All Forum Posts by: Gerhard Listander

I don't really have any book recommendations other than just read everything on Biggerpockets and you'll learn a lot. I do suggest you learn about your VA loan benefits, i'm not sure how the eligibility works for guard members. If you do qualify for a VA loan you can put a 0% down payment on a property and also pay no mortgage insurance. I would look into buying a duplex or up to a fourplex and live in one unit and rent the other units out. Keep your 50k for emergencies or repairs or even find another duplex/fourplex to buy with a conventional loan. A pretty easy and simple way of getting started in your real estate adventure.

I'm basically in the same situation. Stationed overseas and I get out of the Air Force in about 4 months. I'm going back home to northern Illinois though. I have a house in Texas which I bought with a VA loan about two years back and its now a rental. My plan is to use more of my VA loan benefit and try to find a duplex or up to a fourplex to buy, live in one unit and rent out the rest. Try to get it with some equity built in so I can refinance sooner rather then later and keep moving from one property to the next until I have a lot of them. It's been tough trying to find mutli-families where I'm at up north but I'd probably settle for a single family house bought at a good discount if possible of like 10%.

The easiest way is probably to use an FHA loan or VA loan if you qualify and buy a duplex up to a fourplex with the low down payment requirement of a FHA or VA. You have to live in one unit if you use one of those loan programs but you can rent out the other units.

Instead of trying to flip with no money you can use your VA loan benefits to buy a duplex or up to a fourplex. Live in one unit and rent the others out. I own a house in Texas that I bought with a VA loan thats rented out right now since i'm currently overseas. You can do a 0% down payment with a VA loan. The VA loan has a fee of $1,500 but you can wrap it into the mortgage on the house. My closing costs were under probably $1,000 but the house I bought was only around $75k.

I joined on a whim 5 and half years ago and have used a VA loan on one property before I was sent overseas. I can't wait to get out in 6 months, I wouldn't recommend joining just for a loan downpayment VA loan. Its more then a job and benefits, you definitely earn what you get. If you don't like it you'll just be suffering until you get out.

I bought a house about two years ago with a VA loan. Paid around $500 in cash for closing fees and there's a $1,500 fee for using the VA loan but it can be wrapped into the mortgage. The only thing I regret with my VA loan is I paid pretty close to market value for the house so when I got orders overseas I couldn't sell it without losing money but luckily it cash flows. So with a VA loan and 0% down make sure you buy with a good chunk of equity and that it can cash flow if you need to keep it when you PCS.

@Roshan K.

Ya I know it looks sketchy and defeats the purpose of the LLC but I figure if I kept the funds seperate and can prove that they were used for business purposes only it wouldn't be so bad as a temporary fix.

@Daniel Hyman

Thanks for the idea but another problem I have with using the government internet is a lot of things on websites don't work because of the firewall and network settings so when I try to apply for the account it just doesn't go to anything.

I'm having a hard time trying to find a bank that I can open a business account with online. I'm currently overseas with limited ways to communicate with others besides email. I think I can open another personal checking account at the bank I already have and it'll be under my name but i'm trying to buy out of state rentals with an LLC I own. Would it be frowned upon to use a seperate personal account strictly for the business until I get back to the states in about 6 months to phyiscally go and open a business checking account. The only purpose of the account would be to collect payments and pay bills like taxes and insurance on assets held by the LLC.

Thanks for the info guys I appreciate it. I just figured the banks would deny the account based on the business being in Ohio but the address I use is in Illinois.

My situation is this.. I'm currently overseas in the military getting ready to get out in less then a year, my home of record and place i'll be returning to is Illinois. I plan on investing in Ohio so i've formed my first LLC in Ohio and i'm using a statutory agent service in Ohio not a member of the LLC. So I don't have a physical address for my LLC in Ohio but when i'm trying to apply for business banking accounts they all need an address. Can I use my statutory agent as the address or do I need to get some sort of virtual mail box located in Ohio that will just forward the mail to my address in Illinois or is it possible to just use my Illinois address as the business address without the bank declining it? Thanks for the help.