All Forum Posts by: Chris Chong

If you are living in one of your units the thing to do is to have the landlords policy on EVERYTHING and get an additional renters policy for yourself (like the kind of insurance you would take out if you were renting an apartment from someone else).

Be careful about evicting for "too many people". You don't want to discriminate against families.

Instead evict for people staying in the property who are not on the lease agreement.

And also in most states, the first part of the eviction is a notice to quit doing whatever they are violating or leave. So you can serve them that just to scare them.

If he is not offended by your offer you offered too much!

J/K... the thing to do is get your realtor friend to pull up some comps and see how your offer compares to recently sold properties in the area that are in similar condition and size.

Investors in Your Backyard: How to Raise Business Capital from the People You Know by Asheesh Advani

under real estate for sale, search using the word "plex" just by itself

I believe that non-community property refers to properties you each individually own BEFORE you get married. Once you are married, anything you buy automatically becomes community property.

This is a great question to ask any lawyer during your initial "free hour".

And if you are paying cash, then you should be using an LLC, for liability protection. The tax/estate implications are not going to be that large for a single rental property. Its the liability that will get you when you get sued by your tenant.

Tax Lien Certificate Investing?

Hi Travis, I've had a similar situation. Long story short, I was previously a high paid employee, started a side business, it took off and I'm making the same amount of money and in the same industry... but now banks want me to wait 2 years before they will count my income. I already have 1 rental and my house.

You DON'T want to pay down your rentals. You want to have as much cash as you can sitting in the bank, because they WILL require 20% down for your next rental.

Plus they are going to want to see 3-6 months worth of ALL your payments sitting in an account for "reserves".

If you have 6-9 or 1 years reserves that's even better. They start to overlook other things when you have enough cash to last for a year.

The best thing you can do is tell them you intend to move into the house you are buying and do so, then leave after 1 year.

Its way easier if you can live in the place you are buying for a year, then move out and get another property.

If you can legally keep it you absolutely should... you've got costs to cover for a property that is just sitting around vacant and your purchase agreement should be pretty clear on what they agreed to in terms of closing time frame.

If you are flipping then you probably want to do whatever is most popular or possibly what is most common in your area.

For example, in the suburbs of Portland, where I live the main entry, baths and kitchen are tile and the rest carpet 80% of the time (in sub $300K houses). So I would do that because that is what people would expect.