All Forum Posts by: Elizabeth Campanella

A HA! I found a mistake in my calculations. The sheets my mortgage broker has been giving me list the HOA fees for the condos in the same section with P&I, taxes and insurance, and I didn't realize that until tonight. So the Total Payment line that I thought was the mortgage, was actually the mortgage PLUS the HOA, which I had also been recording separately in my spreadsheet. So the instant I fixed it, my monthly income went from red to black. Huzzah.

Thanks, but as I said, I already have a property at $157K that won't work with putting even 35% down, so finding another more expensive property probably won't do me much good.  I'm wondering if in this area people just use cash for the full purchase.

Greetings BP. I'm attempting to find a place for either flip or rent, but I live in Loudoun County Virginia. I haven't found anything in the last 3 months (am using MLS - I'm not interested in direct marketing) that will work. I have 50K+ in cash to use as a down payment, but I have to finance the rest. With closing costs and points plus rehab costs on the places I'm looking at, I can't even squeeze 10K out in profit. The most recent place is $157K with 20-25K rehab to flip or 27-35K to make it sturdy and nice enough for a &1600 a month rental. This place is a condo, so has a nearly $400 a month condo fee that includes all utilities. That would be fine if I could charge $2000 a month to include that, but the highest rent in the complex is 1600 INCLUDING utilities, which would mean that I have to get a mortgage that costs me no more than about $825 a month, and to do that I'd need to put down about 50%. I'd love to do a townhouse with no condo fees, but those are 50-100K higher in price, and I think I'd be in the same boat. How is it that I have 50K in CASH and I can't make this work?? I thought about looking in Winchester or West Virginia where the prices are lower, but the rents are also lower. What am I missing here?

Thank you for your time.

Elizabeth