All Forum Posts by: Brian Harker

@Valentina Naumenko interesting. How did the pandemic affect the performance? When did it start to recover?

I’ve been very interested in buying in Kissimmee for a long time now. I already know where I want to buy (Windsor hills), and I have an agent and a lender. I already own and self manage a vacation rental cabin in the Smoky mountains, and I plan to self-manage anything I buy. I know a lot of realtors and property managers are saying that demand is picking up, and I believe them, but real talk, I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Someone in my position. Someone who owns in Kissimmee and can tell me how they’re doing.

Is your STR paying for itself every month, or are you floating the costs until demand improves? Are you making a profit? What does your cash flow look like?

I looked into buying in Mexico. The biggest disadvantage that you will face there is the near complete lack of financing options. You will probably have to make the purchase in one lump sum cash payment. If you do manage to finance it, it will be at a high interest rate with 50% down, and a 5 year term. All of that combined usually means a leveraged buy in the US will give you a better ROI/ROE.

@William McAdams Lenoir

Awesome, thank you. I’ll pass that along!

@William McAdams Lenoir

Hi, sounds like you made a great deal! I have a friend who wants to use his VA loan eligibility to buy an STR property, but he's concerned that he'll get in trouble he can't convince lenders or the VA that it is legitimately his private residence. Did you find any trouble using a VA loan for this investment, or was it pretty straightforward?

@Samuel Penrod

That was really our main reason for getting in in Indy. Good economic prospects, decent rent to buy ratio (notwithstanding the current housing bubble that has put a bit of a squeeze on traditional leases), and most importantly, properties available for low, low prices. This property we just closed on was $45K.

@Brandon C.J. Grimes

Yeah, it was out of state for me too. I spent about 6 months making phone calls interviewing people to be our “core four” for our team there, but it’s finally paying off.

@Alex Mendoza

Irvington, Indianapolis

@Brandon C.J. Grimes hey, to answer your question, I just closed on my first deal... in Indiana, haha!

Home prices in Utah are astronomical. I’m sure I could be successful flipping properties, but I just decided that buy and hold didn’t make sense there.

I really appreciate all of the responses here. You've all definitely given me a lot to think about, and a big takeaway is that this is really going to depend on the specifics of the loan, of course. I asked a pretty broad question and ended up with some broad answers, but I think everyone is basically getting at "if the math works out, then it's a good deal."

@Greg Scott @David Barnett We're actually currently on a 30 year fixed mortgage and we don't pay PMI. It's at 4% and basically all the refi offers I'm seeing are lower than that.

@Mike Dymski that's exactly the kind of thing that I wanted someone to point out. I would never have known that if you didn't bring it up. Does that still apply if you end up moving back in after it's been rented for a 3 year period?

@Kyle Deutschmann @Chinmay J. thanks for the heads up on the advantages of the owner occupant refi rates. That makes me think if I am going to do this I should do it sooner rather than later to get through that year waiting period as soon as possible.

I think we'll probably end up doing it. I'm going to shop around for good refi's. I've never done it before, so it'll be a learning experience. I assume that I should just aim for the lowest interest rate on the shortest term that still allows the property to cash flow every month. Does that sound right?