All Forum Posts by: Richard Crowe

Welcome Katherine! Lots of good stuff in the Hampton Roads area. 

@Zachary Zinn That absolutely works. I sent you a PM. Hope to hear from you soon.

@Larry Pendleton That could absolutely work. I sent you a Private message. 

Hello BP friends,

My name is Richard Crowe. I decided to give the 90 day intention journal a try. With this came an invitation to a "Mastermind Group". The intent, from my understanding, was that BP was going to place me in a mastermind group with people from my area. This would allow us to meet up as a group and work as a team to keep one another accountable to our goals. Unfortunately, when I was paired with 3 other BP members, the closest of the 3 lives over 4 hours away. Now, I am searching the bigger pockets community for a couple of people who would be interested in meeting bi-weekly at a brewery (or something of the sort) in Virginia Beach to discuss goals, keep each other accountable to those goals, and provide support for both our Real Estate  and non Real Estate goals. Please let me know if anyone is interested or if you know of  anybody who might be interested. 

Additionally, if anyone already has a group going and could use another member or if anyone has any tips on how to establish a good group, I am all ears. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear and meet some of you soon. 

Richard Crowe

Well both options will have their pros and cons. Additionally, it depends on a lot of factors. However, TYPICALLY (here comes a lot of speculation and generalities) it can be cheaper to take out a HELOC in the long run. They tend to runs around 5-7% which is not much more than your home loan probably is BUT it is a shorter loan. So the loan typically costs less in the long run. However, again, that is dependent on the financing options that you choose for the HELOC. The drawback would be your cash flow. Assuming that you only have about $30 in positive cash flow, your HELOC will probably eat that up plus some.

If you refinanced, yes, it will have an up front cost BUT it can potentially increase your cash flow by lowering your mortgage while accomplishing the goal of replacing the HVAC and maybe even some minor renovations, again depending on how much you can/choose to take out. 

I know its a little vague but as with much of real estate, it all comes down to the numbers.Hopefully this at least helps a little and maybe gives you another tool/idea to consider when weighing your options.

Micah! One option you may not be considering is to Refinance the loan. Since this is a VA loan, you should consider Refinancing it being that you may be eligible to get up to 100% of the appraised value. If you took out 20k to fix the AC and make some upgrades, you could force some equity in, lower your mortgage (I estimated your PMI to be about $1565, if you lowered your loan by 20k you could save about $100 a month. Now your $20 cash flow is $120), and you wouldn't loose your property. This is just another option to consider.

Only issue you may run into is that for VA loan, it needs to be owner occupied, which I assume you already know.

Here is an external source from military.com that highlights a VA cash out refinance: https://www.military.com/money/va-loans/cash-out-r...

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Thank you guys for the feedback. The house only really needs paint and a little work on the floor in one room. Other than that it looks good. However, it doesn't really hurt to overestimate the repair cost but I assume it will hurt if I underestimate. Therefore, that is going to be a takeaway from this experience. Looks like I will need to make a small adjustment to my numbers but I don't think that should impact it TOO much. Thanks again for responding. 

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*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.

Hello Friends!

So this is my first post AND if this deal looks half way decent, it will also be my first investment property! I am new to the bigger pockets forum and just became a Pro-member. I am currently a Realtor in Norfolk, Virginia. I spent some time in the Marine Corp and then was a Federal Police Officer for a few years after that. After my daughter was born i decided to do something that allowed me to control my schedule and put a little more focus into my family as opposed to being at work ALL the time. Let me know what you think about these numbers. It looks good to me on paper. 

Second part of this post, I have little/no money available for a down payment. I just finished reading "Real Estate Investing with Low (No) Money Down" and like the idea of finding a Partner. My Question is, how do i go about trying to find a partner here. Again, I am new to BiggerPockets and don't really know how to navigate all that well yet. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.