All Forum Posts by: Jeff Solberg

Jon,

I have been lurking the forums and your posts everyday for the past few weeks. Great stuff.

I try to look over deals people post and try to determine if it makes sense. Then read what the experts have to say. I have learned so much from you all. Thanks.

Plus, I just got another tool, rentometer.com. :)

Thanks everyone :)

Sounds like the first few will be on us and saving. Nothing wrong with that. We will have to investigate other means as we gain experience.

I love the idea of free and clear and that definitely is where we want to be, however, there are just so many deals right now and with interest rates so cheap I'm thinking I would rather use money to acquire right now vs pay down or buy outright.

On a side note, I found BP a few days ago and it is has been a wonderful resource already. Thanks so much for taking the time to help me out.

I will definitely be reading through all these forums.

My wife and I just bought our first rental and we are very excited!

Now we both have good jobs that pay well. Our goal is to test the investment waters and if we like it, purchase more homes to help with retirement income years and years away. We have been pretty conservative ensuring not to over extend ourselves and that we could pay the expenses on the house even if it sat there vacant forever, hopefully this will not happen…At some point we will make a decision if rentals are for us or not. If we decide to stay with it I don’t think we could be as conservative with the next house plus saving up for the next round of upfront costs will take some time.

To my questions:

Where do you come up with the down payments, rehab, closing costs for new investments?

From what I understand down payment is normally 20% of the purchase price. HomePath is the only option I know of requiring < 20%. On top of that you need rehab money and closing costs. A 50k property adds up to be: 10k down payment + 1.5k (3% cc) + ~5k (obviously variable) = $16.5k for each property

Do you all simply have cash reserves just waiting to be used?
Do you pull cash out of other properties?
Partners?

Thanks in advance!