All Forum Posts by: Tyler Hodgson

Hey Jeremy. Welcome to the BP forums. It sounds like you have a good general idea of where you are and where you want to go. Thanks for your service. I too am a veteran in the DFW area.

A little bit about me: I'm 25 years old. I currently have roommates in my primary residence that I got this year with a VA loan. I own a 50% interest in two rental properties with my business partner. We both went in on it completely 50/50 (50% cash required and 50% of profits). I am finishing up my Master's degree in Accounting at UNT and working on my CPA exams. My current full-time job is a Loan Officer for a local lender. I can help you with any financing questions you have.

Back to you: You are in a great position right now with your low debt, chunk of savings, and livable salary. You also have a wonderful resource that your mother is a realtor and probably has great expertise in helping you find some strong cash-flowing rental properties, and if she is willing to manage these properties at no or little cost that will help out tremendously.

It sounds like your next steps are to continue learning and doing research and getting ready to take action when the opportunity arises. Personally, I stumbled upon my first rental opportunity while searching for my primary residence and I just had to jump on it! 

Start finding some potential deals and analyze them. BP has some good calculators for analysis, and there is a specific forum topic just for deal analysis where you can receive the advice of others.

Remember:  Rent  -  Mortgage (plus taxes & insurance); does not = profit. Price in the management fees, repairs & maintenance, vacancy, and capital expenditures (large costs).

Good luck. Again, please reach out if you have any questions!

Welcome to BP, Emily! I have one rental in Flower Mound and one rental in Keller, both SFRs. Both areas are great for rentals. There is no shortage of demand and I've had good experiences with my tenants. 

I'm a Loan Officer and working on my CPA right now. So please don't hesitate to reach out if you have mortgage financing questions or tax questions!

Originally posted by @Kathy Henley:

@Kathleen R. On closing day, greet your tenants with a letter. A knock on the door is nice. They need to know where to pay next month's rent and who to call if there is a maintenance issue.  If you want to offer electronic payments , tell them what they need to know to make it happen.  You cannot require electronic payment without an addendum to their lease. 

For banking, I used a separate account for my business transactions, under my name, until I created a business name. The savings account came with it, no fee. This is for security deposits.It takes a little fuss to get a business account: fees, EIN number, and creating the LLC. No hurry.

For records, an Excel spread sheet will work to begin with.  There may be samples in the Forms/Files section of BP.  Do you have any QuickBook experience?  I moved there, by the time I had property #3. It produces beautiful expense reports by property.  Whole portfolio is under one bank account and one copy of QuickBooks. 

Welcome to the fun.

I agree with Kathy that one business bank account and Quickooks will get the job done. Quickbooks is great for tracking and analyzing properties separately and your performance as a whole. It is pretty easy to learn the basics. I did the same as Kathleen and opened a new bank account and use the checking for operations (rent deposits, mortgage payment, maintenance expenses) and savings account to hold all security deposits. 

Good luck on your first deal. And don't be afraid to reach out to a property management company and/or an accountant to get some help or at least some advice. The most important thing is being proactive and keeping good records.

Yes! I closed on my first rental property last month and have collected two months rent already and my first mortgage payment isn't until Aug 1. My net cash flow after mortgage and escrows will be $390. And in Sept rent is going up by $100, so that's $490 cash flow. It was a lucky opportunity that I stumbled upon and took action to snatch it up quickly. The key is to position yourself to be ready so that when a sweat deal comes up you don't miss out. Good luck!

You cannot originate your own mortgage, unfortunately. And you must work under a company license. So either start your own shop or join someone else's. Things got crazy when NMLS came around.

I say get the license and originate some loans for other investors and friends you have. And if you work at a small local company maybe a fellow loan officer at that company can originate your loan and help out with some of the fees since you are an employee.

Hope this helps!

@Daniel Hernandez

Personally I use Quickbooks Online. Bank accounts synced automatically so I just classify the transactions as they come through. It's very easy and intuitive if you have some basic computer and accounting know-how. You can also classify transactions based on the property and run reports based on property and totals. That is by far my favorite feature for tracking multiple properties.

Originally posted by @Joshua Lyon:

So 420k - the remaining balance on the current VA loan? 420k-229k = 191k

Do you know if that requires a down payment?

Correct, so that would leave $191k available with no down payment. For each dollar over that amount for your new purchase you can borrow up to 75%. So 25% of the purchase over your remaining entitlement of $191k.

$231k purchase = $10k down. The other $221k you can finance through VA Loan. Keep in mind subsequent use VA Funding Fee is higher (if you are not FF exempt)

@Account Closed is spot on with the idea of a streamline refi! Do it!

Three accounts. Same bank. One checking (for operations) and two savings (one for security deposits and one for leftover savings) Use quickbooks (or another accounting/bookkeeping software) to track all of your inflows and outflows by property. I like quickbooks because you can classify transactions based on the property and run reports that show each property and totals too.