All Forum Posts by: Tim Houzenga

@Misael Carlos Vera. Sometimes you feel like you are on an island if you do not come from a family who invests in real estate, work in real estate, or have friends who invest in real estate.

I’m from rural Illinois and had to work really hard to find people and develop relationships in order to be able to talk “shop” about my portfolio. I tried numerous times with my wife, but her eyes glaze over when I broach the real estate topic. Very supportive of what I’m doing, but does not want to talk about it on date night 😂🤣

All I see is a bunch of distressed landlords who underestimated the amount of effort it takes to make it with rental properties, and the effort it takes to get the proper systems in place to have a “fairly” passive investment.

I had wanted to start a real estate investment portfolio when I was 21 years old and still in the military (roughly 2007).  Missed out on a darn good time to start too!  I did not have a tenant move into my first rental property until 2017.  I had read book after book after book... listened to virtually every "Real Estate Guys Radio Podcast".... watched Income Property... took real estate courses.... etc... and never got to the point where I was confident enough to pull the trigger.  I was always to comfortable.  One serious case of analysis paralysis!  

BiggerPockets gave me the confidence to move forward and go against all the naysayers and other "comfortable" peoples' opinions.  In particular Brandon Turner and his books.  Since 2017 I have added a door per year and plan to continue to do so until I retire from my W2.  Yes, I like my job and love real estate and it is hard as hell to strike a balance sometimes.

At my time of retirement I should have 31 doors (one for each day of the month) and every year post retirement should have a property POP (mortgage paid off) and boost my income.  Ultimately leaving a highly conservative portfolio for the kiddos to manage or sell off at their convenience.  

Just wanted to give a big shoutout to the BP team and to let em know we appreciate what they are doing.  Cheers!

@John Lanser I like to use cozy.co. Only have 4 doors, but’s it’s convenient. Only downside is the it takes up to 5 business days to receive the rent, but you can see the status of rent. Pay a couple of bucks to receive faster if you want.

You can also use cozy.co to list your property on realtor.com, receive applications, and have tenants submit background/credit checks.

Overall good deal for when your starting and it’s free and they have a lot of extra content to read about landlording, etc....

@Brian Mackey

You can have the greatest credit score In the world, but in the end it’s going to come down to your debt to income ratio....

Got any friends that understand what you are doing that would go in on the loan with you? I’ve co signed on a few loans with some younger folks in my area to help them househack. I get equity buildup and I get part of cash flow for providing a signature... obviously I understand the risk and can back the loan if I had to.... but to me it’s like having a pre screened tenant in my rental from the start.

Obviously I don’t do this willy nilly with random folks, but it’s been working out so far. I get passive income and people get into properties and build up their credit scores. Win win win in my book.

@George Rodriguez

Drive for dollars. Identify the area you want to have a rental, drive around and find run down “experienced” houses. Once you find some check public records to see if owners are out of state. If they are, send them letters and attempt to contact by other means. Most of the time, tenants provide useful info if you are comfortable knocking on doors and having cold conversations.

I live in rural Illinois, so I search public records, identify out of town owners, knock on doors to to talk to tenants or see if property is vacant, and then start a targeted direct mail campaign to contact out of town owners.

@Benson Webb

I’m not going to lie.... if I was a tenant and found out I was paying to heat the common area I’d be a little ticked off. No way I would want to pay more then I had too. Especially in Minneapolis with sub zero temps in the winter.

@Jason Collins

Your not going to make very many friends saying personal personal responsibility 🤣😂. Way to easy to blame big gov for self inflicted situations.

All sarcasm and joking aside, I really appreciated reading your post. Thanks for sharing.

@Michael Leeson

I can’t remember where I saw the stats, but they showed that if an individual graduated high school, got married, and then had kids, there was only a 5-10% chance they would live in poverty. In that order respectively.

People choose their worth. If they did not, people would never know who the heck Oprah Winfrey is.... she has an amazing story about overcoming adversity and horrible conditions during her childhood years.

@Brittany Rodriguez

How long do you need to live in the house before you could start renting it?

Only asking because I use 0% down VA loans to buy my houses. Similar to your situation. I live in them for a year and then move on and rent the house out, leaving me with a very nice fixed rate loan on the property and it cash flows. It's a form of investing, but not as fast as most people would want to move, but I have kids and a solid career that I like. So I'm in no major hurry.

Beats putting 20% of my own cash down and getting a fixed rate investment property rate to control a property.