All Forum Posts by: Cosette Trantow

Hello everyone in BP land, I hope you're well. 

Part one of my real estate investing plan is to get an FHA loan for a house hack. There's a large speed bump on my road there, however, because my work has not been stable during this year (business closed, then I got a summer job that just ended, and now I'm looking for employment again). I know that for an FHA loan the lender wants to see 2 years worth of employment.

I have a few questions about what they want to see for employment as well as many other things pertaining to an FHA or VA loan and I don't want to bog down the forums here with everything I want to know. I'm going to go to my credit union and talk to their loan officer to get as many answers as I can, but I'm still at the point where I don't know what I don't know, so I'm hoping that some of you can provide me with questions or situations to ask the lender about that I may not know to ask.

I appreciate your help, 

Cosette

Thanks, Matt, I figured I could just use the surrounding area. I'm in 85201 and I used what I'm paying for rent (2/2) to help me analyze this. 

I was going to tag you in this, but I don't know how. 

Thank you Michele, I appreciate your response. I was planning on buying one property a year for the first three years using my FHA and VA loans and then kicking it up a notch after that. I just really want to be sure that I'll be able to buy my second property after that first year and not have to wait longer than that to save up for a down payment.

Hi everyone, I hope y'all are doing well. I tried to analyze my first property today. I'm really not sure if I did it right because it seems like a really good deal (I'm not anywhere near ready to buy yet, just learning how to analyze). I'd like some feedback from those of you who invest here in the Phoenix area so that I know how off my numbers are. I live in Mesa and I tried to find rent comparisons for the area of the property (Alhambra) but there was nothing for rent there I could find. I kind of went with the general area and near what I pay for rent here. 

This property is in the Alhambra Neighborhood of Phoenix AZ. 

List price: $350,000

4 units: 3 x 2 bd/1.5ba 1 X 2bd/2ba

I figured $1100/mo for rent for the 3 1.5 baths and $1150 for the 2 bath

Total Income: $4450

I used Zillow and my assessor's website for tax info (although I have no idea what FCV and LPV are)

Tax: $95

Vacancy: $230 (5%)

Repairs: $230 (5%)

CAPEX: $230 (5%)

Property management: $450 (10%)

Mortgage: $1922 (using an FHA loan at 3.5%)

PMI: $280

Insurance: $70 (based on zillows numbers)

Total Expenses $3507

Cashflow: $4450- $3507 = $943

Down payment: $14000

Closing costs: $4000 (I definitely need help with this number)

Rehab: $10,000 (pulled this out of my butt, only 1 picture of the outside)

Total cash in: $28,000

Cashflow for the year= $11316

COC ROI= 40.4%

I'd just like a little help to figure out if I'm even in the ballpark or if I really need to make some big adjustments to my numbers. Any resources that I can use to understand some of these numbers better would also be appreciated. 

Thank you so much for your time and input, I have a while before I can take action on anything, but I want to be able to analyze a deal in my sleep by the time I get there and be confident that I did it correctly. 

I'm in my education phase right now and I've determined that I want to start out with an FHA house hack (hopefully a 4 plex). I also have the VA loan available to me. My biggest question now is: After I've lived in the house for a year, how do I use that property to get my next one? I can't believe that there will be equity in it as far as what I've paid on the principle, so is the idea that I'd make improvements to the place throughout that year with the rent (even though I think I should do it before I rent it out, right?), or just save any cash flow I might have to save up for a down payment on property #2? In that case, I'll have to make sure that I have a lot of cash flow to save up in one year so it seems like I'd have to find a really really good deal because of the PMI.

Maybe I'm just really confused as to how this is supposed to work out. My plan is to get an FHA loan to house hack for a year, move out and refi to a non-owner occupied loan, then do it again for the next year with my VA loan and maybe one more year after that. I'm sure there are a lot of things I don't understand about this so any light shed on this would be very helpful. I didn't really find any posts about this.

I'm also not sure how much money I should plan on having on hand for initial rehab costs.

Thank you for your time.

I definitely will, thank you. 

Hello, Everbody! My name is Cosette (I use my middle name) and I currently live in Mesa, AZ

I have been thinking about getting into REI for a while and could always see myself owning a multiple family rental, but I never really thought it would be something I would do until "later". I was looking through some youtube videos and came across one from biggerpockets that piqued my interest. I watched a couple and then found this website. There is so much information here and I feel like I stumbled onto a gold mine. Two days ago I knew absolutely nothing about real estate; countless podcasts and videos later I know much more- enough to make me excited and overwhelmed at the same time.

I'm obviously in the education phase right now and would love to set a goal to buy my first property in the next year, however, I'm going to be in school and won't have very good income in order to get a loan (I have the VA loan available to me). Maybe I'll have to move my goal to two years, but it will happen. I plan to be well educated by then and well practiced in analyzing properties. I also hope to meet a lot of new people that I can learn from.

Thank you in advance for all the information I'm about to soak up!