All Forum Posts by: Aaron Zimmerman

Thanks for sharing! I will be there!

Ian - welcome! I'd recommend connecting with@John Warren for Cicero/berwyn. He also has a nice meetup as well.

Id connect with@Tom Shallcross if you're interested in portage park.

im a former house hacker and happy to be a resource if you have any questions!

I think Chicago and the greater area have a lot going for it. There's a ton of great jobs and extremely diversified. Education is fairly good compared to rest of country especially in the suburbs. 

if you're going to invest locally, I'd plug into networking meetups and facebook groups to gain the local insights you're looking for. 

talk with lenders to see what you can afford. 

I would generally say house hacking is the easiest way to get into a more expensive market such as Chicagoland area. If you can't do that, perhaps doing a live and flip would work. And then the rest can be invested in another property. Happy to be a resource as someone in the same geographic area!

I think this bill is a bit too early in its infancy. There's a long road ahead for this bill to become law. House has a small majority and senate has a pretty fair margin. There's going to be reconciliation between the two bills. 

with that caveat out of the way, bonus depreciation is by far going to be a big benefit and seems to have broader support. This is going to be huge for real estate investors buying and selling properties. There will be significant tax benefits. 

There's some other items that may be pertinent to a broader audience but will keep my comments to real estate 

@Albert J Campo - welcome! I'm a real estate CPA as well so happy to learn and connect with you. Looking forward to seeing your insights 

you will want to talk with a cpa that will guide you through the transaction and management of your STR. You need to have the following for your short term rental:

1. Average stay 7 days or less

2. work enough hours (materially participate). There are 7 tests and the easiest one to qualify for is 100 hours and more than anyone else's time. But item here is you don't want to hire a property manager. 

pitfalls: some hours count and some hours don't 

3. can't use it too much for personal use (14 days or 10% of fair rental days)

there are many pitfalls and nuances so you don't want to leave significant potential tax benefits to chance. 

Where are you finding your insurance rates? 

Solo to start but network with as many investors as possible to expand your network of tradespeople, lenders, realtors, etc. $100k is probably more than enough to house hack depending on area. 

You can always partner later and with the experience of your first property, you're a more valuable partner because you have more experience. 

Agreed. LLC does not equal tax benefits. You can achieve the same results with your personal name. That being said, LLCs are important for liability protection.

@Ashish Acharya has a great synoposis. To start, you're probably going to use hard money as you have a track record and will be most available. If you make this your business, you'll want to make sure to start raising private money. It's generally cheaper than hard money and relationship driven