New member in the Tacoma, WA area

[Chauvin Rupley]

Hello Everyone! I am beyond excited to have stumbled upon BiggerPockets and its community. Quick background, I am active duty military assigned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM). I purchased a home for my family and I back in 2012 but recently been assigned to become a recruiter. So naturally that means I will be moving within the next 6-9 months and was left with the big decision "SELL my home or RENT it out". So I went to the Internet to explore options/scenarios and Google graciously pushed me into the BP world and for the past few weeks I have been jumping around from podcast to podcast and read several different forum/sub-forum posts to learn as much as I can. I was astounded to find such a generous community with information readily available to share. At the moment, I don't know what I plan to do with my home since the market seems to be doing great and my home (since 2012) has appreciated a bit. I guess I'm just here to learn and learn some more and then make an informed decision within the next few months. Either way it seems I will end up becoming a landlord or sell and possibly have a small amount to put towards a downpayment on a multi family property. I'm excited and nervous at the same time yet very thankful to have found BiggerPockets and it's awesome community! Thanks for reading! See you around the forum!

[Abraham Saldana]

@Chauvin Rupley

Welcome to the community!  I am active duty army as well and started on this "real estate" journey just a few years ago.  Since we dont have a lot of time on our hands naturally, I have been doing "buy and hold", which goes hand in hand with how frequent we are forced to move.  Just a couple of tips from one newbie to another:

1.  Since you will be moving...a lot, know not only WHERE you want to rent, but WHO you want to rent to when you leave.  This has helped me immensely as I bought properties that were on the high end side, but I would get A/A+ tenants who rarely ever bother me, and make land lording very easy.  Plus the appreciation in those areas are generally pretty good.

2. The VA loan is great, but from the 2nd time on, if you use it, your funding fee is 3% of the purchase price, which can definitely hurt cash flow. Try and put at least 5% down if you have the cash, it'll help. And TRY to refinance out of your current primary home to a conventional loan before you leave. That way you have the super low interest rates available to you for the next 30+ years vs an investment loan rate, and you get your full VA eligibility back. I made this mistake once and its going to cost me over 10K in interest before I can pay it off fully.

3.  Generally, DONT BUY in a military town during PCS season...competition is CRAZY and you'll end up paying a premium.  Try and buy during the lull, especially during Winter, you'll save a lot of money.

If you have any questions let me know, im glad to help!