All Forum Posts by: Wendell Allen

Wow!  There's a lot of good information here, but it's just after midnight as I write this so after a full day of job searching and finally settling down for the evening, I'll check it out tomorrow.  Thanks everyone!  I'll certainly keep y'all posted!  I can tell already this is going to be a LOT of fun.....especially after I get a regular job to tie me over till I can get this going.  Till next time.....good night!

Well, I'm no expert at this of course, but other than one piece of sheetrock in the garage, some interior paint, and what I call "make ready", it's ready to go.  Every thing works and there aren't any major issues with the place.  Hell, we swim in the pool almost daily and that's indicative of the rest of the home.  Think of a 3 year old car....a few nicks and dings, but other than that it's good to go.  Other than one piece of sheetrock in the garage, it's like it was when we moved in.

But you've got me wondering.  We have another place to go if this falls apart.  But now I'm wondering about rental.  What's the process for seeing if this is something we can do?  Who would I talk to about it?  I'm open to anything that will let us keep the place but I'm running out of time.

But I don't know if an investor would see it that way or not.  I bought a nice place in north Houston almost three years ago, and although I see the square footage on the web at just over 2900, when the home was appraised for my loan, it came in at just over 3300.  My current loan balance is about $142K, and this year's Harris County tax appraisal came in at $188K.  And frankly, there are some much more expensive homes in this established and attractive neighborhood.

I wouldn't, under normal circumstances, consider selling it at this time because homes in this area are appreciating pretty rapidly and I'm the kind of guy who would prefer to milk this for as much as I can get of it.  However, I've been unemployed since March, and am getting behind on my payments.

Is there enough equity in my home to make it attractive to an investor to either just pay off the loan or (gasp!) maybe even have a few bucks left over for me?  I hate selling the place, but would rather do so than take a hit on my credit bureau and have a hard time getting into real estate investing, which is really what I'm trying to do now (more about that in my newbie post).

Thanks!

Thanks Gerald!  I'll hit it up today!

Hi everyone, Wendell Allen here, from Houston Texas.  I've never invested in real estate other than my own home purchases, but over the years it's kept calling my name.  And of all the times in my life, this is probably the worst because I'm currently unemployed, and even my own home is at risk right now.  Regardless, that doesn't mean that I can't start the learning process now, which I want very much to do.  Of course I've been seeing these "buy with other people's money" thing on both my facebook page and in my e-mail.  I haven't tried any of them so far, but may consider it after I research them a little more.  Of course I'd like to be able to flip a few homes just for the quick money, but I really don't know that doing so is feasible right now.  Eventually I'd like to also build up an inventory of rental property.

I follow an automotive forum and found out about biggerpockets.com on the off-topic section of that site.  Hopefully those of you here can get me pointed in the right direction to learn about all this.  Of course since I don't know anything about real estate investing, I won't be posting much.  But you can bet I'll lurking here to gain experience through others.

One thing I will say, is that if anyone in the Houston area would be willing to kind of mentor me into this, for lack of a better term, I'd very much appreciate the opportunity to tag along during your experiences to see what this is really all about.  After all, at this point I really don't think I'm in a position to try to reinvent the wheel.  So if you're one of those people or know of one, please send them my way!

Thanks!

Wendell