All Forum Posts by: Eric Robinson

8 quads - nice!  I'm just starting out & trying to buy 1 quad.  That's painful enough in itself.  Do you invest in the OKC area?

Hi Alex,

I'm just getting started as a real estate investor myself & had similar questions. I'm certainly not a lawyer or seasoned investor, but what I've learned is that an LLC will be probably be unnecessary at first unless you have a ton of assets to protect. The main reason for having an LLC is for asset protection. If you're like me, you're not starting with much, so it won't be needed yet. Also, if you're using bank loans (conventional, FHA, VA, etc.), I've heard it is difficult (or impossible?) to buy property via an LLC. So I've decided to use insurance for protection at first, then later move properties into an LLC.

The thing that frustrates me most is - if I was doing this deal 2 months from now, the student loan $ wouldn't be a factor at all since there would be no deposits to have to account for since they only look back 60 days. 

Hi @Kirk King 

I considered that, but I think I would still be in the same boat. According to the bank, the FHA doesn't allow you to use any unsecured loan $ and you can't use any $ secured by the target property toward the reserve requirement. Unfortunately, the only other property I have is the house I'm currently living in which only has about 10K in equity at most.

After working several weeks on my first deal, Wells Fargo is telling me in the 11th hour that I don't have enough in reserve funds to get the loan. It's a house-hacking deal using an FHA loan to buy a 4plex. Since November, the mortgage specialist at WF has been telling me that I will have no problem getting the loan.

Now I'm being told I can't because a good portion of the funds I've scraped together are from student loans. According to them, student loan $ I have in savings can't be used toward the down payment, closing costs, or the 3 months worth of mortgage payment reserve required by the FHA.

I really don't want to give up on this deal.  Has anyone overcome this problem or a smiliar problem?  Is there anything creative I can do to get this deal done? 

No.  They will only do that for 1 to 4 units.  And you have to owner occupy.

@Richard Smith 

I can't wait to see your analysis of the census and BLS data sets.  I have some training in data mining - let me know if I can be of any help.

@Zach Burnett 

As a fellow Airman (retired) and Oklahoma Newbie, I say welcome Zach! I've only been a BP member for a few months myself and it has been an invaluable part of my learning experience. I also recently joined the local REI club - as others on here have advised.

@JJ Gritts 

Thanks for the info on the meet-up!

Oh no - I missed it!  Will this be available to view at all in the future?

@Jason Garder @Zach Sikes - I am doing this now with an FHA loan. It's a 4plex for $390,000 & rents total $3,800 per month. The FHA can work, but the added PMI ($426/mo in my case) makes it difficult to cashflow. Which is why I'll probably refi as soon as possible to get rid of the PMI.

Also, yes there is a limit for FHA - normally $271K as Zack mentioned. However, it goes up for multiple units. I guess this is not well known, because I had to inform my loan officer about it. For a 4plex, the limit is over $500K.