All Forum Posts by: Troy Smith

@Troy Smith - if you buy a new primary home its 5% down for a conventional loan or maybe FHA works as well with 3.5% down. You can leave your old home loan alone. You can do this every year if you want, its a great strategy to buy homes with minimal down!!

You must occupy the new home for at least 1 year.

@Troy Smith Advice on those markets would really depend on what you are looking for as your first investment. What do you think you can find there that you can't replicate in Dover? 

You are not buying an investment property for the sake of buying land, you are buying to make money. So first things first: What alternative investments can you make? Since you make more than your bills, paying down debt is the equivalent of earning a return equal to your interest rates on your debts. Do you have other investments guaranteed to pay you a return equal to your debt interest rates? I doubt it. 

So pay down/off your debt and while you are doing so, look for investment properties and shop rates for purchase loans, etc. Make your personal balance sheet attractive to lenders, as you will probably be signing a personal guarantee in any event, even if you do purchase through a corporate entity. 

So spend the time getting to know your market and the types of properties out there and what it takes to manage them. You may find that you don’t want to be a landlord after all. If that’s the case, you’ll find it’s a lot easier to get out when you’re not up to your gills in debt.

It’s important to start. It’s not important to get X doors in Y period of time.

Hi Troy, 

If you become a member of Tuscarawas Cty REIA (tuscreia.org) You can come up to any meeting in Canton (SCREIA.org) or Akron (ACREIA.org).  Plenty of folks to network with and we also do a lot of events not requiring membership.  We have a lot of transactions going on, education opportunities, and you can get to know the vendors and contractors we use as well.  

Well worth the time and membership fee!  

@Troy Smith With my investment portfolio when we’re upgrading we look at the things that were mentioned like floors, paint, landscaping, kitchen appliances, ceilings can be a quick improvement but we also look at the most outdated things and try to figure out the best way to modernize them if at all possible for the least amount of money.

Sometimes you can work miracles on kitchen cabinets by painting or sanding them down and restaining them and simply changing the hardware to something stylish.

Other times a new $120 vanity with drop in bowl sink and a new $50 mirror instead of a sink from the 50s and a medicine cabinet can elevate a bathroom. Then you add in $200 worth of waterproof LVP and a $40 gallon of paint and it’s looks like it came out of a magazine.

Hey Troy. Jose Medina is the investor friendly realtor for stark Co. Tell him I sent ya- he’s done a ton of deals for me. Great guy.