All Forum Posts by: John Morgan

@Seth M. Jones

I’m in your same position. I have 6 SFRs and two are paid off. My four mortgages have fairly low interest rates (3.25-3.75%) on 15 year loans. These properties all cash flow and I’m not going to bother paying them off early. If they were at higher interest rates like over 6% then I’d try and pay them off. I would keep saving up cash with the intent to pounce on a deal that comes your way in the next few years. I’m doing that and will have patience for something enticing to come along if there is a downturn in the next several years. But cash is king if something comes up on a moments notice. I’m pretty sure something will come up and I’d like to be prepared to jump on it with a low competitive offer. Ten rentals will probably be my max. Keeping track of all the paperwork work on more than ten doesn’t excite me at all. Haha

Branson

@Clint Galloway

I’ve had to repair four out of my five Texas SFRs in the last 9 months. They all had cracks in the walls and doors were sticking. The average repair cost was 4k per house. Clay soil in Texas does this and seems like every house in the DFW area has or will have foundation problems at some point

@Scott Voiers

Go for the base hits at first. I started investing in RE four years ago and have slowly bought 6 SFRs, and keep leaning along the way. They’re only making me on average $300/house, but it’s fun to keep learning about this kind of investing and watching someone else pay off my 15 year mortgages. Good luck and enjoy the ride. I love it so far!

@Cassie Chun

Three of my tenants pay me around the 5th or 6th of the month. Great tenants and treat my properties great. They rarely ever call me for maintenance problems. They take care of most of the smaller stuff themselves and don’t bother me because I help them out by being flexible on the rent date for them. I don’t ever want to see them leave. I don’t have a problem with this at all. I would rather have good tenants like this than problem tenants who pay on the first of the month and call about little issues all the time.

@Jack Hildinger

Thank you Jack! That’s exactly what I needed to know. Although I incorrectly depreciated my new roof for my 2018 tax returns. I didn’t do it for 27 1/2 years. I did it for 15 years. I wonder how I address this now. Same with a new foundation. Is that to be deprecated over 27 1/2 years? I did that for 15 years on my 2018 return. So can I just lump my whole 21k rehab I’m having someone do now for 27 1/2 years if I wanted? That might make things easier on my end since I don’t have an itemized breakdown from my contractor how much every individual thing costs. I plan in keeping this rental forever.

I’m rehabbing my rental and paying my contractor 21k to do it all. How do I depreciate this for tax purposes? Can I depreciate the total amount over 15 years?

@Christian Becker

My attorney advised me to just do one LLC and put all my properties into one LLC vs a series. I would be interested if anyone knows of anyone who has properties in an LLC getting sued. I bet it's extremely rare. I think we're getting a little too paranoid about a rogue lawsuit and not having a series LLC for each property.

@Vennis Hong

I maxed out both my wife's and my Roth IRAs (or close to it) with the intention of taking some of that $ out for a down payment on a rental house. I cashed out 62k of it four years ago for my first SFR. Paid cash for it and have never looked back. You can take out what you have put into it without any tax penalty. However, there might be some rule that you need to have it in there for at least five years. I bought stocks and sold my winners and never had to pay a cent of capital gains.

@Ian Lockwood

I'm at 65% stocks and 35% real estate to diversify our assets. I maxed out (or close to it) our Roth IRAs for awhile. Then when I found my first real estate purchase, I cashed out some of the money we had put in our Roths over the years. Paid cash for our first SFR (130k) and that was the start for us on this real estate journey 4 years ago. Have since bought five more properties and loving real estate investing! Cash flowing about $2,500/month on them all.