New to BP, looking for advice on how to build my portfolio.

[Mike Anderson]

Starting my real estate portfolio, I live in Salt Lake City Utah.

My wife and I have four town homes, one of which we live in. One is in my wife’s name, three in mine. With all four we have about 260k in equity.

With house prices in our area sky rocketing and interest rates climbing, I’m getting nervous as to what our next step should be. How to make our equity work for us.

What type of loans should I be looking at, should I consider 1031 so I can use as much equity as possible?

I talked to one lender and they said i had to keep 25% equity in each property and that left me with roughly 90k I could use if I were to do HELOC.

Any and all advice or insight would be much appreciated!

[Cherie Orellana]

@Mike Anderson I have been in real estate 15 years. I’m a broker/ agent and also investor. I am continuing to invest no matter what the market is doing. As long as you find a great deal you are covered in my opinion. Especially with buy and hold which it sounds like that is your strategy. Home prices went up about 10% over the salt lake valley 2019. Projections for 2019 are 6-7% increase. Slowing down a bit due to interest rates and higher home prices. They also project townhomes will increase in builds and sales about 2% more than single family homes. I would still invest if possible no matter what the market is doing. I know a great lender if you want his contact info. Also transwest and Utah community credit union do portfolio loans outside of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac guidelines.