All Forum Posts by: Natalia Collini

Hey @Leroy Walwyn! Nice to meet you. Looks like we're neighbors. 

I look forward to seeing you around the forums. Have a great day. :-)

I look forward to attending!

Hey @Michael Yu. So sorry I never got back to you. I guess I just assumed I would get a notification if someone responded to this and I never did. :-/ oops!

I went to Rowlett Real Estate School. They were great. I called once when I had a question on some math I was doing and the instructor I spoke with was so personable and friendly and willing to help. It almost made me want to find other reasons to have to call back! lol. 

I hope you have had a great and productive summer these past 3 months, and I wish you a successful rest of the year. Have a great day. 

~Natalia

I am planning on living one of the units. I just read somewhere that buying a SFH with these types of loans doesn't require you to have extra cash saved up in the bank, but once you get into 2-4 family homes then you do. It didn't get specific into amounts of saved cash required, and I was just hoping to get some clarification from others here.

It's good to know that they require reserve contingencies. Thanks for your response @John Reuther! :-) Have a great day. 

Hi @Laura Perry. Someone brand new to this site should start listening to the podcasts, subscribe to the newsletter, and start reading through The Ultimate Beginner's Guide 

 https://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investin...

You'll get lots more actionable tip ideas once you start going through those resources. 

And stay connected on here of course. It's a way to network and connect with other people in the biz. 

Have a great day! :-)

Good morning! I'm interested in getting an FHA 203k loan to purchase a 2-4 unit home with. Some of the things I've read online suggest that a bank will only lend you that money for a multiplex if you have some cash reserves on hand. Are the reserves for added expenses to be incurred if the extra units sit vacant or because of extra potential repair costs? What if you're purchasing the property within your budget for a SFH?

I'm also interested in taking advantage of some of the down payment assistance programs here in the area. Would having that DPA possibly offset any reserves that might be needed? 

Any other tips or words of wisdom would be appreciated also. Thanks very much and have a great day! :-)

I think this is really awesome! I'm still a newbie, and just getting ready to purchase my first house, but this is something that I have considered doing. I want to own apartments but I also want to do something like this. take run down homes and make them great again, hold them for a while, and then sell them to tenants, possibly through owner-financing. I'm sure with time I could do both, it's a matter of figuring out which one I want to start with. 

What do you do to help your tenants build their credit? How much turn-over do you typically have in a home before you end up selling it?

Have a great weekend, and thanks for sharing! :-)

Good morning! The short answer to your question is...there is no short answer! There are a million ways to get deals, you just need to pick a method and devote everything you've got to it. You could drive for dollars, send out yellow letters, look on the MLS, look on craigslist, auctions, For Sale By Owner, even just telling everyone you know that you're looking for a deal. The trick is to pick one (or more) method(s) and stick with it.

The questions you should be asking (and the answers to the one's you've already asked) will largely depend on you and what it is you are looking for. A great way to get started figuring out WHAT those questions are is by reading through this free guide "The Bigger Pockets Ultimate Beginner's Guide": https://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investin.... Here you will find lots of tips, links to articles, and podcasts to listen to. By the time you finish reading through that you should have some better answers to your questions, along with new questions to push you even further to the next level. :-)

I'm personally in the market for buy and hold. Or, more accurately I'm in the market for flip and hold. I want to invest in small multi-families and work up to larger ones while taking advantage of value-add appreciation. I recently got my real estate license so that I can take advantage of the MLS to look for my deals. I'm in a very competitive market but there's plenty available for someone who's willing to hustle a little. And that's just one of many different ways to do it.

I completely recommend the podcasts. They are fun to listen to, packed full of information and tips, and the guests do so many different things in so many different ways. It's really easy to get creative just by listening to a week of podcasts!

I hope some of that helped and I wish you luck on the start of your journey. I hope you have a wonderful and peaceful week. 

Hi Pat! It's nice to meet you. I may be on the other corner of the continent right now, but I actually just moved here less than a year ago from Alaska. I was living in Nome most recently before we left for Florida. 

I'm looking forward to seeing you around the forums. Have a great week! :-)

If I had $400,000 to invest in Real Estate I would use the money as a down payment to buy a run-down apartment complex and fix it up. More doors, more cashflow, and with a good property management team in place, less work for you. AND when you have a commercial property, appreciation is based on the value in the property, not the comps in the area, so you could create your own appreciation to pull out in 2-4 years should you so choose. 

Like I said, that's what I would do. :-) Hope that helps, and have a great day!