All Forum Posts by: Scott Titus

I have a MacBook Pro that I bought in 2012 and use it very heavily. I’ve never had issues, ever, unlike a lot PC’s that I use for work. Not to get super techie, but Mac makes writing their code difficult so the chance of getting viruses are far less common than on PC’s. I decided to upgrade my Mac to a solid slate hard drive this past spring, cost me about 300 bucks to upgrade that and all the memory...and again, I’ve had it since 2012. I also have a iPad and an iPhone (and a surface Pro - more on this in a minute), something to think about is if you have several apple devices, they will all share the documents between all of them seamlessly. For instance, I may work on a cost analysis excel spreadsheet today from my MacBook Pro, leave to see a property and take notes in the same excel spreadsheet on my iPhone and get back home and resume working on it again on my Mac. The same can be done if you use google docs, etc. I’m not saying there aren’t ways to make this happen without having Macs, but Apple makes it as simple as possible. I also have a Surface Pro and I absolutely LOVE it. I use it often and have so for the last couple of years. But, I’m already on my second one as my first one just died on me one day. This goes back to my comment about PC’s dying on me...but I expect it.

Micah Carter the best advice is what you decide to make work for you. It a few years ago my wife and I were in a very similar position and opted to buy a personal residence rather than house hack a MFR. We went back and forth about what was best, we would talk ourselves into one scenario then turn around and talk ourselves out of it. In the end we decided to buy a residence and would buy a mfr in the future...hindsight is 20/20. It took us 3 years to get that mfr due to unexpected financial burdens of buying a residence first (landscape, upkeep, hot water tank goes out, etc etc). Many of these can be expected with any investment property as well, but you have income offsetting the loss. I tried to convince my wife to sell our residence since it’s appreciated so much and move into a mfr that we house hack....but moving backwards with a family is TOUGH. If I could do it all again I would buy a mfr right out of the gate. House hack it, put in a good tenant and live there a couple years. Save some money and do it again into another one. Make a 5-7 year plan where you have the house you want in 5-7 years but you’ll also have 2-3 mfr’s bringing in cash flow. Good luck.

Alex Shaughnessy if you need a banker that’ll loan that money, I may know one depending on the area.

@Zachary Morrell the Kansas City (and surrounding suburbs) are exploding right now. There are a lot of investors moving in buying properties fast, but that doesn't mean there aren't great opportunities there still. I currently have a couple SFR's in the 30-75k range and bought both of them off market and both through the same bank. I'm happy to share my bankers info with you as well as my realtor, but search around, talk to several. Don't be afraid to make good contacts with more than one, as I've bought from a few different ones.

All-in-all Kansas City is a great market as it’s growing fast. Good luck!

Brent Kiger I strongly suggest Steve at A-1 home inspection, I am happy to give you his contact info in pm if you would like. He is fantastic! I strongly recommend him as I used a different person on one property and learned a hard lesson. I’m happy to go deeper into the discussion if you’d like, but that’s my .02 cents. Tell him I gave him a recommendation, I always love giving referrals for great people. For the record, I’m not affiliated with him in anyway.

Earnest Mallard congrats on starting down the path of an exciting and addicting future. I’m a GWOT vet and am interested in apartment complexes as well. When I got started the end of 2016, I thought I wanted to jump right into an apartment and someone wiser taught me to wade into the waters from the beach rather than jump off the boat. Meaning, buy a duplex or three and learn about management, tenants, cash flow, etc. It has turned out to be amazing advice for me as I just went under contract for my eleventh unit a week ago. My 5-7 year plan is to buy a 15-20 unit apartment complex...and the way things have been going for me, I’m planning on it being in my 5 year plan. Don’t take me wrong, I’m not telling you to go this route, but it has been very helpful for me because I didn’t know anything that I “thought” I knew. Good luck.

This is a GREAT post, I have been battling the same thing for the last year and a half. My wife is FAR more financially conservative (very risk averse) than I am and would rather have it sit in a bank rather than an asset. Even after convincing her to buy a duplex (and then another one) and watching the cash flow grow quickly every month, she’s still hesitant. She didn’t care about biggerpockets calculator spreadsheets, numbers, etc. In her mind she’s moving controlled money into an uncontrollable asset that may cost more money to keep up. Finally, after me trying to get her into it for a long time (mostly because she’s smarter than me), she was talking with one of her friends in another state and discovered her friend had gotten into real estate. Her friend explained how her and her husband had gotten started buying SFR’s and duplexes and recently bought a building...once my wife heard it from someone other than me, she realized I wasn’t just trying to sell her snake oil. Now we talk about cash flow, appreciation, etc. and she’s getting her real estate license just for the purpose of investing. My point of this long story is that sometimes it takes someone else to offer a different perspective. Maybe one of your friends is into it, maybe someone you know, or she knows. Good luck, I battled with it for a long time before having a lucky breakthrough.

Max Tanenbaum that’s true unless you buy them on a commercial loan...downside is not every lender will do that and sometimes there’s higher interest rates with commercial loans. The last two duplexes my wife and I purchased were on a commercial loan so we could get them bought (due to them being a great deal) fast. The goal for us was to get them bought, hold them for 10-12 months and refi them into a 30 year fixed. It worked out great, with ups and downs doing it this way. I think I’m going under contract on 3 more of them today (fingers crossed) and will most likely buy them the same way. I’m sure someone far smarter than me will tell me it’s not smart, but it allows me to only put down 20% and close I’m 2-3 weeks.

“you are likely an 800+ score borrower, raised by parents who taught you how to save, your are very conservative (likely limiting your potential) and you can buy cash” Whoa. 😳 Is something wrong with saving? That’s how I got started and how I’ve bought every property I’ve got.

Just to add to Matt R. the city giving landlords until the end of March to get their inspections done. After they they’re saying they’re going to issue fines on those landlords who aren’t in compliance. The inspection process is simple, but how they decided who would be selected to inspect is something I haven’t figured out. Good luck.