All Forum Posts by: Ryan Howell

@Mitch Davidson - It's getting a bit far for me.  I go to Lake Toxaway and Saphire.  Generally, I keep it to an hour radius from Hendersonville, which means I'll go to Maggie Valley, Waynesville, Mars Hill, Black Mountain, Brevard, etc for my vacation rental buyers

@Stephen Gooding - Best of luck.  Still happy to offer any advice I can.

I met a guy on here a few years ago who was local to my area and now we partner on deals after building a relationship. How much networking are you doing locally? I would get involved in your local REIA and BP meetups, etc in your area and starting building relationships with people. Even if you had an amazing deal and posted it here, I wouldn't partner unless I knew you better. Hope that helps!

I would take out a HELOC on your primary and utilize the BRRRR strategy. Buy something where you only utilize that HELOC for short term funding and refinance the property and pay off your HELOC...rince and repeat. You're able to leverage your equity and put it to good use instead of making no return on your equity. You're also only paying interest when you utilize the funds so it minimizes your interest payments vs a refinance. The cost of HELOC is cheaper. By using the BRRRR strategy, it forces you to buy a good deal that you can have 20-25% equity in when you've completed the BRRRR.

Hey Seth, I am an agent, so I'll try to be unbiased...My honest opinion is to utilize an investor minded agent when you're getting started and target an on market property.  You may not hit a grand slam on your first deal, but you can get a solid investment and a great education and a good agent can help you mitigate a lot of risk.  Going after off-market properties or wholesale deals, etc. can be done, but your risk is higher typically.  My first 2 properties were on-market and I had an agent work with me.  After those, I was more comfortable and did buy some off-market properties, that I wouldn't have had the courage to do as my first investment.

I use a broker, but my policies are all with Foremost or State Auto.  Lately, State Auto is the cheapest.  My multi-family are in Hendersonville as well!

Seth, I would suggest buying a small-multi that needs some work as you suggested and move into one unit and house hack.  It is one of the lowest risk ways to get started and supercharge your investing by freeing up your budget.  If I knew what I know now when I was out of college, I would have bought 2-4 units and house hacked.  There are deals to be found on market, but you have to be fast. 

I always start with the Census Bureau. 

PenFed is where I would start.  I dug into this a while back.  Searching on the forums here, I found a list of about 20 banks/credit unions that do this.  They do have a limit on how many total properties you can own.  PenFed was 4, I believe, some were as high as 6.  I personally know investors that have used PenFed though and had a good experience.

I have more than tripled my portfolio this year, by going after larger deals and learning how to partner with likeminded investors. More than anything, I'm learning how to rely on others and adjust my mindset so I can continue to grow. In my agent business, I'm growing a team of rock star talent. Brandon's keynote at BPCON is exactly what I needed. I'm trying to focus on being the architect and less of a project manager / COO, which has proven to be the biggest challenge so far, but I'm starting to see the benefits and opportunity that the mindset brings.

You can do well with a $500k budget in WNC, in the neighboring towns around Asheville.