All Forum Posts by: Quoc Tran

@Ernesto Amaro, the first big step is accumulating a good lump of readily accessible money. This can be money in your savings account or brokerage account where you can pull out money to use in a matter of a day or two. It looks like your market has houses in the $100k to $300k range for SFH (not sure about multifamily), so have accessible cash in the amount of $10,000-$30,000. You can get into a multi-family using an FHA loan for up to ~$900k with a very low down-payment.

@Jan B.

Your strategy is not unrealistic whatsoever. It's been done by many people, and you will find many tips and success stories by people on this forum.  However, I am not sure why you prefer to go the 15yr mortgage route. The idea is not to pay off the entire mortgage. The idea is to get the monthly cash flow so you can save up and reinvest in additional properties. A 15 yr mortgage will lower your cash flow because of the higher P&I payments compared to a 30 yr. For example, a 15 yr mortgage of $200,000 at 4.5% interest will cost about $1500 per month for P&I. A 30 yr would cost about $1000. At the end of one year, you'd have an additional $6000 to invest in another property.

Has she gone and talked to any banks yet? They would be able to listen to her situation and see if they can loan to her. Also, an FHA loan can get her into a home for as low as 3.5% down. If she's interested in house hacking (renting out rooms to other people, or a unit if it's a multifamily property), this can bring in some income and potentially cover her mortgage and other expenses each month.

How about a DIY sliding barn doors? A quick Google search shows someone building one for $40. The roller hardware is about $50 on amazon. Not sure what your budget is, but it would look really good regardless! Check out Pinterest for inspiration, as well.

Selling away your asset would not be the best for you. In this situation, you already have 60k in equity of the house and 18k in credit card debt. A good approach would be to do a cash out refinance on the house. Like someone said before, you can pull out 90k (75% of 120k LTV) , or Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). A cash out refinance would put money in your pocket to pay off that high interest credit card debt. Credit card debt is bad debt, and interest rates usually range in the 18-25%.You want to pay that down before doing any investing. Keep in mind that this will allow you to keep the house and rent it out. After all, your cash flow seems decent. Use the BiggerPockets calculators and YouTube tutorials to figure out additional monthly expenses you should put aside each month. You will learn what your true cash flow will be. After having your credit card debt paid off and having a cash flowing property, you'll be in a good position to use that VA loan to buy a multifamily and house hack! Good luck! We're here to help you along the way.

Never stop learning. Watch the BP Podcasts on your commute, and network with like-minded people. You're on the right track so far with 3 properties and at age 22! Quite impressive actually.

From my experience, the offer contract should have a clause stating something along the lines of... contract is tentative upon inspection of the property. If you find something in the inspection that you deem unacceptable, you should be able to back out of the contract, and that clause should allow you to do so. Also, the appraisal comes out as the same value as you've offered 9 out of 10 times it seems. Strange how that works. If you've analyzed correctly and looked at comps, you should be offering somewhere in the ballpark and the appraiser just backs up that number.

I'm really loving the grey to white shades. They're all over Pinterest. The theme is called "farmhouse"? 

Depends on your future plans. Are you trying to get out of the lease to move into, say, a house hack? Also, read the lease carefully and see if there's any way out of swallowing that loss. Refer to a lawyer if you have to.

Congrats, Laura! The first step seems to be the hardest, and I'm sure you feel absolutely wonderful now that you have your very first rental property! It seems like you did not have any problems finding tenants for the first side, meaning you may be priced too low. Perhaps you can put up a listing for the second side at, say, $950/month. If no one calls you after a few days to a week, lower the price by $25.