All Forum Posts by: Nick Calamia

Hey @Jay Chang I have to second your post! Great book even though some situations Chris talks about seems either do or die, I definitely think the psychological breakdown Chris talks about is great information. I would love to see what else people are reading

Hey @Joseph A. I would wait till the rehab is done and rented out. The lender is going to order the appraisal and you want to make sure you get quoted top value for your property or your gonna be leaving some cash in the property. You want to make sure you can pull as much as possible to keep snowballing the money! The rent you get too is only going to help your DTI as well. Sometimes waiting is the worse part lol. Hope this helps, anymore questions feel free to DM me!

Yes @Stephanie P. that is true my apologies thanks for correcting me, I forgot to mention that part for traditional financing. However I do know some of my buddies have used traditional, portfolio and even hard money lenders that it was not required to disclose ownership. Every lender is different that is why networking is an integral part of real estate investing!

Hey Matt! Good question. If you already have an LLC set up for your investments you can actually issue yourself a W2 as an employee if you elected as an S-corp.( Possibly as a regular LLC as well). This shows stable income to your lender but obviously you want to have established payments to yourself before approaching since some lenders depending how strict their policies are might go back 6 months to a year if they find out you are also owner of the LLC. I am only speaking from experiences I had hope this helps!

Hey @Alexander George It is possible but definitely very scarce on Long Island to do. The biggest killer is property taxes to really benefit from renting the property out. However the purchase price point is the tangible that will really make the difference. You can BRRRR in areas like Mastic Beach, Wyandanch, Central Islip, Brentwood. More in the "lower income" areas where they might get rated C to D neighborhoods. The rents continue to rise on Long Island due to such high purchase prices, with demand rising more and more for homes but the lack of affordability from consumers. Definitely a great market for flips but hard for holding unless you got in 30 years ago! LOL! I was actually born and raised in Port Jeff so I know the are well. Even over there where it is a B class area its really hard to find property to BRRRR with unless you do a really big value add to it. It might sound scary at first but if you are looking to cashflow look out of state where the numbers make a lot more sense and you also won't get caught holding the bag on a vacancy one month thats over 3k just to profit a couple hundred monthly. A lot less risk and even greater returns out of state! I hope this helps! Anymore questions DM would love to chat more!

@Gino Barbaro Very good point Gino! I myself am actually looking to move to Phoenix to help my Uncle out with his flipping and real estate business. Very relate able, as myself I am an Italian with a big family too lol! I see the difficulties here on Long Island with cost of living going up and up, with no end in sight. Glad you made the jump, helps give me a little more courage to make the move where I know it will be worth it!  

Always rekey! Nothing bad has ever happened when someone changes locks but there always potential if you don't. Why leave any risk!

Good question! Really depends on your situation and style investing. I love buy and holds, so to me I don't really have the intention of selling right away, so equity isn't my play it's cashflow. So as long as the cashflow meets my criteria I can live with that even if the bank wants to bang me a bit for it on the interest. Me personally I would rather have more cash on hand for either more downpayments, rehab costs, or emergency funds for vacancies, etc. At the end of the day the bank is a business and they are going to try to get their money anyway, it is just the price of doing business same as you would pay a hard money lender to do a flip. There is no right or wrong answer but I would rather have enough to buy property 2 and cashflow that then just have unusable equity in a house if I can't refi it out of the property just to pay to refi it out anyways down the road! 

Jasmine, I have been in the same shoes as you before! It is a hard one to figure out, sometimes we get more trigger happy then we should and just want to dive into investing but like they always say make sure you BUY RIGHT! The numbers you described doesn't sound too bad once you move out, but really depends on what you are looking to do. A lot of people forget too, that when you househack there is still a lot of tax benefits to go along with living with a reduced rent! So really the 920 or so a month you pay may really be more around like 500 come tax season with the variable write offs and so forth. Have you considered possibly looking just a bit further away from your initial search? You may just be in a hot market, but maybe only 5-10 miles further away you may find a lot more favorable numbers! Depends on your lifestyles however! 

Ps. Don't try to time the market! That is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. If the market keeps rising for another 10 years without downfall you will just be kicking yourself, especially with the inflation of the US dollar going up too. Find a deal you like then act on it!!

Scott, another great tool is owner financing. You can get into a property with little to 0 money down and save your capital for work needed instead. Hard to convince multi units to owner finance because they would probably make more money with the rent coming in then they would your payment, unless it was uninhabitable. Very good strategy for SFR though. If you figure out a good technique for your housing market, get in with 0% down, with little work you could potentially scale VERY VERY fast! But like I said depends on your housing market and the price point. Here on Long Island houses are expensive and usually want some skin in the game but still a lot better deal sometimes then going 25% in and getting stuck waiting to save capital just to rehab and pull back out. Hopefully this helps! Anymore questions shoot me a message!

I have actually been to Than's company's workshop before. They are called fortune builders. I went to the free one night seminar, then got invited for the weekend workshop for a price of $180. I don't believe it is a scam but definitely an up sell program. Basically what the program is, it is fortune builders trying to start you up individually to become your own "investing franchise" like you would if you bought a Mcdonald's or a Subway resturant. They basically give you all their tools and programs, coach you for 6-12 months then let you go do it on your own. I do think they have a good intention but joining the program for the basic tuition was $35K alone and only went up in price to 50K to join the advanced program. I did not like the pressure I got from them however, of them trying to sway me to join by using all my savings and credit cards at the time I attended. I will say though if you do have a chance to go to the free night seminar, and from there able to proceed to the 3 day weekend workshop, I would say DO IT!!! They actually gave out very very valuable information at this workshop and was worth every penny of $180 bucks. It also put me in a great spot where I got to network and meet a lot of other investors and possible capital partners who needed help getting into the industry. Hopefully this helps! If you need anymore info I got all the books and notes in my closet and don't mind sharing!