All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Lane Kawaoka, Thanks for the tip! Our net worth is much more than 300k but most are in our retirement accounts so we pretty much consider they don't exist. I'm preapproved for a 800k loan and possibly more if I put my husband as a co-signer. We don't have too much (Hawaii standards) but we have enough to consider different options. As I mentioned, we've looked at quite a few condos and did not find anything close to what we would even consider buying. Maybe we're looking in the wrong area =( Like some people recommended, we will most likely try to find a house that we may be able to live and flip. We can rent out the house we live currently for $3000+. We would love to buy a duplex, live in one unit and rent out the other unit. But I have not found one duplex that comes with both units on Oahu. We are also considering looking on the mainland too. We're not in a hurry so we'll keep looking!

Really appreciate everyone taking your time to give us some good tips!

Oops, I meant to tag everyone but I don't think I'm doing it right.  Sorry!

@Duc Ong

We are actually looking at a 1-bedroom condo inside of Wikiki Sunset that almost looked like a hotel room. They claimed it's registered for the short-term rental so we looked on airbnb and found that place rents for about $100 day. It looked like that place would actually generate some cashflow but we assume it would require way more work, especially since we probably would try to manage it ourselves. We did look into the syndication and as nice as it sounds, we just won't qualify for it =(

@Lane Kawaoka

Thanks for sharing your knowledge about Rent-to-Value Ratio. I'm finding that one of the hardest things about property investing is finding that perfect deal. Gotta keep looking I guess!

@Royce Talbo

I really like your suggestion about living in flips. That is definitely one of the options we'd consider to buy a house that needs a little work, living there and renting out the place we currently live. Both my husband and I have a full time job and my husband runs a business that he spends majority of his free time on so we can't take on a too big of a project. But fixing it up and selling it at a higher price sounds like a really good idea. And we can take as long as we need to fix it up and sell it. This might be best option for inexperienced people like us. Biggest challenge will be to find that perfect property. Thanks for the suggestion!

@Tatyana Shevnina

Thank you for the information! We were told that you can use the rental property mortgage interest as deduction to reduce our taxable income. I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many property mortgage you can use as tax deduction though. Definitely need to consult with a CPA. Good to know about not paying taxes on the rental income and accumulating rental losses for future use. We're really hoping to find a CPA who knows about all these benefits for real estate investing.

Hello Manaia, thanks for the info. it's actually quite nice to find out there are other strategies for investing in Hawaii. We'd really love to stay within Hawaii since this will be our very first investment property and we just aren't that comfortable hiring someone to do everything for us. We did hear some real estate agents mention that Hawaii market is different and to not be so focused on the cash flow. We will be checking out the local RE events so hopefully can meet someone who's familiar with the market here. I'll definitely check out the podcast by Lane Kawaoka. Thanks!

Hello! I'm not new to the group and I have been meaning to dedicate some time and effort to do some research and get serious about real estate investing since about 2 years ago... Well, good news is that I am finally ready to get the ball rolling!

I'm currently in Oahu; my husband and I have moved to Oahu about 3 years ago and we own a house in Pearl City. We both have a full time job, making pretty good money, which puts us in the 24% tax bracket. We initially decided real estate investment would be a good idea to avoid having to pay too much taxes on all the savings at the end of the year and for that reason, we have been paying nearly double the mortgage payment towards our current house. I just think we can do so much better with the money we are making. We began looking at some condos in Honolulu, which averages at about $500,000 for a single bedroom... After talking with some realtors, we found out that the rent we could get for these places is about $2000 a month. And we have to pay the HOA, which is about $500 a month. How can you even make money off of these? We have been looking for nearly three months and we're starting to get discouraged. Is Hawaii just a bad place for investing? Should we consider going out of state? Would out-of-state real estate investing be feasible with full time jobs? Are there other options that we should consider that will possibly give us a tax advantage for high incomers? For people who are familiar with investing in Hawaii, are there locations that will yield better returns? Any and every recommendation will be greatly appreciated!