All Forum Posts by: Rick Pozos

The loan you have on the property has nothing to do with your profit or taxes that you pay when you sell. 

Hey @Isabella Johnstun I think the biggest factor is going to be the neighborhood. You are going to want to finish it out to the neighborhood. If it's a lower class neighborhood you are probably going to put in $75 ceiling fans. Higher neighborhood, maybe $300. Multiply that times faucets, cabinets, shower fixtures, flooring, etc.

Well then, it is going up again for next year when the homestead comes off. You do need to let them know that the homestead is going away.

Welcome to the forums.

There is lots of free info here and all over the place. The problem is that there is so much!! What do you do?? Flip, wholesale, landlord?? Figure out what type of investing works for you and do a bunch of it.

Welcome. San Antonio is a great place, but man is it hot in the summer!! After about 2 or 3 pm I will not see people outside of my house(with the a/c running full blast).

When you get here, get to some meetups and network with others in the city. There are tons of groups of all types of investors.

I guess I am the contrarian. I would hold it. If it breaks even, makes a little, costs a little, whatever, hold it. You will never have that low of an interest rate. You WILL make more money in the next year or two. Time will bring rents up.

Real Estate is not a 3 year game. It is a 20 or 30 year game. This is your retirement. It is like worrying that your stock portfolio only grew by 1% or lost 5% and now you want to cash it out. 

How about doing what you already did? Find a house that needs SOME work, not a ton of work and clean it up, fix it up, maybe add an ADU. You dont need the cashflow since I assume 250k is pretty darn good even for SF, AND you must be renting out the adu. Do you also have a friend that lives with you in the house paying you rent?? You could if you dont. They might pay $1,000 per month maybe more?

Syndications are a little tough right now, but I would start looking into them for the next few years. 

Meet some others locally and see what they are doing. That is the best way to get a feel for the market. What works in San Antonio, does not necessarily work in the Bay Area.

I would vote for situation #3

If they really want it THAT BAD, they can buy it, YOU put it in so that you know they did not mess anything up, but it stays after they leave. A shower head can be $20 to $200, but so can the installation. Installation is pretty easy and I would do it myself.

I think you used the right phrase, "Ability to Buy". BUT that term is sooooo subjective. 

Your 'Ability to buy' will change with your creativity, not only with your credit score or income. Buying with a conventional loan is 1 way to buy. If you dont have it, find other ways.

My first house was a pre-foreclosure. The seller said he wanted to file bankruptcy. He did and it stopped the sale. I immediately before that, contracted the house. We stopped the sale, I found a buyer, double closed and made 12k. I owed 3 months of child support, recently divorced, back home living with parents, driving an old car with over 100k miles and had been recently fired from a job. Most people would say I had NO ABILITY to buy. BUT I had creativity. I bought and sold or wholesaled houses almost every month that year.

In 20+ years I have still only purchased 1 house with a conventional mortgage. That does not mean my ability to buy is not deep. It just means I dont use conventional mortgages, I have found other ways to deepen my ability to buy.

Owner finance, sub-to, partners, JV, syndication, hard money, private money, friends and some family IRA money are all ways to deepen your 'Ability to Buy'.

Foreclosing on someone is the "Big Bad Wolf" until you have done it a few times. It does cost some money for the attorney, takes some months to get done and YES the property will come back in worse shape. This is all part of the game. Rentals come back with issues when tenants move out just like foreclosures.

It's never a great situation to take a property back. The ones that I have done, we talked with the homeowner all the way through it. They could not pay and they knew that we had to have money or the house back. They were never mad at us or took revenge on the house. It does happen though. The horror stories should be the "Worse Case Scenario", they are not the norm, for us at least.

As mentioned above, scrutinize your buyers. Since about 2015, when we sell owner finance, we go through an RMLO and get at least 10% down. Have not had any issues since then. No foreclosures in about 10 years.