All Forum Posts by: Stefan D.

It sounds like you need to think a little bit more about what you want to do. Do you want to make an investment, or do you want to buy a vacation home for your own enjoyment and use rental income to offset the cost? Both are fine, however, you would use a different framework to think about them.

If you want to buy an investment property, you would more or less be property agnostic. Imagine you have two properties that perform exactly identically. They cost the same, they need the exact same amount of work, they were build in the same year, they would rent for the exact same amount, they are in school district of comparable quality, same cap rate, same cash on cash return etc. You probably wouldn’t care very much which one you buy as an investment. If you want to do turn key, you don’t care if the house is in Memphis, Little Rock, or Cincinnati. If you want to do everything yourself, long distance is obviously harder.

This is a very different case from buying a personal property that you use yourself. If you want to buy a vacation home by the beach in Florida, you want to buy a vacation home by the beach in Florida, and you care very much about what the house looks like and where it is located. Now, if you want a vacation home to use in the winter and then rent it out for the rest of the year to offset the cost, that is a reasonable idea, however, that is very different from buying a property purely as an investment.

From your question, it sounds more like you might want to do the latter. If you decide to do this, keep in mind that you probably could not use the property as a traditional rental since most leases are 12 month long. You could of course AirBnB the property, but be aware that the vacation rental business is much more akin to running a hotel than to a traditional 12 month rental. A long term tenant would never expect their landlord to provide furniture, dish soap, or toilet paper, however, you can’t really do a vacation rental and not have a bed in the unit. You’ll also need to have the unit cleaned after each guest. All of this will require much more hand holding – you need a local cleaner, you need to figure out how to give guests the keys, you need to manage the bookings etc.

Alternatively you could just take your $200k and buy a property solely as an investment and then use the investment returns to pay for your vacation in Florida. Like I said, either option is fine, you just need to decide what you want to do and only you can answer which one works best for your family.

I’m sorry for your loss. This must be an emotional time for your mother and your entire family. Unfortunately, emotional times are often time we make emotional (read bad) decisions.

I would encourage your mother to just put the money into a savings account for five or six month. I know there is basically no return at all while it sits there, but at least it gives you guys time to regroup and adjust to the new normal. For that time, she can just continue to do whatever she has been doing up to this point for money. It also gives you some time to figure out what to do and how to invest that money.

Others have suggested talking to a financial advisor, and I think that would be prudent. She should be set for life financially and it be horrible to see her lose that. Just make sure you understand how that advisor gets paid. Essentially there are 3 ways they can make money. 1. Sales commission, 2. Charging a certain percentage of assets under management (maybe 1% or so), and 3. Fee only advisors. I personally would only work with the last one, because it’s the only one where I can be reasonably sure there is no conflict of interest. I think when interviewing them the questions you need to ask are obviously how they get compensated, and “Do you have fiduciary duty to me at ALL times?” – Note the last one is a “Yes” or “No” question, anything that is not a resounding “Yes” means “No”, no matter how fancy it sounds.

Just to throw a name out there, Brian Preston at Abound Wealth seems like an ethical guy. Full disclosure, though, I have never worked with him or his firm nor do I personally know him. I just heard him on a podcast and liked what he had to say.

Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to REI and I'm getting ready to buy my first rental property in about a month or two. Before doing so I would like to speak with a CPA to get some advise for my specific situation. I live in Beaverton, OR and I was wondering if somebody could recommend a CPA with real estate experience anywhere in the Portland metro area?

@Jay Hinrichs Thanks for all the info. I see you have close to 10k posts, so I assume you have been doing RE for a while. How did you get started if I may ask?

@Austin Strode and @Justin Mespelt.... it's Intel :)

Hello everyone,

I'm new to real estate, and I'm fairly new to BiggerPockets. I listened to about 20 or so episodes of the podcast and I've watched maybe 5 or so of Brandon's webinars (love how excited he his about what he does). I really enjoy the podcast, it makes the time I spend commuting so much more valuable. I work full time for a Fortune 500 company, so I'm mainly interested in rental properties since I don't think I have the time that is required to be successful at flipping or wholesaling. So far I actually only own one property, the townhouse we live in, but I'm looking to acquire my first rental over the next few month or so. I'm excited to meet new people and would love to hear from locals in the Portland metro area.