All Forum Posts by: Rashaud S.

Jake,
That sounds great. I'll be sure to contact him once my partner and I have a bit more experience (or if we're really stuck).
Thanks,
Rashaud

Peter: That was really helpful indeed. Thanks a lot for your advice and wisdom. My business partner and I will have more informed discussions about our options going forward.

Jake: Thanks for letting me know about Shawn. Just for curiosity's sake, have you implemented anything he's taught you?

Thanks!
-Rashaud

Peter,

Thanks! We're really lucky and fortunate to have had things work out like this :)

We really want to buy and hold, but we're totally open to a flip if the numbers make sense. Like I mentioned earlier, we've found what appear to be some really sweet deals, but we were stuck with the financing. Your suggestion makes sense and it's something we'll look into a bit more. Do you know roughly how much of the cost of a home a hard money loan will cover? I haven't been able to find that bit of information just yet.

Much appreciated,
Rashaud

Brian: Thanks a lot for the wisdom. We really appreciate it.

Jake: The alternative to the home being free and clear -- at least as I've been thinking about it -- would be that some third party still has a claim on the home. In theory we could offer to take over the mortgage, take out a new one subject to their terms, pay their payments for them, or some other form of creative financing, but we're simply not sure what's legal and what would actually work out. Apparently, the current atmosphere in real estate (according to what I've been reading/asking/learning) is not conducive to some of the creative ideas we've come up with mostly because the lenders and/or the government would block it on the grounds that it's too risky. The seller his-/herself, moreover, may not be comfortable doing something like that since we're so inexperienced and broke. (These are my musing, btw). It seems that the most effective way to make something happen with seller financing, then, would be to either find a reeeeeeeally motivated seller who hasn't gotten rid of their home yet (seems like we missed that chance by now?) or someone who owns the property free and clear and can therefore make their own decision regarding their property.

Sorry for the long response...

Thanks!
-Rashaud

Eric: thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look into it.

Brian: you raise a very good point. We're saving money, but it's not happening fast enough (not as fast as we'd like, at least). We're fine with putting what little we have into a down payment, but we just don't want to end up losing money each month, especially since we're not sure we'd be able to handle that loss and because that's just bad business. I suppose we're too anxious about getting started?

Thanks for the replies!
-Rashaud

Dale,
We actually didn't think about that at all. I'll talk to my partner about it and take a look at that book.

Thanks a lot for your reply!
-Rashaud

Hi everyone,

My partner and I have recently graduated from college and, after doing lots and lots of research and reading, we're finally ready to try our first deal.

Here's where we are: I graduated last year and have been working full-time for almost a year and he, having just graduated, will start working full-time shortly. We both have good credit and intend to be very careful with it (we're going to form an LLC to protect ourselves as soon as we can, for example). I'm currently applying to medical schools so my time, money, and ability to take out loans is very limited, whereas my partner's are not limited to the same extent. Our long-term goal is to generate a sizable rental income, so we'd prefer to purchase rentals asap, but we're not opposed to flipping homes if the opportunity presents itself and the numbers look right. We're targeting the NYC/Westchester County and Atlanta Metro areas and we're anxious to jump into the business now while we're still recovering from the crash.

Having identified what appear to be excellent candidates for our first property, the problem that we have is money -- being barely out of school, we don't have the money on hand to cover the down payment on a mortgage, let alone the costs for improvements and closing costs. We've been trying to leverage our networks to talk to family, friends, and potential investors, but that hasn't been working out so far. We've come up with some really creative ideas for financing, but, again, we can't implement them without some cash. We're totally in favor of seeking seller financing, but that seems to be an awfully rare occurrence, as far as we can tell, since that requires the seller's to own the property free and clear. So, we're approaching this from the POV that seller financing is not an option.

Do any of you have any suggestions for where we could find investors and/or financing and any suggestions what options/alternatives we should look into? We've thought about hard money loans, but we're worried the terms of that kind of financing (high interest rates, high down payment, and short term = really high monthly payment) will put us into a hole.

Thanks for your responses!

-Rashaud