All Forum Posts by: Shanti S.

Don't try to save money on your accounting - save it on your property offers, rehab materials, groceries, etc :-)

A good accountant will see the big picture of your financial life and where you want to go with your business in a way that software cannot. He/she will be worth their weight in gold over the years and if your finances are currently very simple, you will not be paying them for very much of their time to actually DO your taxes when it comes down to filling out the paperwork.

Get some word-of-mouth recommendations from local real estate investors on who's good, then drop by their office to see if you like each other in a quick interview/intro.

Spend your time on the basics of managing your general business and finding deals and don't try to play catchup with accountants and attorneys so you can go around them with pieces of software....the pros may bill three figures an hour but they should find you much more than that in savings and business advice - so in the end, their hourly rate doesn't really matter much at all. Just their competence, creativity, and chemistry with you.

Still not clear - why do you want to go with a hard money lender instead of conventional?

Banks will do construction to perm or mortgage with holdbacks, where they will finance the rehab funds into the final loan. I'd only be looking at the hard money if I didn't qualify for this or I wanted to do a quick turnover on the property.

If you want a long term rental, you want to be in a 30 year fixed loan, you can do that from the start in one closing, unless your credit is poor or there is some other reason you're forced to use hard money?

Do I read correctly that you do not have the closing funds needed to purchase your 2nd rental conventionally?

You say you have all your ducks in a row but the money is the first duck if you ask me :-)

Where are you living now, you say you have one rental without enough equity in it to refi - are you pretty confident about the appraised value of that one?

I would definitely say stay away from the hard money for now, you do NOT want to get stuck in a long term relationship there on a single property. That would be for purchase, rehab, quick sale of a property that you KNOW you can turn over quickly at a high profit, making the extremely high interest rate acceptable.

In short, if you have one rental that's doing well for you, I'd leverage that experience and repeat with today's wonderfully low FIXED rate conventional loans - depending on your current living situation, if you purchase another single fam and move into it, you can qualify for low $ down owner occupied conventional loans. You can move on later and keep that loan, but you would need to actually move into the property to start with. My local banks have told me they don't have a problem with that plan, but be sure you're updating your insurance company on the owner occupied / non owner occupied status or they will have issues with it.

Jury's still out for me on the ipad, but I did get a new macbook pro about 3 weeks ago, completing the switch over from pc's for my personal use.

And all I can say, is, WOW. It cost about twice as much as a comparable windows laptop, and it's worth it and then some. After spending years learning the ins and outs of pc's, I never want to look at one again. The mac is a pleasure to use, is instantly ready instead of waiting a minute or two, has a 10 hour battery life, the first trackpad that has me not missing an external mouse, I could go on and on and I still don't know half the cool stuff I can do on it.

The speed, integration, and the amount of thought and careful design that went into every aspect of this machine is always evident and I have only regrets that I waited this long.

If I still need to run my windows programs, I boot up a virtual machine in seconds and run mac and pc at the same time.

I agree with both of you that real estate is always local and it's of limited use to discuss the "US housing market" as if it's a homogenous entity - yet that's what you always see and hear discussed on the mainstream media, and to some extent I think that news drives a lot of decisions on the local level.

I'm still looking to buy myself, and lock in some 30 year fixed mortgages at these rates and these affordable prices. Wish I had adequate time to explore some of the few areas of the country that are doing well and invest there.

What's the definition of affordable, though? For those with good salaries or for those who have invested well and have discretionary funds, it's very affordable. For the many, many folks who are unemployed or underemployed, and/or have poor credit, it doesn't really matter if the market drops even further - they're not getting a loan.

By the time we get back to solid employment numbers and people are repairing their credit and building up down payments, I'm thinking it's a good bet that inflation will be in full swing, today's low fixed rates will be gone, and home prices will be shooting up again. Those folks once again will find it epically difficult to improve their standard of living or graduate from being tenants.

Investors are going to do very, very well....I'm just concerned about the long term effects of this wealth transfer.

Definitely a biased site but biased how? Toward a realistic discussion of the housing market as related to the general economy, or does anyone feel that these stats are twisted for some purpose whether profit or politics?

8 to 12 billion per month in discretionary spending from those not paying their mortages currently is nothing to sneeze at. However, if they're not paying because they simply don't have the money, then it's obviously not going to be spending after all.

Personally, I do believe that the economic crisis has been fairly effective camouflage for the greatest transfer of wealth in our history - not just in the US but worldwide, leading in to virtual economic slavery to come for the majority of the world population

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

I ran across this collection of charts about the U.S. housing market and have drawn my own conclusions but I’m looking for comments and reactions from the BP community as well:

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/housing-market-non-payments-foreclosures-10-financial-charts-united-states-housing-problems/

Shoot holes in the figures, dismiss this as internet fearmongering and damned lies, or confirm and discuss, folks...

I found charts 7 and 9 shocking simply because they made points that I hadn’t considered before - the massive amounts of people 12, even 24 months delinquent on their mortgages, but still in their homes, happily spending away the money that they should be paying on their loans, and artificially stimulating the economy in the process so that our current administration can spin this into good news - consumer spending is up! It must be the light at the end of the tunnel!

(edit) I asked the mods to move this post if possible, placed it by accident in the wrong category, clicking too fast while taking a break here, sorry folks

Wow, I voted for a "newbie's" first post because I thought it was carefully considered - and I think you're already on a great track as far as the education goes, Scott.

1) Courses and classes - Yep, find them on Ebay or find the info for free online - no need to pay the $1k to $3k most of the "gurus" are charging.

2) Videos - I haven't explored these too much, some BP members (like Nick, "motiv8d" who resides in your target Phoenix AZ area) have posted some on their blogs or on youtube.

3) I love podcasts for my time on the road that I might otherwise not put to better use. I found this page on BP: http://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-podcasts/index.html but you're right, it does look like it has not been updated. I get mine from itunes or from ripping course CD's and listening to them on the road.

4) Books - library, Amazon, REIA members. Several good threads on BP for recommendations, looks like you've found them.

My advice would be to maintain your focus on one aspect of investing. Start analyzing deals in your target market so you'll start to get a feel for what can be dismissed right away (most listings on the MLS) and what's worth spending more time on and getting more info. Make some contacts in AZ through BP or other conduits so you'll have a team coming together before you pull the trigger - banker, contractor, property manager, bird-dogs, realtors, whoever you might need for local help and area knowledge.

If you want a multi with a vacant unit that you can visit, you'll have to find a good deal if it's going to cash flow or at least pay for itself with one unit empty. A good deal is always a good thing :-) May make more sense to just fill them up and rent a room when you visit, letting the extra cash flow pay for your temporary lodging. Depends on your wants I guess.

You'll probably get to the point fairly soon that you start realizing you've got more education on the subject than many people who are actually doing it and making money. That's when you need to take some action if you haven't already - analysis paralysis :-)

Best of luck!

This site is full of great people giving great advice; but it may not be the best source of the info you're looking for. There are sites dedicated specifically to credit knowledge and credit repair whose members are very helpful as well and they're full time credit geeks.

You haven't really given us enough information to contribute further - make sure you have complete and recent reports and go over them thoroughly. If there's anything negative on there that you can dispute, do so properly in writing (see credit sites for sample letters and credit repair campaigns) and that may get you the most rapid gains.

If you don't have anything to dispute, then it may have more to do with your income or too many recent credit pulls, or...., or....

Not enough info, sir! :-)

Certainly not in my part of the country - I saw this article yesterday and almost spit out my coffee.

Just seems like a colossal waste of money and energy at a time when our nation is suffering and needs good ideas and smart investment for the long term.

Building big trophy houses in the desert with elevators in them when sound bank-owned homes all around them are being neglected into rubbish at the expense of the taxpayers? How about taking that effort and retrofitting homes for energy efficiency and a new lease on life, raising local real estate values and revitalizing broken neighborhoods in the process?

Ugh. Train approaching is the only thing I can see down this tunnel.