All Forum Posts by: Ciprian L.

@Camille Joos-Visconti I changed last year from my previous tax person and the consultation was around 2 hours with the same person, I was very pleased with the experience. 

@Camille Joos-Visconti

I'm using Robert Hall & Associates, their office is in Glendale.

@Shamim Toufighian

First step is to talk to a lender to see for how much you qualify with an FHA loan, then look for properties.

It's hard to find a good deal in this market but not impossible.

@Shamim Toufighian You can buy a 2-4 unit with FHA , you can put 3.5% down. You don't need a big down payment to purchase a primary residence.

You have a 650k house that rents for 2600/month. Can you find a cheaper house that rents for 2600? 

If yes, I would sell it to get the 500k tax free money and buy at least another rental property and a primary residence with 30 years loan. If you want to pay it earlier you can do it.

@Tarquinn Curry

I purchased a multifamily last year with FHA and is not only for first time home buyer. I already had a few loans.

If your goal is passive income buy a multifamily. A single family is a personal residence and will not bring you any income unless you decide to rent individual rooms. The plan of waiting for the value to go up so you can refinance and buy a few more is more like a speculation than investing, is nice when it's happening but you can not build your entire plan around that. What if the property don't appreciate over the next few years, would you prefer to be stuck in a single family or multi that brings you income every month?

It's hard to find a good deal these days, but not impossible. Keep looking and if 40k is all you have to invest don't use all of it for down payment if you invest in multifamily, you will need reserves for maintenance and other unexpected expenses.

I purchased a property last year using FHA financing , just because the loan amount was over the limit for 5% conventional financing.

I don't know if the rules are the same, but you have to pay the mortgage insurance for the duration of the loan for FHA. You will have to refinance to a conventional when you'll have 20-25% equity and pay all the closing costs again in order to get rid of the mortgage insurance and you can never know if the rates will be as good as now.

You should take that extra cost of refinancing in consideration, before you decide to get an FHA or conventional loan.

From my experience, I would chose a 5% conventional over 3.5% FHA.

@Steven Story. I started by investing out of state a few years back. 

Last year I purchased a duplex locally and I live in one of the units (house hacking), the duplex was purchased with FHA financing. The down payment was less than the down payment that I put on any of the out of state properties which require 20-25% down.

I don't know what is your situation, but if you could move in one of the units of the fourplex that you are talking about and live there for 1 year you could get an FHA loan. After 1 year you could move back and rent the other unit.

@Yael Shomron

I don't know anything about the area but, I'm an out of state investor.

If a local investor would tell me to RUN AWAY, I would just move on. There are a lot of better investment properties that you can buy.

If you buy it and have a bad experience, it can be your first and last investment property.

I agree with @Xavier Morales and @Judy Parker. If you can not get 3.5% (10k for a down payment) any other way, you are not ready to invest yet.

Keep the 401k money for a real hardship. 

Keep reading in the forums and get educated, read the success stories and also the horror ones, while you find a way to save the money for a down payment and also have some reserves before you start investing in rental properties.