All Forum Posts by: Trina Seever

Thank you @Alex Chin!  I have always shied away from hard money lenders because it's new...but maybe this is the time to dive into it.  

You're from Olympia!  Yes, I do see the rental market it tough.  I'm not against buying and flipping...it just really couldn't be a nightmare house because my kids aren't up for all that, although we would be!  We're moving Oct 8

I'm not super experienced, but I did go for my real estate license a couple of years ago.  It could be worth it, but it wasn't for me.  I would have had to sell at least 4 houses a year to pay for my fees.  The reason was, because (in TN) you have to work for a broker for the first 2 years, and the average realtor gives about 75% of their 3% commission to the broker.  Then...you become a broker and are responsible for license and insurance fees.  So it could be worth it, if you move enough real estate each year.  

Just my 2 cents, I'm not a financial manager but I am pretty good with money. It depends. How long do you have left on your mortgages? If its a significant amount of time, say over 10 years,and you can afford it, I'd do cash out. Normally, cash out is a lower interest rate than a HELOC. The benefit of a HELOC, is you only have to pay interest monthly, so your monthly payment is lower than cash out. But, you do have a higher interest rate than with cash out, so long term you will pay more. Also, nobody really likes to think about this, but if the worst happens and you have to foreclose a property, a HELOC doesn't count in the foreclosure. You can't just hand in the keys and walk away like you would if it was a refi. It's kind of like credit card debt...

It's been awhile since I've posted, I love trolling but am usually too busy sheet rocking and such to actually post anything :)  But I'm kind of looking for advice from investors who do a little different line of work than I do...WARNING this is going to be really long, because I'm not good at condensing my stories.

Background:  My husband and I have been remodeling/building houses for a long time, but 2 years ago, we both quit our jobs to try doing it full time.  We've had a good time with this, flipped a couple of houses (in case you read my underwater post...we actually ended up profiting on the sale after all!)  and decided to try buy and hold to renters.  Well, Obamacare in Tennessee is kind of killing us, we're not big investors, and our already painful $1,200/mo health ins policy is set to go to over $2K in January. So I decided to go back to work for health insurance.  I got a great job offer in Olympia WA.

As I'm sure you guys know, Puget sound area is quite a bit more pricey than Chattanooga TN.  We've traditionally been cash investors, so the move will hurt a little in the short run.  But I'm actually very excited about the long run, because there's more room for upgrades in a flip there!  Here, it's a tight budget buying a house for $65K and trying to fix its problems and sell it at a profit for $140K...there, the houses sell for enough that it's not so tight that fixing structural will make or break you, is all I'm saying.  

Anyway,  to make our first flip work there, we need double the cash we needed here.  My idea was, "hey, lets rent for a year!"  That gives us enough cash to do a flip right away and see how it goes.  It sounded so perfect.  Until....

No one there rents to people with 4 kids and two large dogs and a cat...I've never really rented before, so that never occurred to me til now.  Also, add to that that we're not going to be long term renters, so we're not super marketable!  But then I thought, aren't there other investors who are looking to buy and hold, and might kind of love us living in/fixing up their house for a year while we do our thing?  I feel that could be a win-win.  

So, what's your advice?  Should I rent, or buy and save tons of money over a year to flip again later?  If I rent, how do I find a landlord who's an investor?  (And likes dogs, haha!)  What would you do in my situation?  

You said it so well!  Thanks for sharing :)

Thanks for all your advice!  I think we are going to go for renting, if nothing else it will give us a good place to start learning how to be a landlord.  

Thank you Scott, for the calculator, it was very helpful!  Mike, I am not familiar with a PRO account, but will be looking into it next.  Tom, thank you for the encouragement.  I actually have an aquaintnance who paid the gurus and is enjoying my failure right now :)  Call me crazy, but losing right now doesn't feel like a loss, it feels like a cheap college education!

Hi, I am a new investor.  My partner Greg and I moved to Chattanooga, TN, wanting to flip houses short term to build some capital, then move to buy and hold, and eventually to apartment complexes.  We started very idealistic, thinking we could buy a fixer uoper, fix everything ourselves, and sell for a profit.

Our first house was such an embarrassing fail I don't want to talk about it. Our second house, which we have now, is our second not so good investment. We bought at a price we thought was great, since we had so much competition and basically just got it because our offer was first. But, we learned that it takes too much time to do it ourselves, and that we didn't get such a deal after all. Even doing most of the work ourselves, we have exactly the ARV into it, before selling costs, and that doesn't count for the fact that we worked for 6 months for free.

We learned alot, and I have since found a plethora of information here on bigger pockets and through the local REIA, so I am confident that our next investments will go better.

My question is, what do you think we should do with this house?  I know many people sell their own houses, but that's not really my forte, so I expect to pay 6% closing costs in a house sale, which would make a 6% loss on this house.  We are prepared for that, but are considering making the house a rental.  It's worth $135,000 and would rent for 1,400 per month.  I'm new to figuring out rental expenses (we would need to mortgage the property at 75% if we rented it...) so it's hard to figure oit if renting is a good choice, or if it's just dragging out the pain of a mistake we can't reverse.

Like I said, new investor here, so kindness and prekindergarten responses are appreciated!