity on the topic - you might want to give it a read. So I also brought up section 8 in the last LA BP meet up, as well as to a few other experienced investors, and for those who do rent to Section 8, they say the key is to really screen your tenants. Be a little more proactive in that aspect, don't just leave it to your property manager. It sounds basic, but that is the one key piece of advice I keep getting over and over. Hope this helps! -Michelle 

@Bryan H. - thank you! I've been on CCIM but didn't realize there were models. Will take a look, thanks so much!

@Chris Nguyen - just PM'd you my preliminary research on those. Gl!

I'm still new, but I was thinking of this myself about a month ago. I brought it up in my local LA BP REI meeting, and the more experienced investors mentioned that in addition to HOA related issues which people have already covered on here, you really have to be careful since some condos here in LA will not allow you to rent out, or have a max number of times you can rent out. Granted there are probably really strict rules in LA, I would just make sure to double check on those.

@Abhi Jain, apologies as Im not knowledgeable enough on the Torrance market myself but my parents have had one SFR as an investment property there, in a B/C class area. They've had it for over 20 years so it's probably irrelevant to find out what they paid, but I do know that recently their latest tenant had move out After very short notice, and my parents seemed to have a new tenant lined up within a couple days. They've never had a problem filling the property with tenants either, and a lot of the older homes have a guest house you can rent to a second tenant as well. I will leave it to others to better say whether it's a good area for investment, but my parents seem to have done just fine and this has been their only investment in RE. Their property is a couple blocks from Mitsuwa the Japanese grocery market, not sure of the exact street. Hope this helps a bit!

Also want to add that my parents haven't given much time to investing in RE education so I would still consider them beginners who invested in Torrance successfully. They self manage but that said they are more than happy to put a ton of time into this one little SFR, perhaps you might want to read a bit in self managing properties to see if that would suit you.

Good luck!

Michelle

@Jon Huber I'm sorry I've got a family event at that time, just realized...will see you at the next one!

Jonathan (my autolink for names isn't working on my computer today, sorry!) - thank you so much for the advice. I do realize that being smart about things will take out like 90% of my fears, and again it's kind, knowledgeable investors such as yourself on this forum that are getting me closer to that. You are AWESOME for starting this post, sometimes people "just need to hear it", you know? :)