All Forum Posts by: Shaun R.

I'm getting closer and closer to owning my first rental property and I'm scrambling to figure out how I'm going to accept applications, collect rents, etc....  I'm looking through their website, and TurboTenant seems like a pretty good service.  Has anyone had any experience using their service?  

I hadn't even considered that I could go with one of the big brokers. I assumed only a smaller company would allow someone who didn't really want to be an active agent. I definitely wouldn't mind the oversight and regulations though. I understand the liability and I'm sure I would need to bounce some questions off of them.

I'm in the Denham Springs/Walker area. I want to get my RE license just for buying and selling my own investment properties. Does anyone know of a good broker who will let investors hang their license that is not looking to be an agent?

And I don't want to sound like my wife is holding me back. She is fully supportive of saving to invest in real estate, but while I'm ready to scale way back and sacrifice to do it faster, she isn't.

There is lots of knowledge on this site. Browse the forums, listen to the podcasts and webinars, and read the blogs.

I put 4% of my salary into my 401k. My company matches that 4% plus they add another 4%. I was contributing more and I had an auto-increase set for every year that I get my cost of living raise, but I decided to drop to the match and put any extra savings into an index fund for rental property down payments. I actually just took a 401k loan out to help buy my first rental property.

I also plan on renting my current home in the near future. It will cashflow some, but nothing crazy. I didn't buy this house like an investment property. I paid market value and used an FHA loan with minimal down payment. I don't plan on ever buying another personal residence this way. On the next one I'll find something that needs some work so I can get in at a discount and force some instant equity.

I've read about real estate investing for probably 15 years. It always intrigued me, but I never took any action. Now at 35 years old I've got my first rental property under contract. Things would be so much different if I was a single guy, able to make all the decisions with no input from others. But, as a husband and father of two, I don't have the luxury of making all the sacrifices that I would like to make. Currently we live in a house we bought for $180,000 that is currently worth $200,000. My payment is $1100 per month and houses in my neighborhood rent for at least $1600. If I were a single guy I would look into renting 3 of the 4 bedrooms to cover my mortgage. We do have rooms that aren't being used since my two kids prefer to share a room, but I wouldn't even consider having strangers in my house around my wife and two girls. I've tried talking the wife into buying a camper and living in it temporarily while we rent our house out and save aggressively. I've tried talking to her about moving into a condo almost half the size of our house, and the difference between rent and our house payment would almost cover the condo payment. None of these things are appealing to her, and since her vote counts just as much as mine, I can't force any of it on her. I'm not a guy that has a lot of patience to sit around and wait for things to happen, but I'm going to have to do this the slow and steady way. I can only cut the budget so much with the wife and kids. There is always something going on that requires money. I've always been more of the spender than she has anyway, so there are some things I'm doing to reign that in. After reading Set For Life I was amped up to cut spending in the areas of our life where we spend the most money, but I haven't been able to find a good compromise that the wife can live with. So I'll cut where I can and continue to save money slowly. I blame myself for not taking action much earlier in life when I had the ability to make all the decisions alone. My household income is approximately $80,000 more right now than back when I was a single guy just learning about real estate investing. I didn't have a lot of money to invest, but if I had only gotten into house hacking back then, there is no telling where I would be financially today.

Thanks Timothy Guidroz I'll check that out and it will give me a reason to get out there and get a La Mex from Pizza Place.

From what I've read most people set aside a percentage of monthly rent for repairs, vacancies, capex, etc... Instead of taking a small percentage every month for these things, I'm leaning towards putting everything that is left after PITI and building a reserve for each property of $5,000. I like the idea of building reserves for any problems more quickly. Once the reserve is met, everything after PITI will be considered cashflow. Does anyone do anything similar to this or is the general consensus to set aside a percentage monthly? The $5,000 is just an arbitrary number and may be adjusted over time depending on how things go.