All Forum Posts by: Nicole Carey

I'm from NEPA (Dallas), currently living in Vermont. Just sent you a message! 

Hi all,

I'm going to reply here. I tried starting another thread but didn't get much action.

I am interested in buying a short term rental condo and opening up a gift shop.

I live in Vermont and have a few successful retail gift shops here and thought it'd be nice to open one there so that I could escape the long winters here from time to time. I have amazing employees here but I'm here all the time so not sure if I could recreate it living mostly out of state but I'm trying to work out logistics.

Are any of you small business owners as well? Is it hard to find staff? I'd be open to partnering with the right person.

For a condo: How much do you need down? Is it possible to get it as a second home with 10% down? I know that's an option in Vermont, but not sure how it works in Hawaii. What banks are the best to use? 

Thanks for any advice! 

Hi Teresa,

Thank you both! I will e-mail you to find a good time to chat. Thanks a bunch,

Nicole

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment in Colchester.

Living in one unit/Airbnb the other
After/Before photos of the airbnb unit. Did all the work ourselves :) We live in the other unit and are working on that one now.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

It was the only way we could afford to buy a home :)

How did you finance this deal?

FHA

How did you add value to the deal?

We did all of the work ourselves in the one unit. Then we started STR that unit and now live in the other.

Hello!

I was born in Hawaii and have recently been back for vacation with my husband. I own three successful gift shops in Northern Vermont and am loving the idea of opening a shop in Hawaii as well as getting a condo that I could live in for part of the year and airbnb. I think the hardest part of this would be to find the right person manage the retail store as it seems easy to find STR in Hawaii. Looking for connections to realtors on Maui and Kauai in both commercial and residential. I'd also love to chat if you own your own business - retail or anything that might be relevant. My stores in Vermont do well near other locally owned businesses, in particular restaurants that focus on local foods and hip coffee shops, though once we are in a place for 6 months our customers tend to seek us out. I'm curious if it's hard to find staff. I'd be open to partnering with the right person who already lives there.

Right now am interested either Maui or Kauai. found a property in Kihei on Maui that was near other good restaurants. Asking price seems too good to be true for a little shop. Too soon to pull the trigger as I just need to do more due diligence.  

I'm a big fan of the bigger pockets podcast and know @Brandon Turner lives on Maui so it can't hurt to throw a tag in! 

Thank you! 

Hi all! I'm originally from Luzerne County (Dallas to be specific) but now live in Vermont. I still have family in the area and the low housing prices are intriguing my interest for a next investment property. 

I would second the person who said to be cautious about the Nanticoke area. I'm interested in Scranton/ Wilkes Barre and surrounding areas. Also interested in Allentown though I am not as familiar with the lay of the land out that way. 

Victoria,

I'm not offering you this as advice as I am trying to figure it out myself too. I'm in Colchester. What about Rutland or Barre instead of investing so far away? While there may not be 50K multi unit deals that are ready to go, there are a lot of low priced multi units. I don't know what the vacancy rate is and haven't spent enough time in either town but it's closer than NJ! Would love to hear your thoughts. 

I have an idea on how we might be able to acquire another duplex but would love some advice. Since I'm a newbie I'm not sure if this would work. Has anyone done something similar? 

We bought our first duplex. We are living in half and have the other unit on Airbnb (which is going really well!) 

We renovated the Airbnb unit ourselves and are currently renovating the unit we are living in, with hopes to eventually buy another property and rent out both.

 The duplex needs some work we need to hire out: a new roof ASAP, and we'd love to get new siding and new windows. We can at the moment pay cash for the roof and maybe the windows but I was wondering if this might be the better option: 

Take out a home equity loan or a Home Depot project loan and get all three done (roof, windows and siding) with the hopes that our house would then appraise for much higher so we could refinance with 20% equity and get rid of PMI. Then our mortgage payment would be lower but we would acquire a new payment for the home equity loan that would likely cancel it out. But would that open us up to then being able to buy another property and we'd still have our cash on hand for a down payment on an FHA loan. Is this a viable option? Would love any advice! Thanks.

Awesome idea! Please count me in! 

Thanks for your input! We (luckily) had our inspection the day after and during very heavy rainfall and did not see any water issues. Going with inspector to pick up radon test tomorrow and will ask him. Waiting to hear back from the seller. I grew up in a house with a finished basement flooding and know the nightmare that can ensue. Want to make sure we don't have to deal with that here.