All Forum Posts by: Robin McMullen

My mother is selling a mobile home on a lot to her neighbor and is offering seller financing (California). The agreed upon purchase price of the property is $150,000 with $10,000 down. She would like to have a monthly payment for 15 years and is concerned about the possibility of an early payoff. What are some ways to structure the contract to dissuade early payoff? Also, they haven't agreed on interest rate/monthly payment amount, does anyone have an opinion on a property like this or is there somewhere I can look to determine seller financing rates in a particular area? Thank you in advance for any advice.

 Thank you for responding Adam, My agent mentioned that it was too late to lower the price (since this issue came up at closing) so this cash payment after closing was her solution. Good point about the extra commission, and having the brokerage process the payment is a great idea.

 Thank you Russell for the clear explanation. It makes sense that you don't exchange cash outside of the transaction, I can see that causing some potential legal problems and that 2% limit should have been identified before showing up to closing.

I've just sold a house in Pennsylvania and offered a seller assist of 3%. At closing, I was informed that the buyer's lender has a 2% seller assist limit. So the house sold for the original agreed upon price, however, the seller assist amount was 2% instead of the previously agreed 3%. After closing, my realtor, who is representing both buyer and seller, said that I need to pay that extra 1% in cash to the buyer. I understand how this works out math wise, however, there will be no documentation/receipt for this payment and that is making me feel uncomfortable. I'm concerned that I will be paying tax on this 1% since I assume that this would be considered a cash gift to the buyer? 

Thank you in advance for any advice on how I should respond to this situation

It is an investment home

I'm looking to refinance my SFR to a lower rate (currently at 5.125%) with cash out to purchase a cash-only investment property to rehab and rent. The current mortgage has $248K left on it and the property is currently valued at $710K, no missed or late payments, and my credit score is 740+. The house is located in Hawaii.

However, my income situation is complicated, especially in the last two years and I'm wondering if a stated income option is available? Otherwise, are there any other financing options that I should look into? 

Thank you in advance for your help!

Thank you all for the welcome and your willingness to share.

Joe Villeneuve, thank you for the ideas for growing our seed money (and the other advice), we will definately be doing more research on that and I hope you don't mind if we come back to you to ask more questions.  

Michael Wagner, thank you for your input, we have done some research on storage and like what we have seen so far. We understand that our 15-20 is optimistic and we were in fact thinking 10K a month would cover us quite comfortably. We would rather enjoy life and have fewer luxuries than work ourselves to the bone, I'm sure the 10K is not an easy target either but maybe with careful planning.

Absolutely Zachary! Great to find someone in the same position. 

Thank you for your response @JR T. 

Agreed, 300K is not much in California so we are trying to get an idea of how we can grow it to the point of 15-20K a month. We really believe that we need to look out of state.

We'll get going on the analysis to get a better idea of what we can expect. Thanks again for the advice.

Hello! Just starting out, trying to learn as much as I can, Biggerpockets has been so imformative and the community seems so supportive. 

My husband and I are in our early 40s and we are ready to make a change from working full time to living off of real estate investments. Two years ago we decided to accept employment overseas because it is allowing us to save 60k a year. We plan to work in our current positions until we are able to invest in real estate that would provide us with 15-20K a month in cash income (after all expenses). At the moment we are trying to put together the best plan possible to reach our goal. I'm hoping that some of you might have some advice for us for our plan moving forward.

We are from N. California and know the area quite well, however we are open to learning about and investing in other areas of the US. 

We are currently living overseas so getting started in purchasing properties is a little difficult (though we have around three months a year off and are able to travel back to the states). 

So far we have planned to stay at our positions for five years which will give us 300K to work with. We have been looking into SFR, multifamily buildings, self storage facilities, we are open to whatever will help us reach our goal.

I have a couple specific questions and welcome any other advice or ideas.

1. Our savings is currently in a savings account earning essentially nothing, is there a better place to put our savings until we are ready to put it into real estate?

2. Is 300K cash investment a realistic amount to potentially earning 15-20K a month?

3. Any specific books/resources recommended?

Thank you in advance for any advice!