All Forum Posts by: Jason Schmidt

well when i say across the street, it is in a whole different (gated) sub division. In my area - 109-150k homes. Across the way ... who knows ... 200-300k.

The problem for me is, how do we chisel out what it falls in 109-150k. If I buy at 100k with my sights on it being a 150k home, and it turns out to only be 110k - thats a big difference.

1 vacancy per 4 homes would be better than 1 to 1, but what about 2 vacancies in 4 homes? 3? 4? And what if this were out of 10? If you have to pay $1000 each, that means that you would have to come up with 3-4k for the month, see what I mean?

so, if a neighborhood has only had, say 1 or 2 go up for sale in the past year, how can you tell how much a house is worth then?

this also leads me to another question. how to look at 100 homes, when not even 10 are sold in this "area"? And by area, the thing is - here houses are in the low to mid 100's whereas across the street, they are twice as pricey. Confusing!

Mike, with a comprehensive website such as har.com in my area, do you still recommend actually physically visiting 100+ houses?

either way, it is encouraging to know that i won't need to have actual comps to determine value!

we are on the outskirts of houston and only a few minutes away from another small town. a large theatre went up a few blocks from us, and a toll road is being built through where we are at to where the small town is.

is this a good or bad thing for appreciation? I would assume a good thing, since it gives people easier access to the inner city, but would love to hear from a seasoned veteran on this!

in Texas, you have to have a real estate license, or have a hook-up with a realtor to find the comps in areas for what houses have sold for. so clearly, all i have access to right now is just what houses are on sale for. What do you all do? Is anyone else in my situation?

What is your goal, and why? Apparently where I am at, property appreciates very slowly. My thinking is buy one at a time until they are 100% mine, then go to the next one, as opposed to buying 10 now and having to take on all of them at once, and worrying about multiple vacancies. At a cashflow of $800 a month on a 100k house, it would take 4 properties that are not paid off with a cashflow of 200 a month to be the same. Am I missing something?

I was thinking - is financial independence acheived when you have enough property to produce rent that will cover all of your monthly expenses, and then have some to put aside in case something happens. Is this right? For example, lets say you have $4000 a month in expenses and bring in $5000 a month from rentals. Is that considered financial independence? Grounds for retiring if you wanted to?

so is rent just a completely different animal then? There is no way to tell truly what things rented for, so therefore it is not as a solid thing as setting a price for sale?

even then to get an accurate picture, i still need to have access to the mls to see what properties actually signed up to be rented at though, right?