All Forum Posts by: Steven Foster Wilson

 House hacking is a great way to get started! When I got started investing my sophomore year of college, I had $500 to my name, My grandmother lent me $12k for the downpayment on a duplex on OSU campus in Columbus. Over the course of a year my wife and I fixed it up, rented to friends, ate peanut butter and jelly, did everything we could. We then refinanced the property and it has given us $140k in cash back and continually produces $1,800/month in cash flow.

Quote from @Logan M.:

In 2018, I purchased my first mobile home park. It had 12 occupied spaces and 3 vacant spaces. 

Over the years, I began to fall in love with creating safe communities and filling vacant spaces. 

Here in Utah, over the last five years, we have gone from $320,000 to $536,500, this number includes all types of housing, and single-family homes are even higher. My point is that housing in America has become extremely unaffordable, and I want to stress that it's not like buying an expensive hamburger, housing is essential, everyone needs it and if we don't create solutions as investors then everything we do is for ourselves and not for others.

PEOPLE MATTER MORE THAN THINGS.

My call to all Bigger Pockets investors is to find ways to make money while solving big problems for your community.

For me, this has become mobile home park investing. I am not bringing this up to get people to think I am special because my point is that all of you are capable of making your community better. 

SOLVE THE PROBLEMS, BE THE SOLUTION. LEAVE AN IMPACT THAT IS WORTH LIVING FOR.

 Below is a project that I am currently working on. We are planning to go from 16 spaces to 35 spaces and we will sell all of the homes at roughly $150,000 in a county where the median home price is $585,000. 

For me, creating 19 new housing units that are non-subsidized by our already broke government IS WHAT I LIVE FOR.

I just want you to take a second after you read this to think of how you can make your community just a little bit better because you live and work there.

 I completely agree with that sentiment, My wife and I invested in RE in Ohio for 5 years, in preparation to move to Indonesia full time to do relief work! We realize we could stay in Ohio and grow our business, make more money, get more houses, but we realize there is a greater purpose in life....People!

You should check out Columbus or Cincinnati. Your money will go very far, you'd be able to pick up a multifamily portfolio and start your cash flow. Not to mention Ohio is a landlord-friendly state.

Personally I like using the calc on ohiorem.com/calculator/ because it allows you to run numbers in less than 30 seconds from your phone. It automatically calculates leasing fee, maintenance costs, and cappex costs. And there are quick ways to edit variables, so if you wanted to adjust interest rate or down payment, its super quick.

 Personally I like using the calc on ohiorem.com/calculator/ because it allows you to run numbers in less than 30 seconds from your phone. It automatically calculates leasing fee, maintenance costs, and cappex costs. There are variables you can add in too to make it more for short term rentals, like the cleaning fees.

 You should consider investing OOS here in Columbus or Cincinnati. The price to rent ratio makes for great investments. Not to mention our appreciation has been 8% higher than the US national average, because of the high demand for affordable housing.

Also......have you heard of intel.....how about Amazon.....how about Google? They have all decided to setup shop right here in Columbus and it's having a massive impact on our demand for housing! You can learn more about why Ohio is a good rental market and good appreciation market at ohiorem.com

 It's not about Zip codes, Cleveland is too street by street for that. For example 44104 has A, B, C, D and F neighborhoods. Thats why its better to go by neighborhood and have a local boots on the ground guy to help identify which side of the street is better etc. 

You can pay an attorney a couple hundred bucks to help with this process. Ill DM you my go-to RE attorney here in Cleveland.

 Welcome to the Real Estate Space! Starting out I would suggest reading “Rich dad, Poor dad” by Robert T. Kiyosak to anyone starting out. Start listening to the BiggerPockets podcast starting at the very beginning. 

Start growing your network, look on Facebook/BiggerPockets for different events, find a mentor doing what you want to do, and get to know the local lenders/brokers.

Id recommend looking at the ratings on ohiorem.com/neighborhood-articles/ and it goes through different Cleveland neighborhoods by grade.

A - AWESOME AREA: Excellent, shops, malls, great schools

B - BETTER AREA: Good area, graduate students, young families

C - CASHFLOW: Working class, corner stores, some government assistance

D - DANGER: Low income, government assistance, high crime

F - F*CK NO: War zone, a lot of vacant properties, poverty