All Forum Posts by: John Barrett

@Sama Pa I would suggest looking for local meetups as that is the best way to get connected with folks successfully doing what you are looking to learn.  A lot of investor groups have moved to doing virtual/zoom meetings during the pandemic.  That said, it is a really easy way to try meet other investors and you don't even have to leave your house.

The other thing you can do is start exploring podcasts, books and blog posts as this is another great way to gain wisdom from others you would like to emulate. You can learn from many great buy and hold investors without ever having met them.

Best of luck,

John

@Sungwoo Choo another option would be to hire a property management company or real estate agent to do the lease up of your property.  There are a lot of agents who will perform this service for landlords.  While this may lead to a lower rent and higher near term it will minimize your losses near term.

Additionally, if you do have to rent for a lower rate than you are expecting you could always do a shorter term lease agreement.

Best of luck,

John

@William J Goforth I personally like to get my financing figured out first. This way you know what your budget is and can go into making offers with an approval letter. Not sure what area of Washington you are looking at investing in but you can find a lot of agents on BP or Facebook who are familiar with buyers using VA loans.

Best of luck,

John

@Ian Wagner I am also located in Snohomish County and love investing here.  When restaurants are open again, I am sure there will be a big demand for in person meetups. There was a new one that was being hosted in downtown Snohomish which I hope will restart again. You can find a bunch of them on Meetup.com.

John

@Sachin Maskey we start generally start all tenants on a 6 month lease that will then revert to month to month following that.  This way we can determine if the tenant is a good long term fit.  If everything goes well, then generally we move to year long leases.

As others have stated, while it is necessary to have a lease in place, it does not prevent tenants from moving.  Given you have a history with this tenant and it seems like it is a good relationship, I would just let it revert to month to month.  Once things settle down with COVID you can get them signed up to a longer term lease.  Otherwise both you and your tenant have the flexibility to change if needed.

Joh

@Adam Azam We have refinanced the majority of our portfolio to both pull equity and lock in these low rates.  While I expect the low rates to be around for awhile due to the weakness of the overall economy, I like the security of having them locked in.  My feeling is that this is a great opportunity to setup your portfolio to perform dramatically better in the future when rates start to rise.

When being offered rates that are shockingly close to zero given their long term averages, I don't see the wisdom waiting.  Currently everyone is trying to refinance which is creating bottlenecks, delays and slightly higher prices.  That said, even if you rate is slightly high by today's standard, I don't think that it will be relevant 7 years from now.

John

@Jason Chung I believe it is referred to as the worst kept secret in Seattle that Amazon is looking to expand (more) into Bellevue.  While I don't expect this to have an immediate negative impact on the Seattle market, it will create a drag over time as these high wage earners move to the surrounding cities.  Additionally, this could lead to more pain for commercial buildings as Amazon has a massive office space footprint in Seattle.  That said, voters could finally get tired of the current city leadership and replace all of them with people who are not anti-business.  Hard to say which way it will go but I am betting Amazon's presence in Seattle will be smaller in the future than it is today.

As for investing, I focus on areas outside of Seattle as I don't want to deal with the regulatory burden and I am happy with the returns.  That said, if Seattle does start to decline due to Amazon leaving, my strategy could change.

Best of luck,

John

Hello,

I am looking to hear about others experience doing a cash out refi using Fannie Mae small loan program? I have engaged in gathering information from one of the vendors listed on Fannie Mae’s website but this is new territory for me and I would like to hear from others who have successfully navigated this process.

Specifically, what surprised you about the process and were there anything you wish you had known about upfront that would have impacted your decisions about using this financing option?

Did you decide to accept an interest only period and do you have any feelings about this good or bad?

Anything else you can think of that you believe people should know about this financing option or loan product?

Thank you and I look forward to learning from the wisdom of this community.

John

@Salman P. no problem at all.  Feel free to send me a message.

@Ariaan Cardenas While there has been a large amount of growth in the short-term rental market in the last few years, that strategy has really been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.  The majority of posts I have been seeing from local short-term rental hosts have been about shifting away from this strategy to a more traditional rental / lease agreement.

I do think this model will survive the pandemic, I would be cautious of this strategy at the moment unless I was certain that property could support itself as a traditional rental if necessary.  While this will dramatically lower your returns, you will not be at risk of loosing the property if consumer behavior takes a long time to return to pre-pandemic conditions.

Best of luck,

John