All Forum Posts by: Okeoma M.

Welcome @Jonathan Acosta-Torres! Congratulations on taking the first step towards becoming a real estate investor (getting educated!) and look forward to seeing you on the forums!

*I also invest in the Abilene area so please feel free to reach out with any questions!!

Best of luck!

Okeoma

Hello Dallas investors! 

I may have an opportunity to move to the Dallas area in the next 12 months so I've started following the market more closely to decide if I should buy or rent. I have a number of friends renting in the Bishop Arts area and am wondering if it'd be a good area for a house hack or a BRRR property. (I know that two or three years ago would have been THE time to buy but hindsight....)

Anyone out there still buying in that area?

@Ronnie Wooldridge Hi Ronnie! Welcome to BP.  I'm a new investor focusing in the Abilene, TX area. I'm primarily focused on buy and holds but considering doing my first flip this year so I'm sure I'll need the advice of a good general contractor. I look forward to seeing you on the boards and possibly connecting in the future.

@Ryan Moran I'm a newbie investor as well. I just closed on my first deal two weeks ago so I've also trying to set up a system of record keeping and accounting that will hopefully be scalable. One tip I got from Paula Pant over at AffordAnythiung was to get a good scanner so I could quickly and easily store all my receipts electronically has been really helpful for me. I am assuming it wouldn't be an issue (if I were to get audited or something) to only have electronic versions of my receipts, but if that's wrong please let me know!

@Lauren Van Riper Wow! That's incredible. I cannot imagine driving myself to the hospital. That being said, I've almost had two babies on the brooklyn bridge so I'm terrible at planning ahead when it comes to babies. Thanks for sharing your story!! It's encouraging to get validation that I'm not insnae... just insanely hardworking. 

@Christopher Cousin We started saving for a primary residence a couple years ago but it became clear that this was a better use of the funds. 

At first glance the quote does sound a little high. Is this a quote from a national insurance company or local shop? How big is the property? In my (limited) experience, the bigger operations insure a property based on replacement cost at appx $100 per sqft. and they don't have much flexibility. Are there any other factors that may be increasing the quote? (Age of property? Fireplace? Old roof?)

Just for comparison, I recently got insurance for a $105K 3200 sqft property in Texas for $1600/yr with appx $260K of coverage. 

@Carol Kohn That is fantastic! Congratulations on getting a deal that works for you. I look forward to hearing more about your experiences as a landlord.

@Ryan Milne I would agree with @Logan Hassinger. There's no harm in calling. I am a big fan of getting on the phone with someone when it comes to multifamily properties. Often I found that the realtors were also the property managers and able to give me more exact figures (which you should always double/triple check). 

Also are you planning on living in this property? If you are planning on using a conventional loan, your lender will probably require 25% down since this is your first investment property. If only want to put in $20K at closing, you should be looking at properties in that you can buy for under $70K, (Keep in mind that in this range you may have to pay for points to get a competitive interest rate).

@Kenneth Hynes Great question: Yes I did review the initial applications but I'm also working closely with my property management company to keep an eye out for any warning signs that any of the inherited tenants are going to be trouble. Assuming rent comes in on time and they continue to take decent care of the property, I don't plan to make them reapply, however if that is not the case then I would rescreen each of the tenants. This would also have the added benefit of allowing me increase rents to current market rates. Since  I've already budgeted a rehab of each unit at the end of each lease, so my primary concern is that rent payments are being made on time and without issue. From our numerous encounters with the tenants they seem like nice enough people but I suppose only time will tell if they are nice enough tenants.

@Carol Kohn Congrats on your first deal! Would love to hear more.