All Forum Posts by: Nathaniel Hovsepian

@Sunday Tsai do you have PMI on the home? I would say that your closing costs are 0, since you already have owned the home for so long. You could add them in if you wanted, but seems unnecessary. There are quite a few questions that I would have though:

-What is your mortgage, insurance and taxes?

-What do you think you can charge for rent (per room i assume?)

-Are you going to charge tenant utilities?

These are just some basic questions you should be asking yourself before you think about trying to calculate anything. 

Let me know what you come up with and I can try to help further. 

@Ben Raygor Ok, I will get with my CPA here when the sale finally goes through (we're on our third buyer now) and the check comes in. I would rather have too much put away than too little that's for sure. Not too too much tho!

@Ben Raygor thank you for the tip! I have met with a CPA out here now that I started an LLC in South Carolina and wanted to make sure that I am getting all of the benefits that I can get. I am also in the process of selling another home in Oklahoma that should end up netting me about $25k profits which he had advised me about taxes on. I think I am on the right track as far as setting aside enough. I forget exactly what he estimated. Does 30% seem about right? Our taxable household income is about $65k currently.

@Sarah Brown thank you for the congradulations! I need the encouragement. Haha

I am part of my local REIA, and have had a couple investors come out and look with me. One advised me to lower my offering price pre-purchase. Thankfully I listened to him or I would be wayyyy further behind the ball than I think I am.

The other actually recommended that I just clean the place up and put it on the market and sell as-is. I decided against that as I am treating this like a learning experience as well as trying to turn a profit. I want to become not only an expert home buyer, but an expert in rehabbing and selling as well!

@John Teachout I appreciate all of your insights. I have had 4 different contractors and carpenters come out. 3 of them said that the joists needed to be brought up to code. 1 never actually got back to me (he went out to the house while I wasn't there). 

I will be pulling a permit for it so I would guess that the county will want it to be brought to code?

@John Teachout I thought it was the joists. The ones that run parallel to the floor. 

From the looks of it, they are in good shape (as well as the rafters), but they are not to code as today's standards dictate.

@Joe A Warner it absolutely does lower the entry point to investing, and it sounds like you should be able to live rent free. This will free you up to make other financial moves that set you up for future successes.

If you can support the full mortgage by yourself, this is a no brainer to me. 

@Richard Gonzales That's exactly what I was thinking. You want to have that safety net first, but then everything is just gravy and all of a sudden you are going to have enough for your next one, and then another and another. 

Don't analyze too long and miss the opportunity!

@Richard Gonzales looks like you accounted for everything there that i would look at. You even threw in water and garbage, which you could have tenants pay, or share the cost with while you're living there. 

Can you easily afford the mortgage on your own? I would say this seems a little bit more like a layup now that I have seen the numbers on it. As long as you can afford to live there with no tenant I would say go forward with it. At the very least, once you get a tenant in there you are going to live rent free.

If it were me, once you get a tenant in there, I would pay yourself rent. Set it aside in a savings account for you in case things go wrong money. 

Keep me posted!

@Ramon Medrano you sound like an amazing 17 year old!

I would absolutely follow the very first piece of advice that Charles gave you and start networking now. There are probably many meetups in your area that you can go to and start networking with investors in Houston that are crushing it. If I had to guess, I would bet that you could find a few people at one that would take you under their wing seeing you as a go getter. 

Go talk to as many people as you can and figure out where you can add some value to their investing business. Learning a trade is a great idea and can get you in some doors, but learning how to invest full time would be even more valuable. 

You got this!