All Forum Posts by: John Rooster

I have never done that other than for small amounts of money at an airport. It is certainly reasonable for them to charge a big transaction fee and spread for exchanging $100 U.S. But you say the conversion is "expensive" for a large sum of money, lets say $200,00 U.S., the price of an average house. How much would one lose in the conversion of $200,000 (US equivalent) from Euros to USD using a competitive foreign currency exchanger like Wells Fargo? My guess would be $500. What is the actual number?

What expensive conversion rates are you speaking of? I don't intend to sound discouraging, I actually want to see you attempt this.

eta: $686/coin as I type this

Because Architects, excepting Howard Roark, know nothing about local building costs and practices. All they do is process information though a computer CAD program, which generates generalized cost information, then they put a stamp on it. I need someone to provide me ballpark figures on projects, before I commit to them, and at a reasonable $, not an inflated Architect $. I just want to build a house not a museum.

Sure. But the further I venture from my house, the greater the deal has got to be. Traveling to and from a job site to monitor progress is not a good use of my time. I would sooner buy a house 3 minutes from me and net $15,000 then buy a house an hour from me and net $25,000.

My situation is that I have remodeled 200+ homes over the last 15 years, but I now for the first time find myself in a situation in the Denver Metro area where the demand for fixers so much exceeds the supply that one can't buy a fixer at a low enough price to make an acceptable profit, at least by my standards. If I don't find something for my crew to do in the next month, I am going to have to let them go. So I am looking at new home construction as an alternative. I have a guy on my crew that has a general contractors license, so he could handle pulling the permits. I am looking to build a few spec homes. Although I built one home 10 years ago, I would not say I am qualified to just start building more. So, I am looking for some sort of paid consultant that could advise me on local building practices and costs. Do you think such a person exists? If so, what would they be called? Architect or Engineer is not the answer I am looking for.

Regarding Bit Coins: I have already commented on them in the existing thread.

Regarding Rentalutions: Just some two bit (pun intended) software company trying to capitalize off the buzz surrounding bit coins.

I have purchased three houses with foundation problems. I still own all three, 8 year, 5 year, and 3 year holds respespectivelly. I bought them very cheap, and they make great rentals. I have put a lot of money into them, but I don't fell comfortable selling them quite yet, I am still observing settling in the 8 year and 5 year holds, and have been doing some tweaking in between tenants over the years. The 3 year hold is solid, and I will probably sell in 2014. The 5 year hold one is particularly interesting, sometime in 2005 some investor bought it, did some cosmetic repairs, then sold it to a third party without disclosing the prior structural issues, which he did not repair. That investor did the same cosmetic trickery to a half dozen other homes in the area, and ended up doing a few year in jail as a result.

So the moral of the story is to not buy a property with a foundation problem unless you are willing to put in a lot of money to do the repairs, and to hold it for a long to time to assure the repairs are effective.

I agree that "passive income" is an inappropriate term. It is my observation that it is most often used by people that do not own any rental properties. But I can not say I am a fan of 'proactive income" though. I don't have a better term to offer.

Did you hear that big popping sound? Trading frozen at MtGox at $877.46 about 45 minutes ago. After adverse news reports out of China, the biggest current market for bit coins.

Profit on property held less than a year is taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. Profit on property held more than a year is taxed as long term capital gains. The tax advantage of renting a property is that by default you end up holding it for more than a year, and thus you pay long term capital gains tax. As with any tax scenario, application varies based upon your personal income situation.