All Forum Posts by: William Huston

Originally posted by @Brian Ellis:

@William Huston keep plugging along, the right opportunity will present itself to you eventually, as long as you are persistent. You have more experience than I do with investing, Looks like you own a few rentals. Maybe taking the time to find something more convenient isn't a bad idea, even if it takes you a while to find that. Being able to compromise is huge though, we cant always have exactly what we want. 

I would have to disagree with you on the experience with having a few rentals lol, i only own them because most were purchased just before the 2008 crash, so i was forced to keep them while the market went down and recovered back to today. I just never was one for renting and kept purchasing houses when i moved duty stations over renting.. and turned them into rentals with property managers... I purchased all the properties based on where i wanted to live, not by numbers to turn them into rentals.. 

Originally posted by @Brian Ellis:

Renting bedrooms as opposed to full units is a whole different ball game. I would much rather buy a multi-family and have someone else at least cover a good portion of the mortgage while I fix it up and add equity. I have enough responsibility of my own.  I don't want to have to worry about making sure a dish is cleaned, or if the laundry is tied up. How would you figure in the utilities if you rented rooms? I would expect a 5 bedroom 4 bathroom to be off the charts. 

How come you aren't willing to go beyond a 20 minute drive? Or go without a garage? You are already 40 minutes away now, what would the difference be? You could also buy one of those car tents for a few years to keep the muscle car enclosed. A lot of times we get comfortable with our current situation (including myself). But if we want to get closer to our ultimate goal, we have to make some sacrifices.

The main reason i am looking for something closer to my job is due to working a 12-14hr shift multiple days in a row, the physical demanding side of things causes you to become exhausted at the end of the shift to the point that i have found myself having to pull off the road to wake up on the long ride home that i currently drive, plus the fuel expense adds up over time when you drive 70 miles round trip each day you work... I rented the place i am renting now back when i was working as a realtor full time while attending school part time. When i was a realtor working 12+ hours, it was very different at the time. 

Originally posted by @Brian Ellis:

@William Huston house hacking is probably the biggest term I hear on BP, there is a reason for that. It makes the most sense financially. 

Renting out bedrooms as an air bnb might be over-whelming based on what others have said here. Personally, id want the privacy within my own home. If you have the option of finding a duplex/multi-family, I would house hack one of those. It just doesn't make sense to me for you to buy one, rent it out, and then over-pay to rent out someone else's apartment. 

I have been trying so hard to find a multi-family close to the hospital i work at to use, but in the year i have been looking every one that ive come across within 20 minutes or less drive are just not a place i would like to call home myself, because 1) they dont have any garages, the units with garages are far and few between it seems in my area and i have a classic muscle car i would prefer to keep in a garage.., and 2) the numbers on the ones that are in decent areas, just make 0 sense to buy, i have tried to offer lower offers on these properties that are in decent areas with no luck or they counter for like $1,000 below the asking price and they always seems to sell for asking price, which when i run the numbers... even putting down 25% down you are barely making $75-100/per door. 

Example there are 2 female nurses working on my floor right now that are both living in a hotel about 5 minutes away, its a 3/5 star hotel with a pool.. but no kitchen, just mini fridge and tv.. they are paying in the range of $1,200/month to stay there each for the 3 months they are here on assignment. Ive found a few upscale 3-5 bedroom A/B properties that are like dream homes in the area of the hospital within 5-15 minutes that i would love to call home that on paper they rent for nearly break even or negative cash flow with today's market values with 20% down.. that are in the $1,700-2,000/month price range to purchase, if i rented out like 2 rooms for $1,000ea i feel that i could live for 0 dollars...

Example Listings: 

$325,000 4 bed/3 bath/3 car garage w/ pool 2,500sq ft in a gated community 12 minutes away 

$395,000 5 bed/4 bath/3 car garage w/ pool 3,100sq ft in a gated community 12 minutes away

$285,000 4 bed/2 bath/3 car garage w/ pool 2,150sq ft 5 minutes away

Currently I am renting a mom and law suite behind a older couples class B house for $550/month, but its roughly 40 minute drive from the hospital outside the city limits.

Most of the Apartments/Condo's/Townhouses/Houses around the immediate hospital with atleast a single car garage rent in the $1000-1200 range for single and $1500+ for 2 car garage.. 

Hello All, 

Just wanted to get some feed back on a situation, recently my life had a lot of changes as i went through a divorce as some may understand, in that time i rented a very very small cheap place to stay while i got my life back together, since that has all cleared up and the dust has settled i have been looking to upgrade out of my current situation and possibly own another property instead of continue to rent. Most of the reason i have been renting is due to the fact that housing prices got a little out of control a year ago when i was ready to buy. 

Also about a year ago i scaled back from full time real estate agent to working at the hospital in a new career due to the fact i could acquire more stable income that exceeded what i was making on average as a realtor at the time. So as of lately i just been working as an agent part time with the occasional buyer, mostly fellow employees from my current hospital job. 

While working at this hospital i have come across many nurses and staff that come as temp staff based on a travel assignment and they constantly struggle to find a decent place to stay, so many  life out of hotels while they work here.. 

An idea i have been bouncing around is purchasing a larger 3+ house with plenty of parking very close to the hospital, since im single it would shorten my commute to work daily, also i could possibly rent some of the extra bedrooms at a platinum rate to the travel staff below the cost of staying in hotels, but the other side of me is saying maybe i should just buy another property purely as a rental and find somewhere closer to rent for myself. Either way im looking to move closer to my work due to the commute being up to 40 minutes each way when you work a 12+hr shift. 

I get that its best to place each property in its own LLC, but how is this afforded with the annual expenses related to maintaining these LLC's? Im currently in Florida and was looking to set roots here in the future for investing and from my understandings it would be $138.75 per LLC to maintain each year.. that cost adds up and dwindles your cash flow...

Honestly i have no clue which angle he was ultimately trying to go at, but it sounded like he works with a lot of investors who own real estate that produce more deductions than they have in income to claim on taxes, the point he kept repeating was that you can calculate how much income on a property could maximize the usage of all your deductions, then either pay down to this point and maintain it, or refinance the property in a shorter mortgage to gain income and bring the level back up to this level every so many year or after paying it off. 

Just wanted to bring it up on here, because i am no expert on the tax side of investing in real estate, honestly i am still learning the basics and getting my feet wet, so there are a lot of things that i have little to no experience in and if this was an actual honest way to go about things, then i figured it would be worth learning about and investing time into it. So wanted to see if others had knowledge...

Hello all, I wanted to get some opinions on this, was at a meetup tonight playing cashflow game with others and I mentioned to someone how I've had such difficulties after loan 5, that I was thinking of buying my property with cash vs paying off one of my current loans, because they have 3%ish interest rates.... guy at my table mentioned that it would be smarter for me to invest time in calculating my perfect deduction amount and purchase the next property with that exact amount. Basically he told me he was a CPA and mentioned that a lot of investors he does taxes for leverage everything and leave so much deductions on the table vs income... Basically he was telling that if I calculate out my deductions, I could finance only x amount to optimize my taxes and increase my Roi overall over paying all cash even with the higher interest rates on investment loans

@Dave Foster Yes 112 of the 303 units burned down

I am still learning the ropes of real estate investing, currently i have PM that manage all of my rentals, but i have been looking at trying out self managing recently after listening to some podcast and readings. One podcast recently i listened to mentioned that he self manages all his properties to save on the PM fees, but he has some sort of policy with the local utilities that basically gives his tenants a 24hr number to call if something was to happen to say a frig or hvac... he even mentioned it covered a clogged toilet..

I am curious what exactly is this such policy he is talking about, because the way he worded it, it sounded like he took most of the headache out of the job with this and he just worries about getting new tenants and collecting rent... he said the policy was cheaper than just keeping a handyman on call to do the repairs.. 

I have an interesting situation on my hand, one of my rentals (Townhouse). Nearly half of the complex was burned down from a fire about a year ago. The insurance company is going to rebuild all the units due to the amount of damage, but there has been some hold ups with the county due to permitting, changes in codes and such that has delayed the rebuild process greatly. Its been nearly a year now and they are just now getting approval to demolish the units and start the rebuilding, telling me its about a year out on the finish of the rebuilding.. 

So once the property is finally rebuilt, i would be unable to rent said property for 2 years.. I currently technically dont have a primary residence as im renting right now, if i was to choose to sell this property. Would it be classified as selling a rental or not? Im a single person...

I have never 1031 exchanged anything before, so not sure if id have to do this to buy another without owing a ton of taxes or could i sell it and just be safe of paying capital gains with the sale being under the 250k for single limit?

Property value prior to fire was 139k, i owe 32k on the property.. so it would be around a 100k+ gain