All Forum Posts by: William Huston

I am reaching out for some advice on a property i managed to get some local scoop on in my neighborhood. Recently i have been doing nightly walks to become more active physically and for the past year a property that previously had someone living in it, has looked empty and after talking to the neighbors, i found out that the person who owned it passed away last year in 2017. Also i noticed that the grass gets incredibly high from time to time and appears a county person is coming out and cutting the grass. 

So i thought that this may make a great off market deal, so i looked up the public records and found that the taxes have not been payed for in over a year, then i found that the property is owned by "estate of persons name" deceased.

What is some advice on possibly acquiring this property?

 That is kinda what i am thinking, i have never managed them myself, but i feel i could do it, just need to figure out all the steps associated with it first, like the correct way to find renters and screen them correctly, to generating a correct contract for the renter to sign, to generating a list of people who can perform some of the repairs as i manage the properties.

@Jim K. "I would also invest in a future live-in flip first as a 1031 rental property if you're married. Every live-in flip a married couple pulls off can funnel half-a-million gloriously tax-free dollars into their pockets. BP's own @Mindy Jensen is one of our local experts on that real estate strategy."

Could you please go into more details on this process, i am not sure if i understand what you are saying correctly. The way im reading it, it sounds like your telling me to go out and buy a property as a primary residence that needs to be flipped/fixed, then 1031 exchange it into another property as a rental? If your are saying this im not following, i thought 1031 exchange only applied to properties that are deemed rentals and can only be exchanged into another property deemed a rental, not sure how you would live in it legally. I may be wrong on this, just going off what i have read recently on 1031 exchange.

Hello All, 

I am currently going through growing pains in my knowledge of investing in real estate, for the past 12+ years i have bought 7 properties as primary residences when i would switch duty stations along my career. Each time i turned the property into a rental and hired a PM. Over the years i have been extremely passive with the business and never took the time to really learn how to property invest in real estate, i just assumed i was doing things correctly, i didn't know how to do the numbers, just went with the flow.

Since im down to 5 rentals and i made a very small amount of money selling off the negative cash flow rentals that just never recovered from the market crash in those 2 areas, since i bought to high in the peak of the market prior to the crash. i decided to apply for a mortgage to purchase another rental in my local area using some of the new knowledge i have learned recently, but after applying for multiple mortgages most of the places i applied basically said no, that cash flow to money lent to me is in a risky zone, basically i own properties that were not bought with rental numbers in mind, so turning them into rentals they barely cashflow except for my very last property i purchased that i did basically a flip on, that left lots of room between the mortgage payment and rental rates in the area. I did managed to get 1 mortgage company to offer me a loan, but they quoted me 6%+ on the loan.

So an option i have been thinking to do is just place all 5 properties up for sale, because if i can sell them all i would walk away with around 285k in positive equity based on current market vales on all of them, then 1031 exchange into something local since im not longer in the military. I feel i could greatly improve my cash flow just repurchasing new rentals local with the equity, even thinking of trying a multifamily like a 4plex.

What do you all think? I have never 1031 exchanged before, so it would be a learning experience, plus im thinking of trying out managing the properties myself locally. 

Hello All, 

I am going through growing phases in learning how to properly invest in real estate. For the last 12+ years i purchased properties and turned them into rentals as i switched duty stations in the military. Over the years i have never land lorded any of my own properties, but i did house hack for about 3 years of that. Currently i have 5 rentals and in 5 different states, so im forced to have 5 different PM's and 5 additional states i have to file taxes in. I am currently contemplating selling some of these properties since they are near peak in each area and would net me enough in equity profit to purchase new properties in my local area here in Florida and make more cash flow if i 1031 exchanged, which i have never done before. 

So, i am on the fence about doing the property managing myself, currently i am a Registered Nurse who works 3 days a week (Night Shift), so i have a good portion of the week im free to things and im pretty handy with things from learning over the years fixing my own primary residences, my last rental property i bought it was a fixer upper and did all the work myself outside of dry finishing. I did the painting, replaced the roof, hung the drywall, replaced the kitchen cabinets, layed new tile in all 3 bathrooms, put wood engineered flooring in house and replaced the water heater myself. So i have gained experience in many of the common repair areas in housing, so its been a thought to take over the management until i become larger. 

Reasoning im thinking of doing self landlording:

1) I have gained a lot of experience with home repairs over the years, im not a professional, but i feel like im pretty handy. 

2) I am currently paying nearly $900/month in PM fees on 5 properties, so i feel like that would be a huge savings if i did the management myself. 

3) $900/month could pay for another rental property....

Hello All, 

So Tuesday night i decided to drive out to one of my local real estate investing meetups. At the meetup there was a speaker who was talking about his success to financial independent and when he went through his list of rentals he bought over the years it left me with a lot of questions. 

1: Most of his rentals he bought in B+ to A area's in the 300-450k range in Florida.

2: His numbers just didnt make sense, one deal he posted it showed literally like a +$5/month cashflow only....

So afterwards i started to talk to him more and he mentioned that he is not the type that invest in cashflow, he is a equity investor... intrigued me so i asked more questions and basically he went on to explain to me that he buys properties that need a little bit of work, but have built in equity in the deal, but he has 4 main rules he goes by... 

1: If the Roof is greater than 10 years, he always puts a reduction in his offer for a replacement roof.

2: If the A/C is older than 5 years, he always puts a reduction in his offer for a replacement a/c.

3: If the house is older than 30yrs old, he always puts 10-15k reduction in his offer for a water line replacement.

4: He refuses to buy houses with pools....

Anyways after a bit of talking he explained to me that he buys larger 300-450k houses, because most investors are educated to not buy them, so there is a lot of room to wiggle on the deals due to lack of competition on offers and most people in that price range are easily able to be purchased with a few % out of the deal to skip agent commisions..

Example he gave me, he recently bought a 455k deal for 405k, but the ARV 535k, because he talked them down in needing a new roof, and a/c and offered to pay cash instead of going through an agent if he would drop 4% off the price for that...

So i asked him, how are you FI if there is no cashflow?, his answer was his cashflow is in the equity and principle every year. He said that his renters are paying down over 400k/yr in principle on his rentals, that he rotates HELOC and refinancing on his properties to cash out that 400k a year. Then he keeps his eyes out for another deal and lives off the remaining each year without working..

I am confused what is going on in the market here in Tampa Bay area.. June we had 1.8 months of inventory, and july 1.71 months... then recently i have been getting bombarded by yellow letters at my personal home. I bought it less than a year ago, so they are getting pretty desperate on finding deals to pay cash for....

I got a yellow letter recently offering me 85% of the market value blindly, without ever seeing the inside of my house to know the shape its in.. just dont understand how these investors can get this desperate with all the signs of a downturn about to happen in the future. 

Just making sure im not overthinking it and missing something, just seems like this type of deal is a myth these days.. so my guard immediately went up.. because its like a 1.5x deal if it pans out when i got to view it today.

Hello All, 

Wanted to get some input on a deal that was passed my way at REIA meeting last night.....

I am running the numbers and things are just not making since, so wanted to get some input from the masses, something just seems off or odd....

Orlando FL., 

B to B+ area

4/2/2 

built 1973

1400sq ft

149k

est: 40k rehab 

ARV $249k

rents in area on 3's going for $1800-2250, no 4 beds under 2500sq ft in area to compare rent rates

I asked the agent if it was sinkhole home, because numbers sound like one.. but claims not, states the home is currently owned and lived in by investor, investor bought home in 2001 for 90k at auction, has lived in it since and never put any money into the home except kitchen with new appliances. Roof is possibly the original, a/c is dated from late 90's but works, and most of the house has bare concrete floors, owner pulled all old flooring and trim up to install flooring, did only the kitchen and never finished the rest of the house. The back of the home is completely overgrown, the owner installed above ground pool years ago, but yard is so overgrown you can only see the ladder of the pool from the back porch. 

I plan on taking the 3ish hour drive out to the property tomorrow, but wanted to get some input on things, maybe yall can think of some reason the house is priced so low. 

Hello All, 

I have been extremely passive investing in real estate over the years turning all the houses i lived in from different duty stations into rentals for the most part. As of last year i was up to 7 rentals, but after some advice from others i sold off the 2 that were still negative cash flow purchased prior to the last housing crash when they finally broke even in value to wash my hands of them. 

My question is this.. I am going through the steps to understand real estate investing better and want to get things heading in the right direction as i start investing in more rentals to grow my portfolio, one recommendation i have read and been told is to put my properties in a LLC and maybe even grab a holding company from Wyoming for protection down the road. My issue is my properties are currently VA military backed loans and after talking to one of the banks who holds mortgage to 2 of the remaining 5, they informed me the value of the loan would be due during transfer, because the LLC is not a military member voiding the backing of the loan if i attempt to do a quick claim deed.

So what is the best route for me to go about fixing this??

3 of the 5 remaining have really nice cashflow, so i want to continue to hold those properties, just sucks they are in 3 different states. 

The last 2 of the 5, they are decent positive cashflow currently with the crazy jump in rental rates, but from 2008-2015 i barely got by with them making less than $40/month in cashflow on them, but they have appreciated a decent amount and would net me about 200-225k in cash if i was to sell them now with the current market values, so i have thought about selling them and purchasing properties closer to my home now, since im no longer in the military moving as much. It would be my very first 1031 exchange, so that would be a journey in itself to learn through... 

I also have about 85k in cash currently that i have been saving up while i searched for another rental local, just not had the best of luck yet grabbing up anything worth investing into, lately houses just been selling for more than asking prices, while im asking below following the principles to get a good deal.