All Forum Posts by: Nicholas Davis

@Account Closed it's never too early to teach our children.  I have been scoffed at many times because of the standard I hold my children to.  Meanwhile their kids are running around destroying homes and screaming in stores while mine behave and know that their dad cares for them which is why he is hard on them.  

I believe you're on the right track for what it's worth.

My job is taking me to Houston, TX and I want to use my VA Loan to house hack while I'm there. Do I need to furnish the house to attract renters? I'm looking at getting at minimum a 4 bedroom house and will rent 3 of the rooms individually to young professionals.

Thanks!

Ashely, that's what I was leaning towards.  I'm looking for 3-4 bedroom places with a garage.  I'm planning to live in the garage and maybe even convert it to a living area.  I can deal with a little discomfort to pursue my goals.

In an effort to boost my path to financial freedom I requested to switch roles at my current job.  Within the next 30 days I'm hoping to switch from an office based employee to one working across the country with our clients.  This change will triple my current income and give me the money I need to invest in properties.

I recently came off a deployment and can now use my VA Loan. I'm considering using the loan to buy a 3-4 bedroom home and rent out the other rooms (house hacking). The issue I'm running into is on the surface it looks like the houses are either in great shape (i.e. won't allow me to pull out a lot cash during the BRRRR) or the houses are so run down that I wouldn't be able to use my VA Loan.

I feel like it's still worth buying a place and renting the rooms as opposed to throwing my money away on a cheap apartment for myself.  Even though I would potentially not be able to pull a larger amount of money out of the deal when I go find the next deal, do you think I should pursue this route?  

FYI, I'd have to stay in the place for one year anyway before I could refinance and use my VA Loan again.

Matt, 

I honestly haven't done all the math to include everything involved with the sale. I didn't want to get too into the weeds before getting a better idea of what I'm getting into. 

What you're saying makes a ton of sense though. 

By the way, how do you tag people like that aka @Nicholas Davis?

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the warm reception. I've avoided forums for years now due to the poor attitudes of senior members to new members. 

I hope the trend continues assuming my questions aren't too stupid.

While surfing around Zillow, I noticed that the houses for sale (pre-owned and new construction) in my subdivision are selling for $10K-20K more than what I paid for my house. 

In my area you can buy/build a home foe similar money as renting. We bought the house for $150K and the payoff is a little less than $140K. I have a background in engineering and survey and my wife has a background in architecture design. We picked the land and house plans with the intent on making the house more desirable than any other in the subdivision. 

We've been in the house for 3 years now and I'm flirting with the idea of selling the house for a $15K or so profit and building a new house to live in then repeat. 

The area I live in is under steady growth as the primary large city it is near has started to reach it's capacity. What are your thoughts about moving forward with this idea? 

Hey everyone. I’m Nick from Purvis, Mississippi and I’m looking forward to learning as much as I can about real estate investing.

I’m a full-time mechanical engineer and a Captain in the Mississippi Army National Guard. I’m currently a Company Commander of a combat engineer company and have been away from my family training for 3 months will an immediate follow on deployment to Kuwait for the last 8 months. One more month till I go home!

I’ve always been motivated and driven to succeed but only since January 2017 did I start to take action towards my goals. I’ve tried and failed at a number of different business ventures (got a closet full of fidget spinners I couldn’t sell as a reminder). I had no direction or real plan on how to achieve my goals.

Being deployed, especially as a Commander, taught me some valuable lessons. Mostly, I learned that no one cares. No one cares that you lack experience. No one cares that it’s hard. No one cares that you can’t be in 4 places at once. What matters is taking action and achieving the result. I learned that despite my lack of experience, consistently moving forward and small improvements each day can make a massive change in your life.

I had three goals when I took Command and brought my guys overseas.

1 – Bring everyone home alive.

2 – Save enough money to pay down my debts and bring my wife home from a 9-5 job.

3 – Figure out what my goals were and how to achieve them within 3-5 years.

Thus far, I’ve achieved all of those things (knock on wood, I still have one more month before all my guys are home). I have been lurking on around BiggerPockets for a while now but now I’m ready to take action. I look forward to moving forward and learning everything I can.

Thanks everyone.

-Nick

Ed,

Much appreciated! That's exactly the piece of the puzzle I was missing. 

Thanks.

Ellis,

The $40K you mentioned above, how would you gain access to it to buy the second property? Is that where a home equity line of credit (HELOC) comes into play?