All Forum Posts by: Roman Porshnev

@Shawn K Hicks that would be much appreciated, thank you for the assistance.

@Alina Trigub certainly! We have been working on building up our network, and will continue to do so. Incidentally I see that there is an investor meetup planned for the following weekend in Gainesville, but unfortunately those dates do not work for us. Either way, we are always up for making new connections when the opportunity arises.

@Scott Wolf that is a great idea, we will be sure to add small local bank visits to our itinerary. At the end of the day, the amount of funding we can secure will determine our initial investment strategy. Thank you for the advice!

Hi Shawn, we are currently in the process of compiling a list of the ones that interest us, and will refine it along the way as we get closer to our visit. 

To briefly summarize our situation - we formed an LLC (may have jumped the gun a bit here), pooled together roughly $50k cash, and began the search. Our initial approach was looking into 2-4 unit rental properties with the intent of putting a down payment and getting a loan for the balance. We have found that most lenders are not too eager to work with a company that currently has 0 equity and 0 cash flow.

This leaves us with two options - take out a personal mortgage, refinance, and transfer the property to the LLC eventually - or buy a SFR fixer-upper with cash, renovate the place (can raise additional capital for a cosmetic renovation), and have it reappraised. At that point we would either 1031 exchange the property, or hold on to it as a rental unit depending on where the numbers make the most sense. Either way, we would now have some additional cash on hand or equity to work with.

The long term goal is to build a portfolio of multi-unit rental properties. We still have much to learn, but so far this has been an exciting experience and I am looking forward to getting more involved in REI.

Happy New Year, everyone! A friend and I have very recently taken the leap into the REI world. Although we are currently in New York, my friend has spent a fair amount of time in Georgia and Florida recently, particularly in the Gainesville area. As such, that is where we have been searching for potential investments. We will be flying down to Orlando on January 31st and driving up to Gainesville, where we will be staying until February 2nd to look at properties. If anyone is in the area that weekend and would like to meet up for some lunch or coffee, please let me know. I would love to hear about your experiences investing in the area, and to meet some friendly people in general!