All Forum Posts by: Brian Harker

So my wife and I live in Northern Virginia (NOVA), and we are looking at moving out of the area in the near future. Due to the nature of our professions, we will very likely be back sometime in the future, and the way houses tend to appreciate in this area, it seems like a mistake to sell. We're committed to holding onto the house, so we'd like to rent it out after we move. The problem is that rental estimates show that we could expect to get $2400 a month for our place, and our monthly expenses on the house come to around $2500. We've been making payments on it for 5 years, and by now I have enough equity in the house to refinance and bring the monthly rate down to $1700. Considering that we're against selling it, it seems like a good move to me to turn the house into a cash-flowing asset by refinancing it rather than putting money into it every month just to hold onto it and build equity.

Is this a good idea in principle, or is there something that I'm not taking into consideration?

@Shadonna N. Interesting idea. What’s the site that you’re referring to, and do you think your friend would be open to letting me pick their brain?

@Russell Brazil

That’s definitely helpful and important insight.

Here's another idea though... Fairfax County classifies short term rentals as anything less than 30 days. I wonder if I could get around it an be successful by requiring a 30 night minimum for people on long business trips. I saw another person in my area requiring a 30 night minimum...

@Lucas Carl

Well, it’s very likely that we end up coming back to this area one day, so we’re not quite ready to dump the house altogether. This whole area appreciates super fast too, so even though it’s won’t cash flow positively initially, it may down the road, and if we do move back, we’ll end up losing money on a new place over just keeping what we have.

I’m definitely going to reach out to the people I’m seeing on air bnb here to see if they’re just ignoring the rules or if they found a way around them.

My wife and I are going to be moving out of our home in Reston, VA. We don't intend to sell, but we're trying to figure out how to make the most out of our home as an asset. Doing a traditional rental will allow us to just about break even (but not after paying a property manager), so we've been considering it for short term rentals. Upon further investigation, it looks like Fairfax county is really trying to make it difficult to do STR as a legitimate for-profit venture. The regulations say that it has to be rented out by the full time resident, and you can only rent it for 60 nights in a calendar year, which pretty well sinks the prospect altogether in my book, but I'm wondering if there are any creative entrepreneurs out there doing STR successfully in Fairfax county as an investment strategy and not just a side hustle in their primary residence. There are lots of properties in the county listed on Air BnB and VRBO. If so, how are you doing it?

Is anyone successfully employing the BRRRR strategy or flipping houses in the Utah Valley market? If so, what do you consider a good deal there?

@Josh E.

That certainly simplifies the calculation a bit. Thanks for the tip! I hope I can find a good deal soon!

@Cherie Orellana

Awesome tip. I’m from Utah originally which is partly why I’m interested in the market, but I’ll be investing from OOS.

Hi,

I'm just starting out and educating myself as much as possible, and I would really like to get into a buy-and-hold strategy for multi-family properties in the 84606 Utah Valley market. I'm starting to analyze deals that are available using BP's calculator tools, but I'm finding calculating rent for the multi-family units I'm looking at to be a little tricky using tools like Rentometer. It seems pretty straightforward for single family homes according to the number of beds, but it doesn't seem to distinguish between a single family home with 4 beds and a duplex with 2 beds per door. Anybody have any advice on getting accurate estimates for this?

Thanks!