All Forum Posts by: Martha Nowlan

@Ethan Fischer my old friend! Reach out and we can chat more. Sorry for the late reply and hope it's still helpful. First off, keep in mind that you can purchase your new home with 3-5% down, so using home equity for the down payment might not make a lot of sense but you'd want to run the numbers with your lender. You can use the STR income for qualifying as long as you claimed the income on your taxes.

Is there a reason you think you'd be selling the property soon? If it cash flows and is in a good market, why not just plan to keep it? If you have it long enough, capital gains won't kill you because you will have made a ton on it. It's really a matter of what your long term strategy is with the property. I can't say this from experience, but I have heard SO MANY times that people wish they had just kept that property instead of selling it. If it works, keep working it and keep it and worry about the capital gains down the road whenever it's time to sell.

Late reply here, @Sabrina Sargent, but I'd make sure to be working with an agent who can help you with this. If you don't have one, I'm happy to connect you with someone.

Hey @Steven Gore, sorry I didn't catch this earlier! Plenty of us on here. I'm happy to chat. I don't cover the entire state but can connect you with someone in the area you're looking in if I can't help. I'll shoot you a message.

Hi @Nathan Williams! I live in Waterbury and happy to connect. Will shoot you a message.

Sounds like a tricky situation. I'm a bit confused as to why they are still living there if they purchased a house? First off, you need to work with a real estate agent who has dealt with tenants before. If yours haven't, let me know and I can help you find someone good in that area. I'm up in Waterbury. 

Do you have a security deposit? They obviously aren't getting that back. I hate to say it, but it might be time to talk to a lawyer. Especially if he is a lawyer, you might not be in a great position in terms of negotiating skills and understanding the legalities. I don't think the market is going to crash... we'll see. I'd say you need to give them notice and try to work out a payment plan. You're more likely to get paid if you don't piss them off and don't kick them out immediately. I know none of the options are good and it all sucks.

@Seb Ko I'm doing the same thing right now and every lender I've contacted said they can do it, just usually 75% LTV. Talk to local credit unions and banks if you haven't already.

Hi @Cameron Bremner! You are on the right path. You should be able to qualify for a mortgage, as a few others have mentioned, since you were in college before you were working full time. Lucky for you, underwriting guidelines understand that if you were in college, you were "working" towards being able to get a great job and actually make money basically. 

Debt to income will be the main obstacle. I think you'd be ok on this with your income and with counting rental income, but you'd have to get preapproved to know for sure and then it's going to depend on each property if you're just on the line. FHA is a great way to go. You can't get a multi family with a conventional loan with a low down payment like you can with FHA. It's a really smart way to get started and that's what I did as well.

I'm a Realtor in VT and happy to connect you with a few great FHA lenders around Burlington to get you started. I'll shoot you a message.

Welcome @Ali Kamil! It's definitely hard to actually figure out where to start. You are on the right path being here though!

I'm an agent and love helping people out, but if you are looking for help with the very basics and to really dig in, I do have a friend who does that amazingly well. I will PM you more info and see if you want me to connect you :)

@Logan Parrette FIrst of all, you are probably overthinking and overanalyzing. I see a lot of new investors do that. There is so much local market knowledge that comes into play here and doesn't fit in with the generalized formulas. Appreciation, cap rates, vacancy rates, etc all vary. I don't care what any statistics say, you can't possibly convince me that Burlington is a bad place to invest. St Albans and Barre as slightly less certain, but I wouldn't bet against them. It doesn't sound like you're clear on what your goals are and what criteria is important to you. You cannot hit every number. Do you want cash flow, a good cap rate, appreciation? Are you going to owner occupy? What class property? What kind of tenants do you want? These are all important questions to answer. You're probably thinking too hard about the wrong things. At some point, you just need to get out there and start doing it.

One key to this is finding a good agent who understands what you can be looking for in this market and understands all the BP speak. Then you don't have to figure all of this out all on your own. I happen to fit that criteria, so feel free to reach out if you want to connect more.

@Robert Anderson I'm also in Vermont and have had my license about 4.5 years. I was with KW and just switched to eXp. I was feeling less and less connected to the culture of the local KW market center and felt like I needed to surround myself with different people and grow in a different direction.

One thing I love about eXp is that you can choose your culture by being intentional about your sponsor and the revenue share group you join. The culture of your immediate mentors and training opportunities and other resources doesn't have to just come from whatever local agents are at the local brokerage or franchise you join--you can choose that from anywhere in the country depending on who you partner with. There are plenty of other reasons, yet that is what I found so appealing about eXp. 

There is no right answer about the best brokerage to join. It depends on so many things. As a new agent, are you going to be full time, part time? Are you doing independent or joining a team? Why are you interested in being an agent? What culture are you looking for? How much do you need your hand held vs being self motivated? Do you want to be hyper local or do you want to be learning tips and tricks from other national players? 

Happy to connect with you more 1:1 and give my insights based on your personal goals.