All Forum Posts by: Rob Myers

I'm looking at all my options to free up capital to buy my first two rentals. We own a vacation property free and clear worth around $150k. I'm not completely in love with it and have considered parting with it, but the market is still a little soft and it may take a while. We also enjoy spending time there, but from a logical standpoint it's cash that is tied up and not bringing in income. The financing for these first two rentals will most likely be conventional.

Here are ideas I thought of:

1. Sell house outright and use capital for down payments.

2. Get at HELOC for 80% of the appraised value. Find long term tenant for the house. It will cash flow negative, but not too bad and I still retain ownership of the property.

What else am I not thinking of?

Thanks everyone for the advice. Looking forward to participating in the community.

I'll 2nd the opinion of having some work needed after removing the popcorn. You may have to go in and do a quick skim coat of the entire ceiling which isn't too difficult, just time consuming.

If it were me, I would scrape, skim coat, then do a quick knock down texture on the ceiling.

Hi everyone - new guy from Milwaukee joining the forum. Seems like a great site with a lot of active discussion.

Lately we made the decision that it's time to pick up a rental property or two. As soon as I can liquidate a vacation property we own in the northern part of the state, I'll have some capital to play with. From talking to a couple lenders, it seems the longest waiting period is going to be the first two years of establishing a rental history before my DTI is no longer a factor for conventional mortgages.

Areas I'm currently considering are Tosa, Waukesha, Pewaukee and Oconomowoc.