All Forum Posts by: Bonnie Low

Thank you! My husband and I will be there! We're very excited about this topic. Thank you for putting it together!

I'm curious if anyone has experience using a Virtual Assistant to manage your books via Quick Books or some other accounting software? If so, can you explain how you're doing it and what your experience has been. Note: this is not for tax preparation, but rather just for bookkeeping to stay on track for tax time.

When is this meeting? I'd like to attend. I'm using the phone app for BP and meeting details aren't showing.

Bryant, this is a very generous offer so thanks for putting yourself out there! I do have a question for you. I posted this in the forum a few weeks ago and only got one reply that was well-intentioned but not super helpful. Since you've been a house hacker, I'm guessing  you're going to have some great insight.

My husband and I are investors - specifically flippers - but we're working our way towards buy and hold. We happened to find a property locally that we're thinking of buying to flip and make it our primary residence for the next 2-5 years. Up until now, we haven't been looking at owner-occupied properties. We were happy to stay in our current home and focus on investing in other properties. However, this house is in a great neighborhood, on a great piece of property that suits our lifestyle, we think it has great flip opportunity AND would make a great house for us for the next few years. So we're seriously considering house hacking. Holding on to it will also help with capital gains. My question to you is, how do you figure your soft costs on a long term house hack? Normally, we budget for commissions, mortgage payments, taxes, utilities, escrow fees, etc. Do you use these same numbers on a long term house hack? Seems like you would be paying a mortgage on your primary residence anyway and if you're holding the property for at least 2 years, it kind of skews your profit numbers. What would you suggest?

Our biggest challenge is the competitiveness of our local market. Lots of investors and relatively high prices. We're looking outside our local farm area. It's not as easy or as efficient to invest from afar. It's much easier to jump in your car and check out a property when it becomes available, but that's the shift we're planning to make in 2017.

My husband and I are Real Estate investors. We've flipped some houses and are used to relying on pretty standard formulas for calculating "quiet costs" and repairs and ARV to determine what our max offer should be. However, we're looking at a house that represents a situation we haven't dealt with before. We're looking at a house to flip that we actually want to live in for a couple of years. We plan on living there for 2-3 years until our son graduates from high school. Normally, we calculate the cost of the mortgage or hard money loan on the property, closing costs, commissions, utilities, insurance etc as our "quiet" or holding costs. However, it seems odd to factor in the mortgage, utilities and insurance in this situation as we would normally have these anyway and we'll be selling the house we live in now. How would you factor these costs into your holding costs to determine your maximum offer, or would you?

Our HML requires 25% down so you're in the ballpark. There are absolutely some who will do it for less. It takes a lot of researching and interviewing to find one who lends in your area and meets your criteria. There are also companies like RealtyShare that have a different model. Lastly, consider finding a partner to help you increase the money you have to work with. A partner might be willing to add to your cash pool for an agreed upon return or may extend their capital for the down payment while you use your funds for any needed improvements. Just a few ideas for you. Good luck!

We typically connect with people to build our network. Say, for example, if we want to invest in a new geographic area we'll reach out to Realtors, lenders, contractors, etc. doing business in that area. Creating those connections makes it easier to set up meetings and it gives you some 'go to' resources for that area. Or, if we're looking for advice on a certain topic - say taxes, or how to invest in tax liens - we'll connect with BP members who have experience in those areas, are writing blogs on those topics, or are active contributors to posts on those topics. Sometimes people send random requests to connect. If the person has detail on their profile, I'll accept. If there's no photo and no detail, I won't. If they don't care enough to elaborate on their profile, I have no reason to believe they have anything to contribute. Sounds harsh, but with millions of members, you have to have some kind of filter.

PM, please!

Greg Betts thanks for the advice. We've been eyeing Idaho for a while now. We have family in Meridian and Nampa and are looking to escape CA in a couple of years when our son graduates high school.