All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Not crazy at all! Your plan sounds just like ours - we are looking to downsize too (two adults, one kid and 2 big dogs) and saving in the meantime. Congrats!!

Based on personal experience, we are going the LVT route when we finally purchase a rental. I've installed Adura LVT by Mannington in our home and it has withstood our 5 year old, a 70 pound lab and a crazy pitbull with NO signs of wear at all! It's a bit more expensive than the big box store stuff, but well worth it in my opinion. 

I also recommend going with the floating type, not the glue down type. If your floors did incur some damage it's very easy to replace a few planks (buy a little extra) if they are not glued down. Also, in the event of a leak you can remove the planks, repair the leak/dry the subfloor and then reinstall the same floor planks - as long as you remove them in a way that you can reinstall them in their original position :)

If we had it to do over again, we would have bought a house that we could rent out in the future or house-hacked for a while. But two years ago we never even considered investing in real estate so we bought  a house that was not a good investment and is now a huge obstacle preventing us from getting started on the investment path. Live and learn.

I'm a Roanoke rookie too! I have nothing to offer as I have zero experience but wanted to say hi and welcome to BP :)

Thanks Josh (can't get the @ thing to work on my phone).

I've spent a lot of time working in Lynchburg but am clueless about the market there. 

We want to play it safe too. Needing money when you have none is not fun! 

Thanks everyone for your responses so far. Looks like we need to figure out a number and develop a plan to get us there.

Thanks for your input. Unfortunately we didn't know about house hacking when we bought our home. It's definitely something we will consider when we are ready to move though!

For my very first BP question, I'm curious how much money did you have in the bank prior to starting out? 

Our plan is to buy and hold. Most of the houses around here are 50-100+ years old so maintenance could be a costly endeavor (it certainly is for our craptastic 70s home). I would think that having a cash cushion to cover unplanned expenses is a wise choice but really have no idea how much is enough. 

Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

Thanks for the warm welcome! I am looking forward to getting out to some of the meetups and meeting some locals soon :)

Hello! Finally getting out of lurker mode and introducing myself here. We are total newbies and are here to learn as much as we can about buy and hold investments.

Looking forward to learning more - this site is pretty awesome!!