All Forum Posts by: Christian Ehlers

I'd agree with Henry's points here, the # of real estate sales happening this year is around 40% less than prior years and thousands of agents are leaving the industry. This isn't a time where I would recommend jumping ship completely from a salaried position with steady pay to a 100% commission career in a slow market. Do it part time, be sure you want to go full time and get a bit of momentum first before jumping ship. 

Also becoming an agent won't make it easier to qualify for a real estate loan either, you'll likely need 2 years of tax returns as an agent to qualify. 

Often with on market properties I've seen you use the regular purchase and sales agreements and paperwork for your state and then a bunch of addendums for Subto. I would see if you can find a Pace Morby Student in Tx that can walk you through it as you definitely need to have the paperwork right for Subto. 

If you don't find one here you can find a bunch in his free FB group, i think its creative real estate with pace morby. 

I'm not invested in the Poconos but Phillip is right on from what I've seen in general, in other markets. Usually properties with more bedrooms tend to be better as you get more revenue out of them with less trips for your cleaners.

You can get larger properties booked pretty easy usually on short notice too but that's usually only with a significant discount for the guests, so that smaller groups can afford to stay there last minute. 

Definitely need a contractor to help with this, ask others for referrals but be sure to get a couple quotes and don't pay anybody for the whole job upfront. Too many have made that mistake and had contractors run off with their money

Usually there's a 6 to 12 month "seasoning Period" with a lot of lenders to refi the money out but there are lenders out there that will do a much shorter time period. Talk to a few mortgage brokers about your plans and they should be able to help you, if not you need to find "portfolio lenders" - small local banks that will be flexible on their terms because they keep the loans in house.

I agree with Chris that your primary residence needs to meet you and your lady's needs more than being just an investment, but of course it's good to think of those things too. 

I would suggest buying instead of renting and putting money in the market because even if you do earn $16K from your investments you are going to pay WAY MORE than that in rent over 4 years...   I don't know rents for your area but if it's $2K/month for 4 years that's $96K you can't get back. 

Get the house/condo/whatever, take the appreciation, the loan paydown, the tax benefits and don't only focus on cashflow.

What Andrew said^^. If you are looking to make an offer all you need is the state purchase and sale paperwork which you can get from any agent or you can give them an LOI (Letter of intent) as well. If you are looking to draft the Note then just have your title company or attorney handle drafting that. They should be able to very easily if they have the basic terms on the purchase and sales, and if they can't you may want to find somebody more experienced in this

You can do a "Mirror Wrap" instead of straight Subject To on the existing mortgage (it's basically creating a new mortgage where the terms are exactly the same as the first, so there is something to foreclose on if your buyer stops paying) this accomplishes the same thing as subject to but gives you more protection. 

Then for the seller finance portion you and the buyer determine the purchase price, down payment, interest rate, loan term, balloon payments, prepayment penalties or anything else you can think of (the first 4 terms are usually the most common and important). 

Typically a Buyer on seller finance is willing to pay a higher price, but in exchange are looking for lower down payment and/or interest rate than they could get at the bank. Most investors I talk to IDEALLY want 10% down or less, but everything is negotiable, if you are going to require 20% then you'll likely need to bring down your price or rate to make it worth it for them.  Hope this helps and good luck

Attorney or Title Company works. Don't sweat the details of the paperwork too much, let the professionals do that, it's usually pretty straight forward for them anyways. Spend more time & energy on finding these opportunities and negotiating the right terms

Get a real estate specific CPA and talk with them often, it's not worth the headache of trying to do your own taxes when a CPA will save you tons of time & often know about deductions you may have never heard of