All Forum Posts by: Steven Caldwell

Hi everyone!

So my question is pretty straightforward. I am a new Real Estate agent and I wonder if I should Americanize my name to gain that initial connection with clients? A lot of people have difficulties pronouncing and remembering my name, and I wonder if I would have more success if I use a more common name. I do go by Sophie sometimes, but it is not my legal name. I wanted to reach out to you guys and see if I can get any inside insights. I want to establish my name and brand in the real estate field and thought I should decide now whether I am going to go with my legal name or a nickname. Quick background on me, I am originally from Israel and moved to FL about 6 years ago. My name means Sapphire in Hebrew, I like it a lot but wouldn't mind having other people call me by a different name if it significantly improves my business. Thank you all!

Thanks for reading - this will be my first post so excuse any strange formatting.

1. I have lived in the north suburbs of Chicago (Evanston/West Ridge) most of my life and have been wanting to start investing.
2. Based off of a few pre-approval letters, I can realistically afford a multifamily unit under 375-400k

With this in mind, I have been finding a lot of potential properties in the following neighborhoods:
Humboldt Park
Austin

Hermosa
South Lawndale (Little Village)
McKinley Park
Brighton Park
Back of the Yards
Canaryville

Does anyone have any strong opinions about any of these neighborhoods?
I've driven through most of them (minus Canaryville) but I'm not too familiar with the good/bad blocks.

Our commercial loans for multifamily are currently still in the 3's despite the recent rate hikes. 

We built healthy cushion into the modeling as we didn't expect rates to stay at all-time lows forever... they'll also not stay high forever either.

As long as there is positive cash flow it doesn't matter what the rates are.

@Andrew Garcia thanks for the reply. My name is not on our current primary residence. Thus, I was thinking of house hacking a multifamily unit in the local area initially to lower the required down payment. Our son is young, 2yo and can be flexible to move to a different daycare if necessary. The opportunity to move is prime before pre-K starts. We don’t have a lot saved for real estate investing since we recently were introduced to it this month. 

I appreciate your offer to help learn because we need it with just beginning this journey. When it comes to seeing what amount we would be qualified for, especially if going the FHA route, my name would have to be on the investment property mortgage since my wife already did an FHA for our current primary residence? Or my wife could do a second FHA as well once we decide to scale? I'd be glad to connect with you privately to learn more.

@Mike Eichler

I have experienced both. I bought a 4 unit, lived in one, rented out 2 as LTR, and did the last unit as a STR. The city of Chicago frowns on STR's so there were a couple of hoops to jump through just to get approval from the city before Airbnb let us use their platform. Once we got everything up and running, it was fun for a couple months but eventually it wasn't worth the time and effort. Cleaning services were charging astronomical prices, Airbnb was not landlord friendly with some of the issues we dealt with, and quite frankly, I didn't like seeing someone trash my property which a couple tenants did.

As for the LTR side, my tenants are great and the system is more of a set it and forget it. As long as the prospective tenants have been screened thoroughly, I'm ok with them being there for a long period of time. The STR looks great on paper but from my experience, it was not worth the extra $500-$1000 a month. Good systems have to be in place before running an STR and even then, it's still an active job.

STR can definitely make you extra cash flow but it all depends on how involved you want to be. And as an investor, I'd rather have one steady tenant over a year than 100 tenants. Sure the 100 tenants will increase my revenue but, how much did they add to my bottom line?

I’ve been slowly writing content articles for all the hot markets covering these items. Really good for investors to know!