All Forum Posts by: Van Hauter

Looking to get in touch with a savvy REI focused CPA! If anyone has a good relationship with one, please let me know.

I’m in Valparaiso - Porter County

So we’re on our first deal, not anything ground breaking but about $250/mo pure cash flow. I like the whole game.

Both my wife and I have W2 jobs (nurse and engineer) as well as 3 boys aged 4 and under. Daycare is absolutely outrageous. (As much as our primary and rental mortgages combined). And it’s going up again in January. We manage it ok but it’s not worth it anymore at this point.

I also 1099 contract on the side (30 hrs/mo max) and it pays minimum 2 times my W2 hourly.

1 of us will be quitting our W2 early next year.

We also plan to stack on our 1 unit in 2022.

Ultimately, we’re leaning towards my wife keeping her W2, I would leave the W2 and be able to increase my 1099 3x and still care for the boys during the day.

This would allow me to focus on scaling the REI quicker as well.

There’s fear right. But we think we just have to go for it.

@Ciji Masser

This is a great sharing thread. Everyone has so much advice and you really start to see a pattern others are following.

So my wife and I sold our starter home in 2020, in which we lived for 12 years. Stayed longer than anticipated. Small house that we quickly outgrew with our young family. Took the $45k and bought a nice house in June 2020 for the family but it wasn’t wise for our (unforeseen) future of real estate. Oh well, we enjoy the area and the house.

Last year, we had quite a bit of pointless debt. I cashed in about $55K from my IRA in October and paid off most of the pointless debt. We still have a student loan and 2 car payments and saved the rest of the IRA cash for a property. Continued to save more and in March we closed on our first rental!

I’m 36 and my wife is 33. We also have a 4 yr and 2yr old with another due in August!

The rental is a small 925sq ft 3bd 1ba we got for $118K but will rent for $1550 when rehabbed and will cash flow about $350 after all expenses. That’s on a 15 year note too! None of this may actually help you but I always like to hear the numbers of other peoples deal just to see what exactly they’re looking at.

The main thing I did was action. You can read and analyze all day but at some point you just need to take action. Take that leap, it’s really not as scary as it seems. I needed to learn how to analyze deals so I read about it, then got to a point where I just needed to run numbers. So I did about 3/day for a week then moved onto the next nugget I need to educate myself with. Find out where you’re at and what you need to know next! Write it down! Maybe it looks like this;

Lending- what options do I have?

-conventional, FHA, VA, seller finance

- who do I call?

- what other options do they offer?

Etc, etc. it’s crazy what doors a simple email opens or phone call opens up and it only takes minutes!

Good luck, you can do it!

@Brandon Lunardi

My lender in Indiana will require 20% for a conventional loan on a SFH that's an investment property. Commercial and muli-fam properties are 25% so I'd say they're on par with other lenders. Shop around, you might be able to find a lender requiring a 20% downstroke but you might be searching pretty hard. Someone on here might know one though. If it's far enough away and you can use it as a "vacation home" you might be able to put down 10%.

@Jay Hinrichs

Thank you Jay, I will start reaching out to them.

@Tony Angelos

This is precisely my plan! Thanks Tony!

Hi unknown friends, I'm a new investor in NW Indiana (Valparaiso) and currently we are closing in our first deal conventionally here in a couple weeks. After this, I want to start in BRRRR deals. To other investors out there, are you working/have you worked with a hard money or private lender that you would recommend? Why said lender? and if private, are they open to lending in more of these types of deals in the future?

I’m not ready to make another purchase yet as I want to get this current deal going, but I’d like to find a reputable lender so when I’m ready we can confidently pull the trigger.

Feel free to pm me any details or responses if you’re uncomfortable publicly posting info.

@Manda Gouvion

I’m in process of closing on my first rental property.

I had a colleague refer me (because I vomited to him one day about how I hate making other people rich and that an office job is not where I truly belong) to rich dad poor dad as a lot of others on here. This was in August 2020. All things square, I should be closed at the end of February. We had some minor debt to clear up which we did in October. I analyzed and researched then researched and analyzed, then was just ready to do pull the trigger. All about 6-7 months which I would think is about average for the typical rookie in your situation.

It’s not the time frame that matters, it’s knowing when you’re comfortable to take that next action.

Good Luck!!!

@Nathan Raisbeck

I’m a mechanic engineer, 35 and am just getting into real estate. I make a decent salary but I really dread corporate life. If I could go back in time, I’d focus straight on real estate because everything I learned about houses was taught to me by my dad or I learned myself. This would’ve saved me years of student loan payments and with time value of money negative much opportunity loss. I’d probably be “retired” by now owning my own property management company. If you’re accepted into engineering school, you already know how to work an equation and a spreadsheet. Learn those equations sooner and you’ll be glad.

@John Fider

Yep pliers. I’ve also had a lot of success boot scraping like a bull but with the impact going forward so the ball area of your boot creates the friction. Rips them right up and saves your back and knees. It won’t get them all as some are sunk deeper than others and you’ll still need pliers.