All Forum Posts by: Helen Zhang

Whenever someone asks you to waive inspection, it is hinting something is wrong especially it is recently remodeled. I would not give anyone the benefit of doubt when I make my purchases. 

@Joe Splitrock while I wholeheartedly agree with you, but I think in return the mortgages are also required to give house owners a 6-months break. That kind made it even. Of course that leads to the lost of investors money in return. The law is hoping for that the money is just a number for investors, but for renters it would be the difference between sheltered or homeless. 

I can resonate my experience with yours and confirm that your experience is legit. They took forever to clear the title, I did not close until almost 3 months after winning the bid. 

What I do not understand is:

1. Are we allowed to choose our title company? If so, how? As buyers, we were given crisp instructions on whom we need to wire the deposit to. This means the title company has already been “chosen”. 

2.I’m not sure what went wrong through the process as auction.com agents seems to be clueless. They have only informed me that is a problem with title, but no details as to what is wrong with the title or what would I need to do next.

Afterall, I did successfully made the pruchase so the effort was worth it. But the whole process was def not smooth. 

I have nothing to sell to you @Mary Griffin, and I noticed that there “might” be some wrong understandings that you have with investment...just a few tips and hope you might have a chance to put them in use.

1. In bay area, it is cheaper to rent than buy

2. If you buy and cost a ton more than rent, you are practically paying more in housing

3.I see that you wanted to buy a property near your work, so I am going to assume you wanted a primary resident. Investment typically means you are using the property to generate income. Sometimes a primary resident can generate income... airbnb or build equity. But you would have to ask the question of do you build money faster with equity or simply put it in bank.

good luck in starting out! I’m sure you will find plenty useful tips on Biggerpockets. 

I have a feeling that you are lacking research on how turkey companies make their income. Instead of looking through your numbers, it is not going to be sufficient for anyone to give you actual opinions until before and after pictures are shown. 

I am interested to see your experience and would love to give you an honest opinion of your property. Generally, we would know if a turkey company is "expensive" as they are trying to upsell their property simply by looking at the property that they are selling to investors. 

Feel free to private chat with me and I am happy to give you an opinion. 

Buy or Rent is a common question. 

There are two part of the question:

1. Can you afford it? 

you should be able to find a ton of affordability calculators out there to answer the affordability question.

2. Is it worth to buy?

Here is my formula and hopefully it is useful to you:  (assuming the house that you are going to buy has the equal condition as where you are living now): 

monthly mortgage interest + monthly mortgage insurance + monthly property tax + monthly HOA + monthly property insurance

Is this number bigger than your monthly rent? if so, keep renting. Otherwise, buy it. 

Without even reading into the details of your description of your tenant, the answer is always YES as long it is not against the Fair Housing Act. 

@Joey Copper Those who tell you that you might not be able to do XYZ, or it is too complicated for you to do XYZ, is simply telling that they want your money because they only know how to do XYZ. (I'm sure you already get that).

It is your money that you are investing in, and you have a right to do everything the way you wanted to do and know everything that you wanted to know. Anyone who tells you otherwise, tell them f* off. 

If one day you have decided that you no longer wanted to manage a property, you can then hand it off to someone else. Meanwhile, I say go eat the orange in whichever way you wanted to eat. You put your money on the table for investment, you should at least get a chance to have a taste on your orange peels regardless you will like it or not. 

I am a software engineer as well, however, I do not want to resonate with the experience. Most of my colleagues are investors, not real estate investors as real estate investors actually sucking up time regardless you are doing flips or rentals. They tend to invest in stocks or hedge as there is no need for them to actively managing anything.  

What I noticed is kinda interesting but sad that I would have to agree, that the software engineers that are real estate investors generally do not have solid sharp engineering skills and are not whole heartily interested in engineering (yes including me). Afterall, what you do other than the 8 hours of sleep and the 8 hours of salary work is what you are truly interested in. A true engineer would still be engineering things even after that 8 hours.  Unfortunately, I do feel that engineers like us who chose to become engineers just love the salary and perks. Although I do have to admit software engineering jobs are way more fun any other jobs that I know of. It requires the least amount of education and the payout of education investment is huge. But if becoming a janitor can earn me a higher salary, I would consider becoming a janitor. 

For those who see the benefit of becoming a software engineer, they obviously have the capability of choosing the shortest path to become rich. So it is not a surprise that they are good at seeking real estate deals. 

@Logan Allec @Steven Hamilton II Thank you for the response, your contribution to this thread is super helpful. I am curious if my LLC would incur $800 LLC fees as well. My LLC is texas LLC and it has a property in California. I am a Texas resident and I am actively managing the property. Is it fair to say that it will not incur $800 LLC fees?