All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Account Closed

I have known @robyn Thompson since 2006 or so, I consider her a great teacher of rehabs

I'm of the opinion there is absolutely nothing wrong with buying a super leveraged property as long as you bought it correctly.  If you buy in the right area, project the right analysis, don't fudge your numbers and justify bad ones, you should be fine bringing as low as 3% down for a property.  

I think the reason people say "low money down is a terrible idea" is because so many really extreme novice investors with zero clue about real estate fail when they bring less than 20% down.  I believe these are the same people that would fail even if they brought 50% down.  It's just much more noticeable when they bring 3% down to a bad deal because of this scenario:

A. dummy REI buys a negative cash flowing buy and hold rental property either because they had no clue how to run a buy and hold analysis or they thought it was OK to buy a negative cash flower due to the fact their exit strategy was going to be sell in 1-2 years. They noticed other homes EXACTLY like the one they bought increase by over 18% in value in one year, so they say, "heck, I'll buy this place even though I have to pay a measly $80/month towards the mortgage because the total gross rents don't fully cover it"

B.  housing market crashes

C. dummy REI realizes that now after having a baby and buying a new car, they cannot afford to pay their primary residence mortgage along with another $80/month towards their rental properties mortgage. Not to mention that new furnace they had to buy since one of them went out in the property.

D. dummy REI feels they are better off selling the rental property at a huge loss because it's too much of a mental drain on them to own it.

E. smart REI buys at large discount

:)

Not having a sufficient cash reserve. And buying properties with less than 20% down.

@Account Closed and @KJ Smith, sorry, couldn't get the @ feature to work in the post above so made a new post....

Hello. I am a real estate appraiser in east tennessee.  I am hoping to learn about real estate investing,  particularly multifamily properties. 

@kj 

@KJ SmithI've read a lot of books on apartment buildings (and am an active apt investor). I would start out with The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apartment Buildings by Steve Berges. Really good book. 

@KJ Smith and @Account Closed If you are looking for free resources, you're in the right place. Biggerpockets has a ton of great content in the forums and blog articles. One of their regular contributors Michael Blank also has a lot of free resources on his own site, including a podcast, dedicated entirely to apartment investing. In addition, I purchased his deal analyzer template to underwrite my deals and I have found it extremely useful and clean for presenting to investors. For paid education, I attended Dave Lindahl's Multifamily 3 day bootcamp and learned a TON of information. The bootcamp came with a home study kit and access to a coach to review any deals that we put under contract. The course was not cheap but the value I got from it far outweighed the cost. 

For books to help with understanding NOI and the various underwriting calculations, I'd recommend Frank Gallinelli's "What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow."

Feel free to reach out with any additional questions.