All Forum Posts by: Gloria Mirza

I have been investing in Stockton and Elk Grove.  You can cash flow neutral with a 25% down in those areas and have the added bonus of appreciation.

Thank you all for the input.   I can't really pull out enough equity in HELOCs to buy another house, each property is at about 60 ltv now.  Sounds like I just need to do more shopping around and check out commercial loans a little more.

So I have finally hit the 10 property mark. They each have a mortgage with a rate between 3.5% and 4.0%, so I don't want to refinance them into an umbrella loan or anything like that. My question is, what is the best rate I can expect going forward with portfolio lenders. I have excellent credit and my DTI is around 42.

I got one quote from a portfolio lender for 6.875 5/1 ARM, 30 year pay down. Are there better rates out there? What would be considered a "good" rate from a portfolio lender? What about commercial loans on 5+ unit properties, would those come with better loan terms?

I have done a cash out refi about 1 month after purchasing a home using a Fannie Mae backed loan, nothing fancy about that. I don't think there is a 6 mo. seasoning period, unless you are talking about some special rule that only pertains to moving title from LLC.

Hi Peter,

Have you considered investing in Stockton, Sacramento, or Vallejo?   There are advantages to having the property local and those cities are still very affordable.  I have 5 properties in Sacramento and 4 in Elk Grove and it has worked out great for me.

longer lease is actually a benefit for the tenant not the landlord.   If a tenant wants to move they will probably just break the lease and you are SOL.  On the other hand if rents go up, you are stuck in a longer lease and forced to honor it.  

I have been doing 1 1/2 to 2 hours away and have 8 properties to self manage.  I don't mind getting the properties ready for new tenants since it's usually just incremental fixes, but getting a new property fixed up and online is getting to be a major PITA!

@Alexander Lang a 401k is not reported to the credit reporting agencies and does not affect your DTI. The only downside of this is that if it's a regular 401k (not a roth 401k) you are paying interest in after tax dollars and will be taxed again on the interest you paid yourself when you retire and take the money out. Furthermore since you are paying yourself the interest, you do have the option to subtract whatever interest you paid yourself from your ongoing 401k contributions without affecting your 401k savings rate.

I pay off my credit card balance before the credit card statement is even generated.  This will give you a huge jump in your score.  It increased my score by about 40 points.

$1,400 insurance on a $14,000 property?  It sounds like you would be better off insuring the structure yourself.  i.e. don't get insurance, and on the off chance something catastrophic happens take your loss and sell the land for $3k or whatever it is worth.  I know we always advocate insurance but that's when you're paying $500 to insure a 250k structure.  When the insurance is 10% of the purchase price it starts making more sense to just go it alone.  If I had a car worth 14k (my car's are worth less than that, but that's another story) and they wanted $1,400 for full coverage, I wouldn't buy the insurance.  Why buy it on a house that's even less likely to be completely destroyed.