All Forum Posts by: Sharon Tzib

I'm not a fan of paying off your primary residence mortgage unless you feel like you are going to live there for decades, or you have some financial hardship where you want to reduce your overhead. If I had $300K, I'd buy 8 $150K rentals w/ 20% down, then I'd start snowballing all ten of your rental properties mortgages (one at a time of course), until they're all paid off. Then you can decide if you want to snowball your personal residence. After you snowball the first couple of properties, you'd be surprised how quickly you can get your portfolio paid off. Quality problem to have, my friend! 

Hi @Dong Yan that is sad. There's lots of different ways to put money in my buyers pocket, so I look at all terms in the contract that we can utilize to help meet my clients' goals. And I find negotiating on terms can be just as successful sometimes as price. There's more than one way to skin a cat :)

I only recommend my buyer/investor clients get one if the seller is paying, which in Houston, is pretty customary. Some of my investors don't want anything to do with them, however, due to negative past experiences. And sometimes we can use the home warranty cost as a negotiation tool to get a lower price, seller concession, etc. if we don't ask for one. 

If you do get one, check out the consumer affair reviews before you choose a company, and then read any companies exceptions very carefully. One company, for instance, has a loophole where no claims can be filed for 30 days after payment for the policy is received-you're SOL if something happens right after you take possession. Here's the link:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/aaa_warranties.html

Lastly, in Houston, we cannot take a referral fee from a home warranty or any service company without having a signed disclosure from all parties. I just avoid that scenario at all times.

Multi-families are mostly an aged product in Houston, since they hardly build them any more. This becomes problematic for FHA loans, and even conventional to some extent, because they have certain condition standards that must be met, and in the under $250K price range, it can be tough to find properties that don't have structural issues, aged systems, and/or safety hazards. Of course, you can get a rehab loan, but the lender criteria becomes even stiffer then. And lenders will also look at you investment experience, so if this is your first rei, I would definitely stick with a 2-4 unit as that will be far easier to qualify for.

I'm not a lender, of course, but these are some of the issues my first-time investor clients have run into trying to house hack and/or buy multis in Houston. It definitely takes a ton of persistence!

@Ben Unger the data reported on HAR is from listings on HAR. It's not for all homes sold or rented in the Houston area, just those listed, sold and/or rented on HAR itself.

You are quite welcome @Theodore Rivera!

Yes @Tristan S. the Houston market continues to prove all the naysayers wrong and is stronger than ever. It can all be traced back to demand, and despite increased inventory levels, we still don't have enough homes to satisfy all the buyers out there. Until that levels off, I would expect to see the market proceed on this trajectory.

http://www.har.com/content/newsroom/

Houston Real Estate Highlights in April

• Single-family home sales rose 3.1 percent year-over-year with 6,583 units sold;
• Total property sales increased 4.2 percent with 8,014 units sold;
• Total dollar volume jumped 8.1 percent to $2.2 billion;
• At $228,000, the single-family home median price rose 4.6 percent to an April high;
• The single-family home average price climbed 4.7 percent to $291,770, which was also the highest level for an April;
• Single-family homes months of inventory grew to a 4.0-months supply, the highest level since August 2016;
• Townhome/condominium sales increased 3.8 percent, with the average price down 0.6 percent to $207,527 and the median price up 8.5 percent to $171,500;
• Leases of single-family homes soared 14.6 percent with average rent down 4.9 percent to $1,715;
• Volume of townhome/condominium leases rose 5.9 percent with average rent down 1.1 percent to $1,557.

Hey @Denise Mayo-Walley, I believe @Paul Guilbeau is exactly right. The rental market is just going through a correction, after years of increasing rents, it has been normalizing (and/or lowering a bit in some areas) for several months now. While incomes have been increasing again "somewhat," they certainly could not sustain the rental increases for very long without something having to give.