Refinancing vs using a partner's cash
My business partner and I bought 6 section 8 houses with my cash last September to start our real estate investment journey. I'm a remote cash source/investor while he is the boots on the ground.
When one of the tenant's moved out, we decided to remodel that house in order to rent it out as a single family rental since the house was a mess and we thought we could get more rent. The house is a 3 bed 2 bath that we paid $122k cash to purchase and then my partner did the remodel with a friend for about ~$15k all-in, but my he has not taken any payment himself yet. We signed a 1 year lease with a new tenant for $1600/mo, so this is looking like a good deal/investment currently! Our business account is almost empty and we want to remodel 2 more of our houses over the next couple of months to repeat this process hopefully. We estimate that we'll need about $40k to pay for the next 2 remodels, and my partner could use a payday of ~$15k or so for his labor on the first remodel. The question we have now is whether we should refinance to fund these goals versus having me lend more to the business.
Initially, we were thinking that we could refinance this first remodel with an ARV of ~$180k-$210k in order to take out $140k+ and easily pay for operating expenses going forward and give my partner his first payday. On second thought, however, this is just adding more debt at a %8.25+ interest rate and I'm wondering if I should be the bank instead. I have a little more cash and I am not in a rush to get paid back. Instead, I was thinking that I can inject another ~$55k (more if needed) or so to pay for everything the business needs and charge my own business 8%ish. I would prefer that 8% interest go to me instead of the bank! I'm fine with either charging just interest or also paying down principal. My main goal is to get a return on my capital wherever it ends up.
The real estate playbook says to BRRR, but are we in a position where we should keep the bank our of the equation until I run out of capital that I'm willing to invest in the business?
I should note that this extra cash I have on hand is sitting in Treasury bills, so 8% is a little more attractive to me than the 5% (I know it's riskier!).
Are you able to sit tight and let the rental income build up? After 8-12 months then decide. Could you also do a flip to build some capital? I know you want to keep them but seems needed to continue to scale
Thanks for the ideas, Caleb!
The 2 remodels we want to do are both having the tenants move out over the next couple of months, so I don't think we can sit tight. We both think it makes sense to upgrade the houses from section 8 to SFRs if possible, but keeping them as section 8 would still require clean up and a few fixes to pass the section 8 inspection.
A flip could fund more remodels, but the business' goal is to accumulate profitable long term holds, so I think we'd prefer any alternative to flipping this first remodel.
