All Forum Posts by: Tamara Deering

I always put my card in a letter I send, sometimes more than one.  The letter will get thrown away but there is a chance they will keep the card or give it to someone else.  There is a reason that people send magnets, calendars and even address labels, it is to keep you top of mind.

@David Soest

No you're not, if anything you are being generous. Most of the wholesale deals are not deals and I would caution you to take the wholesaler's numbers with a grain of salt. I have seen comps that are from a totally different neighborhood, when the house two doors down sold two weeks ago but it wasn't included because it brought down the ARV. I have seen ridiculous construction bids, or my favorite, needs no repairs to rent but $50k to flip, how does that make sense? Anyway, the bottom line is that the wholesaler is a middleman and mark up is involved that way so the profit potential will be thinner.

Keep doing what you're doing, watch the MLS, vet the wholesale deals and more than that make offers. You can make offers that make sense to you on any property, even if it is below asking price. As long as you are truly offering your best price and not just trying to take advantage of someone below market offers are not offensive, just make sure you can back it up with the reason for the offer.

Good Luck to you.

Yes, definitely it never hurts to learn one of the trades.  Personally, I wish I had gone into plumbing or electrical, even HVAC.  Seriously, you're in TX you know that the HVAC guys hold our lives in their hands, they must have some serious union, because they are the only trade that has effectively shut out the DIY market.  I know it sounds like I'm being sarcastic but I'm not, the ability to understand and repair the infrastructure in a house is what will make the difference from being able to make money on a deal or not.  The $2,000 or so extra you can offer on a house because you can take care of the roof at cost may be the difference between a winning bid and a losing one.  Go for it, the worst that will happen is that you will have a job to add to your resume.

@Griffin Stephens

I don't know, how can you add value to my business?  What can you do?  What do most of the people you admire on this forum dislike doing that you can take off their plate?  What are your skills and interests?  You say you would like to add value but you are asking people to tell you how, that is the opposite approach you should take.

You are a military veteran so you understand a command structure, working through red tape and perseverance, right? How do those traits relate to real estate investing? You could bird dog, cold call, canvas neighborhoods to find a potential deal to bring to someone.

You live in Raleigh NC, a real estate hot spot that is more affordable than a lot of markets, can you help someone from CA learn your local market?  Do you know where the next big thing is going to be?  You are a college student you have access to a large pool of renters, where do they want to live? How do they want to live? That information is invaluable to people trying to invest remotely.

I haven't even touched on what you are studying.  You have been researching real estate investment, package what you have going for you to meet the needs of investors and then offer it to them, without strings and see what comes of it.

Aside from that get a job in the industry, working for a construction company or a property management firm is a great way to get experience that will benefit you in the future.  So is working at a bank or hard money company, heck even selling cars would help.  It's all in the way that you look at it, everything can teach you something about where you want to go if you no where you are headed.

You want to make sure the property still cash flows after your refi.  So look at all of your expenses and the new payment and make your decision based on those numbers.  The other question is what are you planning to do with the cash?  Maybe you just pull out what you need to do to finance your next adventure and complete the refinance on that one.

Texas has high property taxes and the median price is rising quickly, double digit growth in most of Central Texas. San Antonio has more options under $200k than Austin but whether they will cash flow or not is another question. When you do your due diligence make sure that you are using the actual tax rate and that you are comparing rental rates in the same neighborhood not the same zip code or MLS area. I will give you an example, there are two houses for sale on W. Elsmere Pl. one is listed for $98,000 and another is $1.25 million, the difference? The road runs under major freeways, dead ends and picks back up in a different place. To work San Antonio you have to know what's going on at a block by block level or someone is going to sell you a rental that has a convenience store across the street, a restaurant next door and train tracks two houses down. This house is on the market for $70K and needs to be totally gutted and half the square footage removed because they are bad additions. It will never cash flow. So to answer your question, yes San Antonio is a great place to invest and yes there are probably easier markets to invest in Texas.

@Clay Monroe

Congratulations on surviving your purchase.  Having flipped 10 properties in Central Texas with only 1 that did not require foundation repairs I would add a couple of things to your lessons learned.

1.  A large portion of properties in the Austin, San Antonio area will need foundation repair/leveling.  That doesn't make them a no go but people should be aware of the following:  1.  If the property is slab on grade, you don't want to buy it if it will require piers in the center of the house, this involves breaking up the slab and probably breaking the plumbing.  Also, you really don't want a house that is much more than 3" out of level, that's an awful lot to jack, again substantially increasing the odds of broken pipes.

2.  While the plumbing and wiring in older houses consist of materials that are out of date, I would argue that most of the other materials are actually better than what we have now.  The siding, lumber and trim work are generally better.  I would rather buy a mid-century box than one that was built in an 80's subdivision.

3. Finally don't beat yourself up for what you didn't know.  You will learn some new, probably painful, lesson on every house you buy.  The last house I bought had a clay sewage line, I would have been thrilled with cast iron.  I had no idea until I made plumbing changes because the clean out was PVC and the pipe was buried.

Keep up the good work.

@Account Closed

I'm not saying anything.  I think you should speak to a local mortgage broker and get some advice, there are too many pros and cons and what-ifs for anyone not intimately involved to have a valid opinion.

The question is how soon do you plan to move and do you expect the appreciation to continue?  Traditional advice says it takes 7 years to pay for a refinance.  If you are planning to stay put for awhile I would leave the equity in the house until nearer the time you are ready to move.  The best person to answer your question would be a mortgage broker.  Find one that is well respected and really wants to help you achieve your goals and not just earn their commission.  There will be timing involved in when you have to have cash in your account for your new purchase and how long the new lender will want you to have your existing mortgage in place before they are willing to offer another mortgage on a new property.  Every lender is different which is why I recommend getting a broker on board.

You are off to a great start, keep it up.

@Garrett Gatton

Leverage is your friend, you always want to use other people's money whenever possible.  If you qualify for a conventional loan on a rental property that is your best bet as long as the property cash flows.  If it doesn't cash flow you probably should pass.  If you are going to pay all cash make sure you calculate your cash on cash return to make sure your money is earning more with the rental than it would earn in other investments.

All that being said, in this part of the business cycle I would be really careful with my purchases.  Make sure that anything you buy is a really good deal.   If not you are better off saving your money until a great deal comes along.  With the current political situation, presidential elections on the horizon, and the crazy increase in property prices we are getting ready for a normal correction in the housing market.  I don't mean a 2008 level correction but the standard 5 to 10 percent correction that comes at the end of a business cycle.  A correction is good for you because it means that prices will be lower and there will be less competition.

How was that for a total non-answer?