All Forum Posts by: Mariah Jeffery

The elusive 6-plex was finally listed this morning for $159.9K. I offered the asking price, in cash, with a $1K earnest deposit. Bank (seller) countered back with the same price and 10% earnest deposit, plus closing within 2 weeks. I countered back with same price and $5K earnest deposit. Bank claims they won't take less than 5% ($8K). I've never heard of such high earnest deposits. I think I'm going to accept and finally get this one.

I bought it strictly to use as a rental so I'm pretty much SOL there. I really would rather leave it off of my tax return for 2010 just because of the hassle, but I don't think I can legally.

The property taxes ended up working out nicely. They are about $6,300/year for all 4 houses. Since they are paid in arrears, the seller owned me a credit of ~$6,250 at closing. That significantly reduced my upfront costs, and now I have to pay half of that in April and half in October.

Ditto. I stick with what I know.

We ended up closing and settling on 12/30 because the title co. was closed on 12/31. I received $51 in rent for 2010.

I haven't ever attended a local NWREI meeting. It's interesting that you've heard negative things about them. I've attended a meeting of the "RE Mastermind" club on Meetup.com, and found it was essentially a recruiting tool for an overpriced RE course that the members try to refer you to, so they can earn a referral bonus to pay off their debt from their bad deals that they undertook as a result of the training they overpaid for. But I digress... If you do attend the meeting, please let me know how it goes.

A lot of people invest in RE because they hate their jobs and want to be their own boss, but I love my job. I just hate the taxes I pay, which end up taking over 1/3 of my paycheck between federal, state, and FICA taxes. Being W2 slaves, my husband and I don't have many opportunities for tax deductions outside of RE. On the other hand, too many so called investors shoot themselves in the foot by buying something that actually loses money so they can save on taxes. The key is to buy something with positive cash flow that you can show to be a loss on your taxes due to depreciation and phantom losses.

More than half of my family's net worth is in RE and I only see that increasing if we continue to buy properties. I don't see any problem with this # being 60-80%; however, what worries me a little is that it's all in residential rentals in one area of one fairly small town. This particular town has a great rental market now and only a 4.2% unemployment rate. However, if something were to happen to this town (a major employer goes out of business, for example) that would significantly hurt the rental market.

On the other hand, I've invested her for a reason. I have a team in place here, my husband and I know the area well, and it's easier than most places to find good cash flow. We invest in RE part-time and have full-time jobs, so we don't have the time to do the due diligence to find a new area to invest.

Overall, I think we're better off continuing to buy property here as long as it's cheap enough. We buy conservatively so we should be ok unless the most doomsday of scenarios occurs. I do have to stop and think about whether we're going overboard at times.

Hi Alex. I'm not far from you in Hillsboro. All of my RE is in South Dakota, though, so I'm afraid I can't be much help. How was the REI meeting?

After closing on 12/31, I will own 23 rental units in South Dakota. I live in Oregon. The reason I chose to invest there is because Portland is very poor for cash flow, and also because my father in law is kind of a fly-by-night handyman. My husband and I have no desire to self-manage so it was a win-win.

14 units are managed by my father in law plus myself, to the extent I can from afar. We pay him 5%. 9 units are managed professionally and we pay 8%, which is a much better deal than what we have going with my FIL. It's worth the extra 3% to be totally hands off.

After Friday, monthly revenues will be ~ $14.5K on the 23 units. Debt service around $5.5K

I'm generally pretty happy how things are going. Not much I would change. We fly back once per year to check on things and that helps keep the team in check.

About 50.6% of my family's net worth, which is right about where we want it. 60% is probably the max, but I'm just a part-time RE investor.