All Forum Posts by: Justin B.

We have an apartment complex in Vicksburg, but no houses.  It's a little far away for us to manage (and no good PM's in the area), so we're getting it ready to sell.

Yep, all the info is on the meetup site.

Potentially.  for me, that's just when I noticed it.  I'm not so on top of things that I'm looking every month.  In this case, our loan came due (balloon) and we decided to sell versus refinance.  I could have taken money out via refinance as well, but in this case, we were looking to get out of this particular neighborhood.

I've done it once.  I'm ~3 years into it and it works well.  For me, going with a bank is just easy.  I know the process well and I've got processes in place that make it easy and painless.  So for me, I only do seller financing if the seller is willing to beat what the bank offers me.  If the seller wants to do 1% less interest or a much lower down payment, etc, then I would do it.  In my case, he offered the same down payment and 1% less interest rate, so I did it.

The last thing I'll say is treat it like a bank would and have a solid loan document in place to dictate everything so they can't just call it on you at any time or change the terms on you.  Make sure everything is spelled out as to how it will work and have it signed.

For me, it's a comparison question.  I compare DC to where I currently invest in the south.  When I do that, I look at the DC market and say no thank you.  However, you can make money in the DC area as Russell does.

For me, I've been investing for ~9 years.  I haven't paid myself a single cent so far.  My goal is to have that be my retirement (yes, I have other vehicles too like 401k, stock, etc).  I have a day job where my income exceeds my expenses, so my extra money goes into investing and when I retire (probably in early 50's), my rental income will pay my expenses and then some.

So that's my goal, but if your goal is different, you might do something different.

I echo what Russel said in his first post, but if I assume your goal is mortgage paydown (for whatever reason), I wouldn't lock myself into 2 week payments.  What I'd do is just pay extra each month based on the extra cash you have.  That way, if you have some months with big expenses and you don't want to pay extra on the mortgage, you have that option.  Just paying extra principal when you have the cash accomplishes the same thing (plus the extra amount can differ based on that months expenses.

Locking yourself into 2 week payments means you're doing it whether you want to or not.  So keep the monthly payment going and just pay extra principal in those months where you have the cash to do so.

100% a personal decision :). For me, it's infinity. I've invested in both SFR's and MFR's (even a few 10+ units). My SFR's do a lot better than the MFR's I have. Of course, a ton of variables come into play here. Mainly where you invest. Where I invest, MFR's are fewer and further between so the cash flow on them isn't very attractive. For where I invest, SFR's are the play. We're actually moving away from MFR's and getting back to SFR's as it's better cash flow and value for our money. That's a really high level statement of course and there are a lot of factors to consider, but for me, SFR's is where I'm staying for the time being.

Also, 2-4 units fall into that "SFR" category for me. I know that's technically an MFR, but to clarify, we're staying with 1-4 unit properties and staying away from the bigger MFR's. I do have 1 5-unit that does pretty well, so the # is slightly flexible, but the 10+ apartment type units is what we're staying away from where we invest.

Personally, what I use is the potential return in selling vs continuing to rent.  I'm not sure I have a HARD set # I look at, but I do this.  If I can sell the property and turn that gain into higher cash flow I would do it.  Also, I look at how long it would take to make the same money by renting.  One of my examples is I was able to sell a property and make $25k in profit after taxes.  I was making $150/month cash flow.  So the question was sell now and make $25k or wait ~14 years (assuming no major expenses which is almost certain over that amount of time, but the increase in rent may even that out and keep it at the same timeframe).  I took the $25k and rolled it into another property that gave me $300/month cash flow.  for me, that's a no brainer.  But again, your goals determine whether that's a valid strategy or not.  There are other ways to increase cash flow however (ex: refinance and reduce the mortgage), but again, the above is kind of what I use at a high level.

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