All Forum Posts by: Nick Harrington

Hey Kollin - 

I'm an investor myself in the Milwaukee area and also help a lot of house-hacker clients to find their first investment property. 

For 150K, the neighborhoods I recommend that I see long term appreciation are going to be Riverwest, Harambe, Bay View, Washington Heights, and pockets of West Allis. These are neighborhoods that I see a lot of first time investors succeed in, and neighborhoods that I believe in long term. 

Have you considered the duplex route instead of a single family or condo? With a duplex, you can still rent out your bedrooms, you have an additional tenant to offset your cash flow even further, and then down the road you have a rental property that is ideally cash flowing once you move out. This is how I got my start, and it gave me the ability to save up to add further investments to my portfolio and keep it as a cash flowing property long term. 

Hey Lilach - 

I'd check out shortsuitemanagement.com - Lisa Loesel with them is phenomenal, knowledgable, and a good place for you to start. 

Welcome to BP @Vince Biegel, and go Ravens (my girlfriend is a die hard Ravens fan and now has me on the band wagon). 

We're seeing a lot of out-of-state investors succeed in the greater Milwaukee area. Most out-of-state investors we work with are very attracted to MKE due to the immediate cash flow opportunities from low price points for multi-family and strong rents. I've heard similar things with Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Columbus. 

Best of luck on the journey, let me know if I can ever be a resource to you! 

Welcome to Milwaukee @Brendan Terranova! Our team hosts monthly investor happy hours and quarterly "mastermind" events. For our last event we had a local private money lender come in and share more about hard money and what they are seeing in the market. 

If you want to be a part of it, let me know and I can send you the details!

I use Tosa Insurance and they are great for the Milwaukee area!

Hey Kira - 

Here's my go to list for anyone, and I'm sure some of these have been repeated before. Also this list is not being paid for by Bigger Pockets - but their content is GREAT. 

This is the order I'd read them in as well. 

Rich Dad Poor Dad - Great place to start, helps understand the mindset of what it means to take control of your life, get out of the rat race, and take control of your finances

Set for Life - A more modern day approach to Rich Dad Poor Dad that has tactical strategies you can walk away with on how to help grow your income, manage your finances, and build passive income

How to Invest in Real Estate: The Ultimate Beginners Guide - A great real estate investing guide, going over how to find deals, different options for rentals, property management details, and essentially all you need to feel prepared to buy your first deal

Buy Rent Rehab Refinance and Repeat - One of the best books I've read that truly opened my mind to the power of how to scale a real estate business and how to do so creatively. Gets into the details of ways to finance properties, minutia of how to find a deal, work with contractors, and reinforces the idea that the deal is made when you purchase based on the purchase price. 

Hope this helps and is a good starting place for you!

Hey Samuel - 

I would start taking a look at what's for sale and analyzing the deals now. Make it a goal to spend an hour each week analyzing deals, and see how many you can do in that hour.  

The more familiar you can get with the market now, the easier it will be for you to spot what you are after when the time comes. 

As far as finding an agent and a lender - you may need an agent to provide you with MLS access, which will provide you with current rents / taxes.

Otherwise, I would recommend 4 months out to have a lender and an agent nailed down - consider it takes a month for closing, so realistically, that would give you 3 months to have everything ready to go. 

Hey Jason - 

I have househacked my way through two duplexes and was able to purchase a 5-plex - all within 3 years.

Here is my two cents: 

1. The first deal is always the scariest and the hardest - my recommendation is find a deal that works, the numbers are there for you, and to just do it. 

2. Determine what your short and long term goals are - your strategy is going to very VASTLY depending on what you are wanting to do long term. Consider how this one deal (short term goals) plays into your long term goals. Househacking is super beneficial in reducing your living expenses in the short term - whether that money saved can be used to by future rentals or a single family is entirely up to what you want to do long term. 

3. Find a lender - I'd connect with a lender to understand what your budget, monthly payment, and down payment would be. This sets the stage for what is reasonable for you to start searching for and for you to start analyzing deals. There are creative financing options for living in such as FHA, Homepossible, etc. A lender will know what you would qualify for and what fits your situation.

4. Find an agent - find a real estate agent who has experience investing themselves or working with investor clients. They will be able to help identify neighborhoods that fit what you are looking for and fits within your budget. 

5. Analyze deals and go on showings - Build out a spreadsheet or use one of the BP calculators to start analyzing your deals (I have a spreadsheet I use if you'd like me to send it). Do this for as many properties as you can, and eventually, you will be able to spot what is a good deal vs. bad deal by just knowing the neighborhood and purchase price.

6. Make offers and close - Congrats! You now have your first house hack

While the work really starts once you have the property - these are the first steps I would take to "take action" in actually acquiring your first property and moving from researching about househacking to actually having your own. 

Good luck with your journey and here for any questions you have!

Hey @Rolando DeLeon - I just did the same for one of my rentals and I used Shalom Second Hand Appliances (LINK here to their Facebook).

I bought a stainless steel fridge and gas stove, was all in at $780, and it included delivery and removal of the old appliances. 

I've used both Venmo & Zelle for rent collection - Overall, both are great when managing a small number of units and are almost the same in my opinion. 

Here's my two cents:

VENMO - 
Pros: easy to use, free, links to all major bank accounts, majority of people already have it
Cons: It takes I believe 1-2 days from when you transfer your Venmo funds to your bank before you receive the funds 

ZELLE - 
Pros: instant transfer from bank to bank, free, easy set up, links to major banks
Cons: I find it not as easy to use / set up as Venmo, but more personal preferance than anything. 

Cons of both Venmo & Zelle is there is no recurring payment options for someone, so they need to remember to pay each month as a tenant, and it's not really a scalable collection option when managing several units.

Overall - I prefer using rent collection software like Tenantcloud which has ACH payments built in. Tenant's link their bank account directly, you link your bank account to receive rent, renters can set up recurring automatic payments so they don't need to remember to pay each month, and it's automatically deposited into your account. Downside of this is it does take a couple days, and their is a $1.50 processing fee which you can either absorb or pass to your tenant.