All Forum Posts by: Anthony Liguori

Happy pandemic everyone... I wanted to take some time to share the wild and exciting ride that my wife and I have been on over the last 12 months. We have posted several times on BiggerPockets regarding our interest in real estate investing. I am currently in orthopedic surgery residency and my wife is a full-time special ed teacher. We have two small children and are very busy. However, I wanted to tell our story here with hopes to give back to this community due to the positive impact this community has had on us.

First, I would like to specifically thank @brandonturner, @davidgreene, @joshdorkin and the bigger pockets podcast community for their impact on our learning and journey thus far.

I’ll start a year ago. My wife and I initially began discussing our retirement plan midway through my third year of residency. At this point, I had mountains of medical school debt and had not saved a dime to my retirement. Therefore, I investigated a way to utilize calculated risk to develop cash flow options that we could utilize in retirement in addition to our traditional investment portfolio. This led me to BiggerPockets. Fast forward several months, where we purchased our first duplex in Valdosta Georgia. We did this fairly non-traditionally. Due to my debt to income ratio and my lack of initial capital, we were unable to secure traditional financing with most institutions. Therefore, I began by contacting as many smaller community banks as possible. This brought us to the institution that we eventually used. This was Commercial Banking Company of Valdosta Georgia, specifically Taylor Biddle. They allowed me to utilize my future orthopedic surgery contract as collateral to obtain no money down financing. We purchased the duplex, established stable renters and then moved on. As the months progressed, I continued my orthopedic training and we utilized our first direct mail campaign. Mailing approximately 130 letters, we closed on our second property, another duplex. After stabilizing this, we utilized our contact with a local broker to close on five additional three bedroom/2 bathroom single-family rental homes. Subsequently, We have placed renters in these homes and stabilized them, allowing me to pursue refinance options to potentially save two points on our debt. I say all of this to initiate discussion regarding how we got started, how we utilize non-traditional financing as well as the value associated with the BiggerPockets forum and the bigger pockets podcast.

Specifically, I’d like to briefly talk about time management and how you can gain knowledge in your daily life utilizing these resources. The way I did this is by utilizing headphones and listening to the BiggerPockets podcast throughout my daily commute to and from work as well as between responsibilities in the hospital. Push to learn all the time! Additionally, I’ve listen to multiple audiobooks which I can recommend if people would like this information. I know this is a very long post but I wanted to initiate some discussion and express my gratitude to this community of people. We are off to a great start and I as well as my wife have big dreams moving forward. Thanks again!

I just submitted my application. The website is struggling. It wouldn't let me upload the files for certain things they require because the upload feature wasn't working. I even tried on internet explorer (somehow that was their preferred brower). But this loan may be huge for landlords with a lot of properties. I have 82 houses. If 50 don't pay the rent, that would be a loss of roughly 70k a month.   That'll eat thru my reserves awfully quick. 

But I saw on the front page of the loan request app that they spefically state that landlords with rentals can get the loan and they even give us the direct instruction as to some selections we need to make (i.e. economic injury - just as David mentioned in his initial post). 

To me, I look at it as though they should be able to make some projections as to losses. Maybe a worst case of 50% collections for a period of 6 to 9 months? And then offer a loan up to that amount. Again, how they come with their numbers will determine how useful the loan will be. A 10k loan is going to do nothing for me. A 100k loan might be the difference in keeping all my payments with the banks current and still having enough money for repairs and the like so I don't lose my houses.

Honestly, a worst case scenario of this going on for 9 months and say 50 percent collections and no option to sell the homes because we couldn't evict the tenants could cause me to lose everything. Its just not a scenario we can plan for. I've always said that there could come a time when there simply weren't enough renters because everyone was able to buy again. Well, that would mean house prices would be huge and i"d just jump on the bandwagon and sell and take my profits.

But how in the world do you account for something like this? Little to rents coming in. No ability to evict the tenants to sell the property as an exit? That just doesn't exist.

But thats why I really believe the sba is going to be super aggressive in these landlord loans. If I can get thru this with all my payments being kept up and the only hit to me is a new loan/debt of say 200k at 3.75%..... guess what, I'll be tickled pink. I can factor that in as the cost of doing business and then show these banks how I was able to survive in one of the worst debacles ever seen. 

We'll find out....... :-)

I would love to hear how you ended up with 82 properties.. I am looking for properties and areas to invest because NJ is just impossible right now 

@Anthony Liguori i to live in new jersey and i do all my inveating in the lehigh valley. The rental base is very strong cause there are alot of people trying to grt out of ny and nj causr its to expensive. You can find a investment property alot cheaper with less property taxes.

I live near the Poconos but don’t invest there because of that 75% weekend occupancy in spring and fall, that basically means you’re only booked for 6 days a month for 6 months of the year.
 

I invest in the southern US where I get 20 or 25 days or more occupancy per month, year round, it just makes more sense to invest down south you just get higher occupancy‘s and way higher return on investment.

I do have some friends who invest locally in the Poconos and yes it is very very tough for them to find cleaners, property taxes are very expensive almost $1000 per month , Their electricity bills run about $1000 per month as well. So they earn decent money in summers and sometimes in Winters, they hardly earn much in spring and falls, and their expenses are very high. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me considering you can stay booked 20 to 25 or more days every month down south and make double this amount of money.

Out of state investing is fun when it makes you this much money!!

You simply won't get annual revenue, annual occupancy rates, annual net income, & annual ROI like this in the Poconos:

https://theshorttermshop.com/c...

which areas in the south in particular??