All Forum Posts by: Stone Jin

Since you are in the area having a PM may not be critical to your success.  I have a full time job and still manage all my local properties (my portfolio is slightly larger than yours), my wife does the back end books and I deal with showings.  The maintenance is just my tenants texting me and me texting a handyman, plumber, garage guy, roofer etc etc.  Similar to your mindset, I have a hard time justifying to the 30-40k commission I would have to give up for that service.

With that said, everything that we have out of my local area, I use PM for.  It is what it is for those properties and I run my numbers with PM included and they work fine.  

You can try it, worst case you go back to the agency.  However my experience is that it doesn't really take much time and allows me to have greater control over my properties.

I think it is quite common that people want to seek out people who are like minded.  If you want to meet real estate investors in your area, go to a meet up then try to cultivate those relationships by having 1 on 1 meets like lunch or coffee.  The group of friends I had in my 20's are not into real estate so I had to search out new friends.  I meet with 1-2 investors a month for lunch.  I try to provide value to them and things sort of just work.

I think a lot of people start with a condo as their entry point in real estate investing.  My first investment was a 1 bedroom 1 bath condo.  There is nothing wrong with a condo as long as you are aware of the downside with the hoa fees and hoa rules (potential for them to convert to owner occupied only).  Run the numbers and if they work for you, why not?  

Usually tenants that want to pay a huge chunk upfront will have issues.  I'd pass.

Can you refi the condo using conventional since you have equity and then buy the second using FHA? Are you looking to move into this second home or use it for another rental?

What is wrong with the water?  Obviously people need clean water to live, if you are saying that the water is contaminated, then I would say yes tenants will not like that and it also puts you in a risky position if they do get sick on it. 

Sounds like if murphy's law strikes you would be in significant distress.  I think both houses are probably going to lose money in the long run.  If you are negative cashflow now in MO, you likely will continue to be negative cashflow for the foreseeable future.  At some point a roof or AC will wipe out years of cashflow.  

I would think the DE house is going to cost dearly as things break as everything is over 100 years old.  

If I was in your position, I'd probably look to sell both properties and buy something that you could easily afford on just 1 salary.  I would then focus energy on finding rentals that are purposefully rentals and not just houses you live in throughout the years in various geo's.  I've always been thought that cashflow pays the bills.

I know some of the crowd funding sites have sorter term loans like 3-5 months.  However if you are looking to jump on a deal I would keep cash on hand.  The little bit of interest you would get is nothing if you miss out on the right deal.

doesn't seem like a winner to me.  Also your interest rate seems really low.  Investor rates on stick built homes are like 5.75, I would assume manufactured housing would be higher.

I think from the tax standpoint nothing will change as your LLC will likely be a passthrough. However what's the point of documenting the rent to oneself? Are you looking to have the rent count as income so it doesn't lower your DTI? The money is going from left pocket to right pocket, I'm not sure I see the advantage of doing this.