All Forum Posts by: Richard Jahnle

@Chris Breezy - Also, the process of getting pre-approved involves the lender running your credit report, verifying your income and liabilities, and seeing if you have the cash on hand to cover downpayment/closing costs etc. Like @Jason Fike said, until you are pretty close to finding the right house, you may not want to get pre-approved since they will run a credit inquiry. If you want an idea of the price range that you will qualify for, you can ask a lender for a pre-qualification. It's just an estimate and isn't a guarantee that they can lend you that amount of money, but they can probably give a pretty good estimate of what you can qualify for.

@Chris Breezy If you go to a lender in New York looking to invest in New Jersey, you need to make sure that the lender and the loan originator you are working with are also licensed to originate loans in NJ. There's a good chance they will be since New Jersey is a neighboring state, but you just need to ask the lender.

Also if you are looking to use an FHA loan, you need to live in the house for at least a year, so if you are still going to be living in NY, you can't use an FHA loan to buy an investment property in NJ, it has to be owner-occupied.

@Ian Andrews I work about 10 min from the Drexel Hill area and looked there to possibly buy (had same plan as you, buy an owner-occupied multifamily). There were a few downsides to buying there. Yes, duplexes and triplexes are relatively inexpensive there but for whatever reason, I found property taxes are very high. I bet you would end up paying more in property taxes in D.Hill then wage tax in Philly. Also having grown up in the Delco area, Drexel Hill is one of the surrounding suburbs of Philadelphia/Delco that is not very desirable to live in. It's sort of in that Upper Darby area, a place with a below average school system, especially compared to the other surrounding delco schools. I have friends living in Drexel Hill now who are having a baby, and they are trying to get out of Drexel Hill ASAP to an area with a better school system. Also like you said, not great crime statistics. 

I ended up buying in Manayunk/Roxborough. If you have any questions about the Manayunk/Roxborough or any other surrounding area, let me know. 

@Jorge Santiago Welcome to BP. Podcasts and the forums are a great way to learn and get started. Good luck in your quest to house-hack - I started by house-hacking a duplex about a year after I started listening to the podcast. If you have any questions along the way, feel free to connect.

Welcome @Wanda Hernandez. Congratulations on house hacking the triplex, having your tenants pay for your entire mortgage with money left over gives you a great start to your investing career

Since you aren't planning to buy a property for a year, your first step may be to get pre-qualified. You can have a mortgage lender prequalify you at any time to give you an estimate of what loan amount you can qualify for, and what loan types you can qualify for. Then again, pre-qualifying is just an estimate, and may change a lot over the next year if your income, credit, and/or debts change in any way. 

Pre-approval will actually approve you to purchase a home. Whenever you get close to buying a home, you should get pre-appoved - you don't want to have your ideal property go on the market, and not be able to make an offer because you are not pre-approved. So if I were you, I would probably wait until early next year to get pre-approved. 

@Joe P. - I agree with you and @Brendan Markle, makes sense on paper to sell the $0 cash flow rental for a multifamily with more cash flow. $60,000 of appreciation over 7 years is awesome, even if you did have to pay for some of the improvements.

Brendan - where in Philadelphia would you recommend for higher cash flow at the moment? Sounds like it would require Joe to buy in an area like Germantown where he may have to deal with more difficult tenants than his current rental.

I'm also curious as to how landlords deal with this. Water in my duplex is not separated by unit, so I pay the whole bill myself. 

@Monica Diaz I purchased a duplex in Roxborough last year. I can refer you to the agent that I used and also answer any questions you have about the area. 

I also live in the area so can let you know my opinion on the neighborhood. 

Good luck!

@Account Closed I also am in a similar situation. My house was converted to a duplex by the previous owner and has been used as a duplex for years despite having RSA-3 zoning on Philadelphia property records. I think the previous owner did a lot of things without getting zoning/permits including building a deck.

However, when I went to L&I to get a rental license for the unit I rent out (I live in the other unit), I was able to obtain it. My guess is that the public Philadelphia Property Records just have not been updated to reflect my property is a duplex. L&I doesn't seem like the most organized and efficient entity.

One piece of advice for dealing with L&I if you do need to go down there to straighten things out - go first thing in the morning. Once they get backed up, you may have to wait for hours before you get helped.