All Forum Posts by: Gareth Fisher

Anyone else have any opinions?  Still struggling on figuring out what to do.   I wonder if a wait and see approach would be best. If rate continue there downward trend, it may pay to wait a little longer?

Thabks for the tips.   I am a low debt guy as well. However I think paying it off earlier will hamper my ability to invest and grow other income producing assets.   Were at about 50% ltv on the property which is a great defensive position.   I also dont know that I want to pay it all off because I dont plan on staying here long term.  I feel like if I would pay it off.  I would end up refiing the money out to purchase something else with so whats the point?

Hi guys got a question related to strategic planning.

Our goal is to get down to a single income to improve quality of life.    One of the options for accomplishing this goal is I am looking at refinancing our personal home to alleviate stress on our monthly budget.  With 2 incomes it is not much of  burden, but is a little much to cover with only 1 income.

We are currently at about 50% ltv on our personal home.  6 years into a 15 yr mortgage at around 3%     If we would refi into a 30 or 20 yr this would cut our payments into half.  Decreasing our monthly expenses by about 20%.   However I ran the numbers out in a 20 yr projection.  Vs keeping the mortgage and investing heavily after its payed vs refinancing and investing the remainder.   The math says to keep it the way it is by investing our full mortgage payment after our mortgage is paid off we would amass a nice sum of money in 20 yrs about 500k more then refinancing.  However I think it would be unlikely we would both keep working after the mortgage would be paid off.  Also we don't see this as our forever home, so there is that.  Refinancing now while it is our personal home would give us a good rate and would cash flow nicely after we move out.  

 We are in our mid 30s and I think that refinancing would move us closer to our goals our monthly payments would be reduced significantly. However I am not a fan of holding lots of debt and try to manage risk.   On the other hand having lower payments would seem to lower risk.  Lots of factors at play.  Not really sure what to do.   Looking for any advice or opinions on what to do here.  

Heck of a good start keep up the great work.

Yup that was the understanding that we came ttoo...smh

I recently put an office building under contract at a good price.   The plan was to convert it from an office building to a 4 unit apartment building.  It had plenty of parking and the building was in decent shape.  Due to the great price it seemed that everything was coming together nicely.    

However a friend tipped me off that we were going to probably add a fire sprinkler system.     After digging some more we found out not only were we going to have to add a fire sprinkler system, we were also going to have to make one of the units handicap accessible.     

Obviously these added costs blew up the budget and killed what was looking to be a great deal.

I find myself pretty bitter at this.  I live in a 300k plus home, yet I don't have a sprinkler system.    Why should a tenant who is paying 750 a month have one?   Regulations like this create larger barrier to entries, hurt our local economies and keep a small guy from growing.

Has anyone had experience with this and has anyone found any good work around's?   I thought we had found a really good strategy but now see very little future in it knowing that building codes are such.

I have considered looking into taking classes and becoming certified in the systems, so I can do it myself.   Has anyone looked into this?

Any other advice  on get budgets to work with so many codes and regs.

150 a sqft on average,  might be able to get it down to 125 with cheaper finishes

 I'm just over in Manhiem.  

Id be happy to have lunch sometime if u would like.

 What is it that your looking to know?   

We have many different markets and plenty of old houses to fix up.  Even in this high demand low inventory deals can still be find. I know of multiple investors flipping 40+ homes a year.    Central PA has a bunch of great markets to invest in.   

  Typical pitfalls, Having a good home inspector is worth there weight in Gold.   These old homes can quickly become money pits many of the properties I scoop often need work for the first few years to catch up on deferred Maintenance.   Lots of old homes some with some major problems.

Deals can still be found, but they will take some hard work to find.   

 Middletown and Lower Dauphin are not considered good school districts by most that I know. Most that can afford choose to move out of those districts.  However these markets are the most likely you will find a good cash flowing rental or multi unit.