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All Forum Posts by: Robert Morse

Robert Morse has started 2 posts and replied 9 times.

Post: New Investor in Capitol Heights, MD!

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5
Originally posted by @Clyde Wellman:

Hello everyone!

I am Clyde Wellman and I am a new real estate investor in Capitol Heights MD. I am currently house-hacking my personal residence and looking to purchase a rental in the near future. I am also waiting on my contractors license to arrive in the mail, MHIC (Maryland Home improvement Commission) can be a little slow lol. I have been woking along side my father (carpenter) for years. I am currently working full time and hope to find a rental property with a cosmetic rehab I can complete in my spare time. It's a pleasure to be a part of the community on Bigger Pockets. I am looking forward to connecting with you all!

Good afternoon! Are you looking to invest in Capitol Heights for a rental?  I have a rental down in Great Mills, MD and I bought a shortsale in Bowie that needed a lot of cosmetic work.  I'm still slowly picking away at the cosmetic stuff but it's a solid house (I've been living in it for two years now).

I'd like to pick up a third house to rent out but it seems incredibly difficult to find a deal in this area...I may be waiting a bit to see if there's a market downturn.

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5
Originally posted by @Kevin Hunter:

@Robert Morse, although this property is not cash flowing at all, and still won't when you raise the rent to market value, I recommend you keep it.  With the two payments a month, you will have it paid off in eight years, that means you are paying down about 12.5K of principal each year.  So if you are losing $300 a month, you are still gaining a very nice cash on cash return, one that you will not find anywhere else.  

Where are you living right now? If you are renting a place, I would say it is time to find another property with an FHA loan or another small down payment loan. I would give @Russell Brazil a call as I am sure he can help you get into a new property. I would suggest that, this time, you run the numbers much more carefully and ensure you find a property that will be cash flow positive when you move out, after all fees: repairs, HOA, property management, CAPEX, utilities (if you have to pay any as a landlord), PITI, landscaping/snow removal.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice Kevin! I moved up to D.C. for a new job; still with the federal government. I'm renting a room at a buddy's place for only $600. I'm currently trying to pay off my truck as fast as I can, and then will start looking to buy the next property. Homes in this area are just too expensive to buy when I already have a mortgage and a truck payment. Truck payment is around $475 a month with about $20k left to go. I'm paying $450 every two weeks on it and I'm about to up that to $750 every two weeks. Once that's paid off, the extra money can go towards the original mortgage while I'm looking for house number two

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5

I gotcha. Thanks for your input...I'm still learning this crap haha. I'm absolutely increasing rent when he moves out, which should be soon. 

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5

Damn.  I responded in your quoted text with bold but it didn't carry over when I posted....

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5
Originally posted by @Leland Barrow:

You need to decide what your goals are. The question that you are asking cannot be answered unless you know your specific goals. I will give you some basic advice.

1. You are making a mistake renting to a friend that is doing the maintenance and upkeep. A rental house is like a small business. You are basically paying your friend to run your small business. You are paying him through discounted rent. If it was a small business you would go out of business. Agreed. 

2. If market rent is $1,300 per month then you should be getting $1,300 per month. The fact that you are not getting $1,300 per month means that you are incompetent at running a small business. Instead you are running a charity without any of the benefits of running a charity. Your friend performing maintenance is not good enough. What maintenance has he performed? What was the quality? Was it needed? How do you know that it was done? That's the thing though....I have paid $0 in maintenance since 2014.  He has repaired the fence, fixed a plumbing leak, installed a new bathroom vent, upgraded all door knobs, etc. on his own dime. He sends pictures to me as he does things and I've visited the property to check things out.

If you want to be a real estate investor then be prepared to make business decisions. If you want to be a hobbyist and play at running a business then save yourself the heart ache and forget about it. If you want to run it as a business then you need to bring it up to market rents. What do your numbers look like at market rent? Around $14,500 a year in mortgage, insurance, taxes, HOA, etc.  $15,600 (maybe $16,800 if I'm lucky) a year in potential rental income.

You have ten years left on a 15 year mortgage at 3.125%. You are currently paying more towards principal every month than interest. In ten years this property will be paid off and your cash flow will increase dramatically. I am assuming this used to be a primary residence because of the interest rate. You are not going to get anything close to 3.125% again on an investment property. In real estate terms that is almost as close as you can get to borrowing money for free. That's why I have been hesitant to sell.  I'm looking at that cash flow when it's paid off. Also, I've been paying half every two weeks since new, so I'm closer to around 8 years to go.  Semantics.

Another option is to try and recast the loan for better cash flow but I don't think that you need to. 

Your alternative is to liquidate and buy another property with better cash flow. You are going to pay transaction fees, higher interest, and push a payoff down the road 30 years. You can calculate the NPV of both options fairly easily with an NPV calculator or look up how to calculate NPV. My intuition tells me that your NPV will be better on your current rental if you increase the rent.

Your other alternative is to refinance for 30 years. You will get a higher interest rate with a trade off for how much more in cash flow? You can calculate the NPV on this alternative also.

I would recast or get it to at least break-even and pay it off. 

Hopefully I addressed everything.

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5

But yea, I agree...the houses don't seem to appreciate but there seems to be a ton of renters in that area.

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5

I lived in the house for awhile and replaced/fixed most issues so there shouldn't (hopefully) be any big surprises.  The townhouse is directly across from the elementary school on Chancellor's Run.  Roof is from 2013; HVAC is older; water heater and appliances are probably 7 years old.

Post: Should I sell or keep my rental?

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5

Hey all, I've been poking around this site awhile now and it's causing me to take a long hard look at my current strategy. I own a townhouse in southern Maryland (Great Mills), that I paid $140,300 for back in 2010. It is now worth a whopping $141,000 according to Zillow and I still owe $103,000 on it. I refinanced into a 15 year loan back in 2012 and I'm paying $600 every two weeks on the loan (the minimum payment a month is close to $1100). My goal is to get it paid off by 2025 and would love to pay it off a lot faster. However, I'm only currently getting $1050 a month and I also have a $600 a year HOA.

I'm renting the house to my friend who is doing all maintenance and upkeep, and has been renting it for the last 3 years.  I'm losing money each month but it has been a hands-off rental for years.  He has done repairs on the house out of his own pocket.  When he moves out (which might be in the next few months, pending him getting a new job), I should be able to rent the house for $1200-1300 a month.  My goal is to have several houses paid off and generating cash flows.

In your opinion, am I better off selling the house and trying to find a rental with better cash flow?  Keep paying the house down (I'm currently paying my car loan down as aggressively as possible and will then take that money and apply it to the mortgage)? Refinance into a 30 year to increase my cash flow (current mortgage is only 3.125%)?

Any and all advice is welcomed.  Just not sure if it's worth keeping or if I can achieve my goal of having multiple income streams (replacing my current income from my job) faster by selling.

Post: Investor? from Maryland

Robert MorsePosted
  • Investor
  • Bowie, MD
  • Posts 9
  • Votes 5

Hey guys, figured I'd introduce myself instead of just lurking like I've been doing for the past month. I guess I'm an investor; I'm kind of doing my own thing.  Graduated from UMCP with a degree in economics in 2009 and then moved out of my parents' house and down to Southern Maryland for a job. I rented a one bedroom apartment for a year and realized that I HATE paying rent. So the next year, at the naive age of 23, I purchased a foreclosed townhouse in Great Mills, MD and started fixing it up.  I also immediately started renting out a room to offset the price of my mortgage payment. I quickly realized that both a house without a garage and southern Maryland is not for me and moved up to the DC area at the end of 2013/beginning of 2014. I also refinanced into a 15 year loan in order to pay off the townhouse faster.  The guy who was renting out a room for the past year and a half took over renting out the whole house for my mortgage payment and I started paying rent again up in the DC area.

Flash forward to end of 2015 and I'm looking to pick up another house and do the same thing over again; I've also increase my monthly payment on my first house.  I've been preapproved and I found a short sale in an area that I believe will see some tremendous growth in the next ten years. The house is priced under comps and my offer has been accepted by the listing agent; I'm just waiting (and waiting and waiting) to hear back from the bank. In the meantime, I've decided that I need to get serious about this whole renting/investing/landlord deal now that I'm about to own two properties.  This is what landed me here and I'm looking forward to learning from all of you who have been doing what I'm doing, except much more efficiently.