All Forum Posts by: Mike Smith

Hi all,

If anyone has any advice or can point me to someone that would be great…

I have a few rental properties and I’m thinking of getting out. That means I have to deal with capital gains. I’ve heard of the following ways to minimize these taxes…

1) Combine some tax harvesting with the sale.

I will be investigating this more but does anyone have any experience with this …any input? …do’s and don’ts?

2) Sell the rentals after living in them for 2 yrs.

Not an option.

3) Do a 1031 exchange.

Not really looking to get another property but I've heard you can exchange into a REIT and I will investigate this more but again …any input? …any do's and don'ts? Note I have zero REIT experience/knowledge.

Thx!

Hi, 

I have a few rental properties (single family homes).  Not enough to have a full-time maintenance guy or anything like that.  I've had a few insurance claims over the years but not too many (mostly always had to do with water damage).  I recently switched all my insurance to USAA and had to put a claim in for a garage roof. Find out a few days later a pipe in the finished basement has been leaking for who knows how long and a small part of the ceiling caved.  

That means 2 claims on the same property in weeks.  I'm not concerned much about USAA and their polices on "too many claims were are going to drop you" although I've heard they are pretty strict.  I'm more interested in any input you may have on "rental friendly" insurance companies.  Anyone have to deal with multiple claims and getting dropped?  What did you do?  It's not like moving insurance companies fixes anything - they all look at your claim history when quoting you.

Thanks

Hi all,

I have a 30 year fix rate mortgage on a primary residence with a HELOC. I see 15 year teaser rates all over the place "less than 2%..." Each place I call the rate always ends up being around 2.4+/- and I'm fine with that rate (I get it they have to tease). Thing is I don't find a single place with closing costs less than 3K and I'm not fine with 3K. Especially when my primary was $700 closing costs. Anyone have any recommendations on some low closing cost refi lenders (note I'm in Ohio).

Thanks

Hi all,

I have a single-family rental that's worth about 165K (all I do is build equity - not much cash flow). It's a good property - low maintenance and in a decent neighborhood. I owe a bit of money on it but I could net out some dollars that I could use as a down payment on a lake front property that is worth much, much more. If I dropped my net from the sale and rented the lake front property out for what I think I can get ($2,700) I would be about 500-600 cash flow positive before taxes. Sounds like trading up from a cash-flow perspective is a good move.

What I don't have experience with is renting a house on a lake and renting something for ($2,700).  Note: weekly rentals of the lake front property are not allowed. The lake front property is not the nicest layout wise - kind of a tri-level but its 5 bedrooms with a great view and a cove for swimming that isn't out in the boat traffic area).

Anyone have experience renting a place like this on a yearly lease - is that a difficult ask?

Would I have extra insurance costs (tenant would be allowed to have a boat if they want)?

Should I have a tenant sign a special document releasing me if any accidents occur (god forbid a swimming accident should occur)?

Anything else to consider?

Thanks!

Hi,

I have a few single family rentals that have a decent amount of equity in them (been a side hustle for me - I don't make a ton of money on them).  I keep looking at the high prices of homes and think to myself maybe it's time to make a move... sell them and invest in a large multi-unit property or possibly leverage the equity to get into a large multi-unit property.  At the same time I figure any decent large multi-unit is going to be fairly pricey.  I'm just wondering what people are thinking / doing these days.  Ideally I would like to leverage what I have to get some more cash-flow (I charge about as much as I can right now).  And I don't really have the time to take on flipping or fix-ups to rent as this is the side hustle.  Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts - poking around for different angles.

Thanks

Hi,

I have a few rental properties (single family homes) that I would like to get refinanced to a lower rate.  Before I call twenty different places just to find out if they do mortgages on rental properties, if they have reasonable closing costs, etc. I was wondering if anyone had recently done any refinancing recently and had any recommendations.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

I have three Ohio located rental properties (single-family homes) that I'm looking to refinance. Anyone have any recommendations on institutions (really looking to keep my closing costs down and avoid rate raises due to the properties being investment properties).  Note: I own four rentals and a personal residence - seems like that comes into play sometimes as one institution told me they wouldn't do a fixed rate mortgage with me due to the number of properties i own.  Figure there has to be some institution out there that would like three.

Thanks in advance for any input!

FYI, I was able to get a HELOC on an investment property in OHIO at about a 9% rate. Note: they do have offers to lock in at a lower rate. Jonathan you asked about Indiana though - pretty sure somewhere in this thread someone mentions that the Huntington Bank footprint extends into Indiana. Hope that helps!

Hi,

I own a couple single family rentals and a primary residence (PR).  I want to turn my PR into a rental and purchase a new smaller house to live in.  I'm going to have to invest quite a bit of money into my PR (three bathrooms need redoing and some other stuff  - probably won't be doing any of it myself).  I seem to remember hearing at one point in time that  a property has to be "Active" before you can write off/depreciate investments.  Ideally...

I live in PR while improvements are done.

I buy a smaller place and move out and put current PR up for rent.

I write off/depreciate improvements put into current PR.

Anyone have any guidelines on working something like this? 

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, I started this thread... I did ultimately have success at Huntington Bank (www.huntington.com) Got a HELOC at a rate of about 9% (my credit is fine that was just all they were offering). I did this in Ohio and at the time that I applied I already had four existing rental mortgages and a primary residence mortgage. The investment property that I got the HELOC on appraised at 130K and I owed about 70K. Good luck!