All Forum Posts by: Alex Grosvenor

Hey Lex! Welcome. The DFW investing community is great. Learn as much as you can - network as much as you can - do as much as you can (even for free) so that you bring value to people with knowledge and money.

@Randall E Collins first things first learn all that you can learn. 

Listen to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Go to Networking Events and meet people. Get your name out there and let people put a face to your name. Consistently show up and provide value where you can. Suck in all of the information you can.

Next step is finding what you want to do in Real Estate. There are 1,000 different ways to do real estate figure out what your path is. What do you find in the information step that interests you? 

The absolute BEST advice I can give you is : Build one bridge at a time find out what you want to do. Don't stop doing it until that thing is successful then move onto the next thing. 

I have to agree with Patrick. I got 5 pages in and I was like whoa. Is that really true? 

I stopped right there and realized it would take me HOURS on end to read it and fact check it and understand your research vs everybody else's research. 

The 70+ pages are insane.

@Drew Smith The best way to find out what lenders will do what for you is to go in and talk to the smallest banks you can find. One with only like 3 branches or just in DFW. Those are the banks that will work with you the most putting less than 20% down even on an investment properties. It may take 20 times of you going in and bugging them to do it. But the smaller banks can bend the rules the most. Especially if you build a good relationship with them.

EXAMPLE:

ARV $300,000

Loan Amount Remaining: $150,000

Equity= $150,000

HELOC= $300,000 x 80% - $150,000

HELOC = $90,000 would be your HELOC amount

I just want to clarify this for everybody who may not know how HELOCS work. Also, if others want to do this they get a ballpark estimate of how much they can pull out of their homes.  

@Drew Smith my recommendation for you is to split that HELOC amount into 2 or 3 deals if you can and not just one. This would allow you to cashflow more and pay down your HELOC more.

I would also look into using your HELOC to pay down your actual mortgage if the HELOC is at a lower interest rate. No different amount in your loans. It's just a cheat code to give you a cheaper interest rate.

I wish you the best.

@Paul Gomez once a month. 

@Olivia Evans Out of state investing is really no different from in state investing. The right team is hard to find and it is time consuming to go through and interview 3-4 people for each position you need help with. That’s 3-4 property managers, 3-4 contractors, 3-4 realtors and 3-4 lenders. No matter if you’re in state or out of state that up from work should be done.

Even if you plan on buying something rent ready you still need to have a contractor for when things break. Everything breaks eventually. 

The only difference with out of out of state is learning your market. Picking what areas you want to invest in and knowing it well. That is the most difficult part. But if you have a great Agent and PM they should be able to help you speed up that process. 

The real estate investment process to me is meant to be passive; meaning if I’m in the area or not, somebody else should be dealing with all of the issues that pop up. Finding the tenant, screening the tenants, evicting tenants, collecting rents, raising rents, and even finding most of the handymen that are used to fix issues with the house. Just calling me to approve the repair amount should pretty much be all that is needed. 

If your idea of real estate investing is different for you and you want to be more involved in everything going on then I recommend in your area because that is a lot easier to be present. 

Hey all.
Feel free to come to a little meetup that @Richard Helppie-Schmieder is hosting this Saturday the 9th at 8am at Halcyon. It’s a coffee shop near lower Greenville. Should be 10-15 people there that everybody can make and make connections.

Hi Blake. Crazy enough I just spoke to another person overseas about investing in Dallas TX. Being prior Army I love to talk about people experiences on deployments! 

A duplex for that price is a tough task to ask especially with little to no repairs. Where in North Dallas are you looking? Places like Sherman or Denison can be done, but if you’re talking Frisco or Addison or Plano I don’t think that price range is realistic. 

@Michael Healey there are a lot of different places that you can look to for gentrification in the upcoming 5-10 years. there are neighborhoods that are 25% of the way to gentrification and others that are 50% of the way there. It all just depends on how much success you want to see before you take the risk of jumping in there.

A lot of those gentrification areas don't have comps to support your ARV or rents or anything you're just in speculation that the rest of the neighborhood is going to get fixed up and the value of your home gets pushed up and the neighborhood changes around you.

there are about 5 specific areas I look for my clients who are searching for the same thing.