All Forum Posts by: Nicholas L.

@Matt Burgess don't pay off your primary residence as soon as you can; that will unnecessarily tie up cash that you could use in your investing.  Interest rates for primaries are incredibly low right now.  Save everything you can while you decide what your first investment will be.

Also, check out Kristy Shen's book "Quit Like a Millionaire."  It's a non real-estate path to FI, but I found her personal story and mindset inspiring to those of us looking to invest in real estate.

@Christine Humphrey do you and your partner have savings?  You need money to be able to invest in real estate.  If you don't have savings, you haven't missed out on anything.

@Matt Burgess get a good W2 job, crank up your savings rate, and house hack.

@Jason M. I like paying down the debt.  Timing the market is difficult - I don't think it's clear at all what is going to happen to the real estate market as we head into fall and winter, so I wouldn't worry about "missing" an opportunity.  On the one hand, it seems like the recession would cause prices to go down, but on the other, supply in the places where people want to lives remains constrained.

@David P. why will it be difficult to deliver the unit vacant?  The only thing that guarantees the unit will be vacant...is delivering it to you vacant.  =)

Is your only option to evict if they don't move out?  No - negotiate.  Get more information from the seller on their situations.  Figure out what date might be convenient to them and what might incentivize them to move out.

@De'Mille Morris welcome (sorry, I can't get this post to tag you for some reason). I actually just moved out of the DMV but still own a condo there. There are many excellent REIA meetings, I am assuming they were all put on hold because of covid but will be starting back up soon. I liked Traction REIA in Tysons, DC REIA, and there was a BP-ish one that just started before covid called DC Rockstars.

@Ian Landrum on finding good tenants - it depends.  If you have an attractive rental, you'll get more applicants, and if you have more applicants, you can apply stricter screening criteria, and if you apply stricter screening criteria, you'll get a better tenant that you end up accepting and placing in your property.  Make sense?  There are tons of threads on BP about the criteria different investors use.  Find some and see what you think.  One thing to note based on the way you worded your question - your cash flow from your first property is not going to add up so that you're able to buy a second property a few months (or even years) later.  Making $200 a month net of ALL EXPENSES, for example, would be considered a success by many investors - but that's "only" $2,400 a year toward your next down payment.  So you need some other source of cash or some other strategy to keep buying.

Wholesaling - again, tons of great threads on BP about it, and a controversial topic.  Go to the wholesaling sub-forum and read up.  Wholesaling is NOT passive.

@Tyler Galleher I wasn't sure where Menifee was and just looked it up, I see you're in Riverside County.  I totally agree that it's possible to invest in Riverside County - good population growth but not as expensive as LA or Orange County.

Back to your potential rental - just a reminder - net monthly income is NOT monthly rent minus mortgage.  Your house could be in great shape such that your capex and repairs are low for the first few years - but you're still going to have vacancy, and you might need property management.  So it seems to me like you'd be breaking even.  There's nothing wrong with that - I have a condo in Virginia that I break even on that I'm holding because it's 2 miles from where the new AWS HQ is going to go - but it is another thing to consider as you try to objectively evaluate it as a rental.  Run a "worst case" scenario and see if you'd be comfortable for a year or two.

@Phil Wells it's an interesting question, thanks for starting this thread.  I think the US is big enough, and still growing enough, that some people may leave cities in the wake of covid AND the attractive cities will also continue to grow.  There's another thread going on BP about the supposed "exodus" from California, and I think the same principle applies.  It's inarguable that California is not growing as fast as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s - and also that more residents are leaving than are moving in - but that's just one measure: domestic migration, not overall growth.  So, just as California isn't actually about to start shrinking even as growth crests, so it goes with the trendy cities.

@Matthew M Spolsky that's what I figured.  Are you looking at properties in person or virtually?  I find actually hitting the pavement with my agent to be motivating.  I'm looking at one market that is local to me and one out of state.