All Forum Posts by: Shiloh Lundahl

@Oscar Liao the correct forum to advertise services is the classified section. And I think you have to have the upgraded membership to be able to post in the classified section. 

If you have ever learned something important by trial and error, then you can probably understand the frustration that you feel when you make a "rookie mistake" or a simple error that creates a big negative result. Like accidentally leaving the car light on in the car and having your car battery dead in the morning. A simple mistake with a big result. 

When it comes to getting loans, which is pretty important for real estate investors, simple "mistakes" can make it so that you either don't qualify or you may qualify but with a higher interest rate or higher loan fees. 

I have probably gotten between a hundred and two hundred loans within the past 8 years and I have learned some things along the way that make getting loans easier and harder. Here are some tips and tricks to make loans easier.

1. Don't disclose things that are unnecessary. For example, if the loan officer asks you what your monthly payments are and your mother-in-law moved in with you because she is struggling financially and you are paying her car payment, don't share that you are paying her car payment every month. You don't own the debt even though you are nice enough to pay it. The same goes with real estate. If the loan officer asks you about your debts, you can ask clarifying questions such as are you asking for personal debts or business debts? If the loan officer asks for just personal debts, then don't disclose any business debts including debts on real estate that if that debt was qualified for by the business.

2. If you are married, put the debt for the family house in only one person's name. My wife and I have business income and our accountant can divide the income according to what would be the best for reducing tax liability. If you are able to qualify for the house debt in only one person's name then do that. Our mortgage and HELOC are both in my wife's name. This makes it much easier for me to qualify for loans because I don't have to disclose the home debt that would effect my income to debt ratio. I am looked at by the loan officer as living in a situation rent free.

3. Lets say your accountant tries to write off as much as is legally possible when it comes to lowing your taxible income so that your tax burden is less and you pay less taxes. This can make it hard for you to get a loan because a loan officer will say that they can only go off of what the taxes say.  Your explanation of really making a million dollars a year even though your taxes only show a hundred thousand will only make you look shady. So don't do it. Instead, ask your accountant to write a letter of explanation for your finances that adds back depreciation and capital improvements rather than expenses. This can help your bank be able to qualify more income. Also, if you sell homes regularly each year, whether it's a few or more and you can show the bank that that is your business model and if you can show the bank consistency in that model, they can use your capital gains as regular income which can greatly help you qualify for a loan.

4. Let's say your accountant is like a magician because it's almost like he can make your income disappear on your taxes (legally of course). This can be good when it comes to avoiding taxes but bad when it comes to qualifying for a loan. Let's say you already used the tips above but you really want this nice yacht you've been looking at buying but you want to buy it with a loan and you only need to show $5000 more a month in income to buy it. You have the money, but you really want to buy it with a loan for some reason. So here's another hack. You can create a trust to pay you out $5000 a month for a 39 month period of time. Show the bank the first couple of transfers into your account and if the those transfers are expected to continue for at lease the next 3 years, the bank can use that $5000 as monthly income which can help you qualify for a loan to buy the yacht of your dreams. Happy sailing. 

For all the experienced investors out there, if you have found other legal loan hacks that have helped you qualify for loans which in turn has helped you grow your real estate portfolio, share some of them below.

If anything I have stated above is illegal then you can point that out too. We don't want to lead people astray. But make sure it is actually illegal and not just your opinion. 

This is such an interesting question. And I don't think it is as clear cut as people are saying. I get a lot of loans every year and the questions depend on the bank the and the loan officer.

Currently I am looking at getting a US based loan on a property that I own in Costa Rica. They are doing their underwriting process. They know that I own a lot of real estate, but they are only asking me questions about properties that I own where the initial debt was was taken out in my own name (qualifying loans or non-DSCR loans) before I transferred them into LLCs. Those are the only properties I need to give a specific accounting for as far as my debt goes. They use the rent payments to offset the debt if I have rented the properties for a couple of years. All the other real estate in my businesses are counted as assets minus the debt liabilities for net worth purposes and the business income that comes to me is counted as part of my personal income. It really depends on the bank and the banker.

The best is to work with a seasoned banker who knows the system well and knows which questions to ask investors and which not to ask investors. Because, for instance, if I am flipping a couple of properties and I am in the middle of the rehab, but it will take a couple of months for them to get finished and sold, I may be paying $4000 on hard money debt payments per month, and if that debt is included in whether or not I will qualify for a refinance, then I may not qualify. Even though those debts are temporary. So my loan officer may direct me to not disclose those properties while applying for the refinance.  

If something is disclosed then it will be counted against you so just ask the loan officer some qualifying questions to see what you need to disclose. Questions such as:

- What type of real estate do you want me to disclose?

- Do you want me to disclose real estate owned in my own name or real estate owned in my businesses too if my businesses qualified for the debt? 

- Do you want me to disclose real estate that I may own if the debt was guanenteed by someone else? Etc.

You both want to make the loan happen so just ask questions and then disclose according to what the loan officer directs you to disclose.  If while asking the questions the loan officer says that the sub to property that you are getting ready to buy would become an issue then just close on the sub to property after you close on your refinance. 

Hi@John Jacobs. There are ways of buying a property to get around seasoning time requirements. But tell us your particular situation so that we can understand it better. 

This post is for high-level investors want to connect with other high-level investors that have done 50 or more deals or have 50 or more properties and they want to improve their business systems. If that sounds like you then check out our Investor mastermind retreat that we’re hosting in April out of our properties in Costa Rica. 

https://reiretreats.com/mastermind-retreats/

Investor Mastermind Retreat in Costa Rica 2025

 I'll tell you what @Joe S. If you come to my with me on the retreat in April, I will explain every single detail of the process.

@Joe S. I use the last property I bought as an example. I bought it for $138,000 with a rehab credit of $57,000 so I closed on it for $195,000. Then I put about $45,000 in fixing it up and I expect the appraisal to come back within the next couple of days at $240,000 or higher. 

I bought it through a wholesaler. so the Wholesaler added an addendum to the contract to increase the purchase price to $195,000 with a $57,000 rehab credit. The $57,000 rehab credit is represented on both sides of the settlement statement canceling each other out and increasing the purchase price to $195,000.

I buy it with hard money and the Hard Money Lender understands this process. Then I refinance it with a long-term DSCR loan. The lender For the DSCR loan uses the $195,000 purchase price plus the $45,000 To come up with the purchase price plus rehab. Then they give me 75% of the $240,000 for the refinance.

@Tyler Garza one last thought about what was said about not getting rich quick. I disagree with that statement. I think people can definitely get rich quick. But in order to do that, you need to define "rich," and you need to find "quick." I think most people can become a millionaire within five years if they are willing to follow a strategy, make the sacrifices necessary, and do the work that it takes to become a millionaire in five years. My net worth was about $30,000 in 2008 and it rose to $300,000 by 2014. Today it is more than 10 times that. I don't say that in any braggadocious way. I recognize that my net worth is small compared to some of the people I associate with. I say that to give context to the principles that I am sharing.

@Tyler Garza almost every property I purchase I do so with the rehab credit strategy. I haven't met anyone else who uses this strategy the same way I do but it has been probably the one thing that has helped me scale as quickly as I have over the years. 

Let me share some thoughts and perspective with you.

Love your wife, but help her understand and see the financial benefits of sacrificing now for the comforts and freedoms that early sacrifices will make in the long term. 

We purchased our first home when I was almost 29 years old. It was a fixer-upper. We purchased it for 135k and we put into it about 15k in repairs, of which most of the work we did ourselves. While we lived at this house I took a home equity line on our home and I bought a house in our neighborhood at market value because I didn't know any better. This was our first rental.

After living in our first home for 4 years we sold it and purchased another home that was a fixer-upper that had a guest house in the back. We rented out the guest house to family members and we rehabbed the primary home.

We then moved to a different state (from Arizona to California) but we knew it would be temporary so we kept our house in Arizona and we rented out the main house as well.  

While living in California we purchased a small house - 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. But it also had a small 200 square foot guest house in the back which we rented out for $1500. We were a family of 7 living in a 2-bedroom home. We were living on top of each other. Four kids in one room and the baby in our room. I commuted back and forth from Arizona to California for 4 years and when I would stay in Arizona I stayed on the fold out couch in the living room of the guest house behind my Arizona primary home because my mother-in-law still lived in the bedroom.

During this time of living in Arizona for 4 days and California for 3 days a week, my business partner and I built a large real estate portfolio through hustling and finding good deals. We used the lease option strategy so we would buy properties under market value and we would keep them for only around 3-5 years and then we would sell them and trade them up for more properties with the equity that was created. We didn't take any money from our real estate business for 5 years. We just reinvested everything back into our real estate businesses. 

I'm 2019 I found a nice property on the market that would suit my family really well. It was 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms on almost an acre of land. I noticed the seller started out trying to sell it for $800,000 but he was lowering it pretty aggressively. I showed the house to a mentor of mine and said that I was considering purchasing it. He told me I should and then helped me purchase it. When the price had been reduced to $680,000 I put in an offer for $640,000 cash. They accepted the offer. I then had my mentor who was also a hard money lender purchase the house and sell it to me on a lease option. But rather than closing on the house at $640,000 he closed on it at $750,000 with a $110,000 rehab credit because that is where the value should come in at. Then when I exercised the option within a few months. Because he purchased it with the rehab credit, the appraisal came in at $755,000. I got a primary loan for around $530,000 and a second loan for $110,000 so my total out of pocket was about $10,000 for closing costs. I did pay about $6000 a month in interest to him until I refinanced it. But during that time, I rented out all of the rooms for about a year which brought in about $4500 a month to offset the majority of the monthly payment. 

Then we sold the house in California and moved my family back to Arizona into our nice, big house which my wife has been beautifying since we moved in. I was 39 years old when we moved into our dream home. 

I share my journey with you to help you see the unconvential path that we went on for a decade and how that helped us get to where we are today. We sacrificed comforts, moved into homes where we could add value or offset the payments by house hacking and continued to trade up over a decade. I was able to work at my counseling practice and my wife was able to stay home with our kids. 

Here are a couple of principles you can take away from my journey if you would like. 

1. Figure out ways to offset your living expenses or buy properties that you can add value to and then trade up within 3-4 years.

2. Be willing to live unconventionally and sacrifice for a time period so that you can have what you want. I tell people that if they don't have a net worth to buy their dream house in cash then they aren't ready to buy their dream house. 

3. Be willing to reinvest the gains of your business for several years without taking money out of it in order to grow it into something significant that can help you get your dreams. 

@Stuart Udis where is it you want to go or how to do you want to grow?

I read your post and it looks like you want a partner but it wasn't very clear exactly what you want or what you're looking for.

If you set the vision and then define the roles and responsibilities I think you can have an easier time finding the person you are looking for. Also, if it is going to be a long-term partnership, you'll want to get to know that person really, really well. What is their personality style? How do they resolve conflicts? How do they treat people that are close to them? How resourceful are they? How well do they take responsibility and execute on tasks? Etc.

My primary partner, Jason, and I were partners for six or seven years. We had a plan to build a large real estate portfolio and then sell it in five years and divide the money. We did that. We still own a couple of mobile home parks together and a triplex. But for the most part, we have divided our properties as we initially had planned. it was great working with him. There were times where I got frustrated with him and there were probably more times that he got frustrated with me. But we were able to resolve conflict pretty well and still remain really good friends today.

I would say if you're going to find a partner, you really want to find somebody that you get along really well and who also knows how to work hard and resolve conflict well.