All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Here's my advice. At 14, forget about real estate. Concentrate on girls.

Is this in a D class neighborhood? Even if it is, I would love to find that here.

How much is the home worth? The fees seem fairly reasonable to me. It seems from what I've seen here on this forum that it's hard to get that good of terms on cash outs unless you own multi-family commercial properties. 

I was able to get two HELOCs out of two of my SFR rentals with Wells Fargo a few (5?) years back. I believe they did not look at my personal DTI back then but I can't remember, and unfortunately, I'm not even sure if they still have that product available now. LTV was about 70% if I remember correctly and interest was actually higher and variable. But back then the interest rate environment was 1.5-2% higher than what they are now, so they are comparable to what Finance of America is offering now.

So with high value houses, I think the fees are not too bad, but if your house is between 100-200k, it looks expensive. 

Have you had any experience dealing with these folks? I am especially curious as to what fees they charge for their product. (closing costs, requirement of title insurance, points, junk fees, etc). I see that for single rental loans they go as low as 6.5% and for their portfolio loans they go as low as 5.5%. Back when the program was with Blackstone (B2R), there were some onerous requirements for the investor. The one that particularly turned me off was the requirement that you have some sort of renter's insurance or something and properties must have independent  property management. Do you know if it's still the same now?

I'm definitely interested in their product as I would imagine its much cheaper than hard money loans.

Don't ask her to pay the mortgage but she still must pay "rent." Find out what market rent is for the one part of the duplex and ask her to pay her half. Since she's making a similar salary to you I don't see any good reason to let her live there free. Living expenses should be split down the line. We do live in a supposedly egalitarian society so why be unfair to yourself financially when your partner is already a financial equal? All this talk about chivalry and letting your girlfriend living there free makes me a little queasy.

Personally I don't think you need a contract. If she agrees to the setup and reneges later, then you'll know she's not a good partner and what the next steps should be. I believe the law is on your side if ownership of the property is in question in Texas (don't take my word on that), but if you want to save the hassle should that circumstance come up, by all means write up a rental contract.

This is coming from a happily married man of 8 years who keeps separate finance accounts and still splits living expenses with his wife.

Low inventory can work to your advantage because you can later sell for a high price so using that as a reason to not invest in California misses the other side of the coin. 

That said, the high barrier for entry in this market makes it very hard to get started, especially if your from Newport Beach where I'm pretty sure the prices are quite astronomical. The way I see it, buying a place here to live in as a home can potentially make sense, but as a place to start off your investing career . . . it does not. I'm sure there are strategies that still exist to make a buck, but man is this area saturated and competitive!

There are financial instruments with better returns and less established risk. I for one do not want to gamble on my own or borrowed money in the mid 6 figures range, take on unknown risks that I have yet to understand (if you haven't done this before), for a paltry return. If it's possible to test the waters first with a smaller amount to understand first hand the risk, better to do it that way.

So is it a foolish time to get in California investing? I think so due to the high cost to start, that failure can put you back quite a few years, and there exists other decent (non-real estate) alternatives to invest in.

I don't know about the private loans, but at least for the $30k federal loan, she may qualify for several different federal loan forgiveness programs. You can find them here:

https://studentloanhero.com/featured/the-complete-...

Check out #2 through #5 as those require little effort. The terms are quite favorable and I believe your girlfriend may not have to pay much on that loan due to her debt load. However, I believe the window of opportunity may be narrow due to future uncertainty of the viability of the program and changing political influences in the coming years. But as far I know, if your debt load is high, you may not have to pay back most of your loan. Caveat is that it takes something like 20 years for it to be forgiven and you have to pay taxes on the forgiven amount, but at least your girlfriend can see the light at the end of the tunnel if she qualifies for any of those plans.

My wife is currently going to pharmacy school and both her and I have some doubts as to whether she will actually work or not, or if she does whether it will be full time. I'm not even worried about the $250k+ in debt she'll incur in the next 3 years because she'll qualify for the program under its current criteria if she works part time. That's about $60k/year which is close to where your girlfriend is at working full time. 

My advice is to re-consider refinancing the federal loans despite the high interest due to the existence of these programs. On the other hand, that 12% private loan is pretty scary.