All Forum Posts by: Leslie C.

Thank you for posting this Matt, I am new (I have just one property) and your post was EXACTLY what I needed to hear today!  It was both inspiring and it gave very clear action steps.  Thank you for giving back.  : )

Hi Alan,
Thank you so much for your thoughts and feedback, I really appreciate it! My last post was in reference to yours and Michael's feedback... Your feedback was invaluable.  I am going to continue to educate myself and keep analyzing and looking.  I feel challenged because everything has been going so quickly here.  I also still need to build up our cash for a down payment.  I am going to cut and paste your feedback into my word document so I can reference it on an on-going basis.  Thanks again! 

Michael, I sincerely appreciate your feedback! This is really helpful.  I think I need to get more clear on my criteria... Right now I've been looking at lots of different properties and I am starting to feel overwhelmed.  I think I also need to stay in action and at the same time keep saving for our down payment AND trust that all the good deals are NOT taken, and that its never too late!

Like Gary Keller says in "the Millionaire Real Estate Investor,"  Opportunities are always there in every market and in every time.  Sometimes there are a lot, and sometimes there are not... While yesterday's deals have indeed been taken, tomorrow's deals have not; nor are they destined to go to someone else.  But in time they will be taken by someone, and I want you to realize that someone could be you." 

This is the mindset I am taking on and I am committed to taking consistent daily actions from that mindset!

Thank you again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts, it has made a difference for me!  : )

Hi Daniel,

Thanks so much for your feedback!  Have you bought many deals in Bozeman?  I would love to hear how you made it work!  Thanks so much for your thoughts, I sincerely appreciate it!

All my best,
Leslie

Hi Logan,

Thanks so much for your response!  I have only enough for one deal right now.  And my husband and I intend to save up enough money from our businesses to buy a second deal in two years or sooner.

I live in Bozeman, MT and have an opportunity to purchase a brand new townhouse for $327K (or $335 if its an end unit). 3 beds, 2.5 baths around 1600 square feet. I can get it to cash flow for about $265 to $300 a month with a Coc ROI of just 5%. Many/some investors say they just buy property here and make sure they can cover expenses and they don't care about cash flow (they say its too hard to find cash flowing properties here).

I was looking for 10% Coc ROI, but couldn't find anything that would cash flow. At this point I'm thinking this might be a good opportunity to get into the market and have some okay cash flow, in a market that can be challenging to find a cash flowing property. I would GREATLY appreciate any thoughts that you might have on this and different perspectives. I really want to start out investing here, since I live here. I've been analyzing 5 properties a week (through Brandon's recommendation) over the last couple of months. I have one property that I bought almost 18 years ago and I'm committed to finding and buying my next investment opportunity!

After I look at this some more, maybe I should use my SBA Loan to pay off the IRS debt of 40K  (since the SBA loan is at 3.75% interest) and then I would still have some cash reserves available (of about 30K) instead of wiping out all my cash reserves?  I know the SBA loan over 25K is a secured loan.  It would still affect my debt to income ratio, but at least the IRS would be paid off and I wouldn't wipe out my cash reserves.  Any thoughts on that? 

Thank you Adrien!  I want to do the right thing, and clearly paying off the IRS debt is the "next right" course of action to take!  We do have the money, so we will do that immediately.  I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to offer your feedback!

Hi Taylor,  Thanks so much for your feedback on this... It is super helpful!  We paid off our house last year and pulled money out of my retirement account to do that (which I realize now wasn't a wise choice, in terms of using our retirement money).  And it resulted in a huge tax bill.  I've been great with money and I hate having debt.  Both my husband and I run our own businesses (which were affected by Covid).  But we are both committed to fully recovering them, so we can make more money and put more money away for investing.  I appreciate your suggestion to cut back on expenses.  I am always amazed at how much we spend on variable spending every month!  I am enrolling my husband in tracking our variable spending daily and to make it a "game" to not spending any money on variable expenses!  Thank you again for your feedback, it is GREATLY appreciated!

My husband and I were intending to buy our second investment property.  However, we have filed to pay taxes late this year because we owe a big chunk of money to the IRS.  I am wondering if we should create a payment plan with IRS to pay it off over several years, so that we can have money available to invest in an next investment property or should we just pay off the IRS?  We've also been approved for SBA loans at 3.75% (to be paid back over 30 years). 

If we pay off the IRS this year (instead of opting for a payment plan).  It will wipe out all our cash reserves that we had set aside for investing in real estate (approx 40K).  I would greatly appreciate any thoughts/insights that any of you might have to offer.   Thanks so much!