All Forum Posts by: Tracy Montarti

Aly!!! that's so great! and thanks for the welcome :)
I've heard of chicks that click.... don't you have a conference every year?

Hi all,
I'm Tracy, I'm originally from CA but now live in Pittsburgh. Family is still in CA. I came to Pittsburgh for graduate school (Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne) b/c they had Peace Corps fellowships and I was just getting out of the Peace Corps at the time. Grad school was the probably the worst financial decision I ever made! I started out with no debt and ended up with student loans and was only making $30K at my job after all was said and done. And the kicker is that I'm not even using my degrees.

I'm a SAHM, but I'm also a biz owner... first an incorporated biz related to the job I had before I had kids and now I'm a high-end custom baby/children's photographer. But I only take about 4-6 clients at the most per month since I only want to do it part time at this point.

I love doing that and will continue to do it, but I've been interested in real estate investing for many many years and have done lots of reading but was never in a position to actually do it (or at least I thought)... everything else took precedence. I also took an urban development course in grad school and had to come up with pro formas and everything for a larger apartment building with first floor retail. It KILLS me to know how much money I could have been making over the last 17 years since I was first considering to buy a condo in college and rent out the rooms.

The nice thing about Pittsburgh is that the prices are reasonable and we don't seem to be experiencing as much of a dip in the housing market as some other areas. Granted, prices don't appreciate as fast here, but I fully believe you can still make money.

I'm still learning, but I'm primarily interested in small multifamily units and bank owned... to hold or sell would depend on the property. I also would like to purchase a 2-3 story commercial building in one of our cute business districts and use part of it as a boutique for my studio and rent out the rest.

I do go to CA to visit family and I have some photography clients there as well, so who knows... maybe at some point I can get something out there too, or at the very least get my parents to get something.

It turns out that my grandparents (94 years old) used to flip houses... they said they'd buy it, "gingerbread it" and sell it quick... like in a month or at the most 2. I just loved their term of "gingerbreading it" - just basically paint, carpet, some landscaping, flowerboxes, etc.

I'm still reading and digesting this site and I'm so glad to have found it! THANK YOU ALL for sharing your expertise and advice.

slimmatic - thank you for the advice! I really appreciate it.
I was reading through posts here in the meantime and was about to come back here and say that buying a duplex might be a better option. I even looked at the regular real estate website just to see what was available full price (would work hard to find a better deal though).

Our landlords before we bought this house were doing that very thing... they bought and rehabbed a duplex and then eventually rented out both sides and bought a house.

I remember thinking 'we should have done that' after we bought this house, and now it wasn't the very first thing to come to mind... why I don't know.

A nice thing about that option too is that we would have control over who our neighbors are since we'd own it.

anyway, thanks again for your input!

greetings all!

(edited to move to new member intro)

MY QUESTION is should we sell our current house, knowing that we may have to rent for a little while so we can act quickly when we find an opportunity? We may get lucky and not have to rent. We could rent probably for 6 months and keep our sanity.

We currently have a 15yr mortgage with 10 years left @ 5.5% as well as a small second HE loan (6 years left @ 5.5%) and HE loc... I think at 8%? All together adds up to $84K. We also have one consolidation loan (stupid) (about 22K) which is a higher rate... like 13% or something that we'd like to pay off with the equity from this house (worth $125-135K). After paying realtor fees, we'd only have about 7-17K to work with.

All together payments = $1592
We could rent a 2BR for a short time for $700-750/mo
Our goal would be to pay about $95-$110K for a house worth $140-160K. But it would have to be close enough to livable condition that we could move into it after minor repairs, painting etc. within a month or so.

We know we don't want to stay in this house forever, which is why we're considering a move now (otherwise we'd just pay off the stupid consolidation loan with a HE loan at a much lower interest rate).

Adding on to this house isn't really an option b/c then we'd be the most expensive home in our little area.

We may have to live through 1-2 moves so we can leap frog into our dream home. We'd love to be able to do this eventually without moving, but I don't think we can do that at the moment.

Unless we refinance the whole shebang for a longer term (i.e. much lower payments) and rent this one out? How does the bank see rentals? I'm not sure we'd have enough for 2 mortgages, even if they're lower b/c of longer terms.

We have 2 children (6 and 3) and a dog, so it isn't just us moving.

WOULD YOU DO IT?

Thank you for getting this far... Any ideas or advice you may have would be greatly appreciated.