All Forum Posts by: Lionel Li

He must be real fun at parties. Ignore him..he probably should've googled "mortgage fraud" instead of being an uninformed internet police.

Anyway, back to the relevant topic..I don't believe the cash-out refi at this point would be your best use of your equity. The closing cost at the moment is pretty high for the total 'cash out' and the cost wouldn't be offset from savings in interest from the .25% drop (it'd be different if it was at least a 1% drop). I'd definitely use the cheaper initial cost of a HELOC mentioned above and wait for a better opportunity to cash-out refi later on. You have rent increase/appreciation + principal paydown working hard for you to get a better cash-out later on!

@Matt Gilroy will be there for the Sunday mixer and staying on-site. Can't wait to meet everyone!

@Vernon Trice III

I'm attending the conference!

I think it really depends on what you hope/plan to achieve while at the meeting. If the goal is to just to sit, listen and not network, I'd say save your money for your investments and watch their podcasts. I won't write off the fact that as a beginner, it's easy to feel small and intimidated in large meetups and conferences. I've been there, there was a NYC meetup that @Brandon Turner flew in to speak and it was my first one. Luckily it was just a $20 event but I tried my hardest to get the most out of the group and even got a picture with the man himself. I'm planning to network/add value to whomever I can/introduce myself to people and get as much out the BP Conference therefore, it'll be worth every penny to me.

Let me know if you attend!

@Kyle Bishop

Two things:

1) I know what you're suggesting..and what you're suggesting is going to be an issue because every state has a cap for interest rates on promissory notes and if you don't want to be breaking any usury laws I'd stay clear of doing that.

2) Lets just say it's under the usury limit. You have to realize that to get your interest expense written off; something else has to give. In this case, the seller would have to pay extra tax for the interest you're trying to inflate while simultaneously decreasing principal. So if I was the seller, why would I want to pay more tax just so the buyer could get more write-offs..the whole point of seller financing was to save on taxes/maximize the net of sale by arbitrage of inflation and interest rate for a form of passive income.

Hope that makes sense.

Indianapolis property taxes are calculated by the One-Two-Three Tax Cap Rule. The only one we're talking about is the 2% cap calculation without homestead exemption. The 2% cap is saying that a non-owner occupant should pay no more than 2% of the tax assessed value in property taxes annually (not appraised value) less special assessments. If the Indy tax assessors are somehow as accurate as appraisers, please let me know and I'll create a new automated real estate appraisal company and kill the Zillow Zestimate once and for all.

Same here, born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens. Just had a BiggerPockets meetup in Manhattan last week, ton of opportunities in NYC to talk shop and learn if you're willing.

There's gold to be mined from you guys, can't wait for the meetup!

@Stephanie P.

485/mo after PITI, not even including the water bill like Isaac mentioned in the first post is nothing I'd get excited for. All it takes is one full month vacancy for him to dip to or close to negative. I have about 10% reserved for vacancy/repairs/CapEx each for a total of 30%.

@Isaac El

If you're thinking long-term and that's exactly what a buy & hold is, you need to thinking long-term reserves. With this kind of margin, all you're doing is delaying your flip profit and attempting to compound that with appreciation. If you can make this kind of margin from your flip, why not just attempt to do it again. A flip property should be flipped, not BRRR'd. If you want to use that method take your profit and invest it where the rent to value ratio isn't 0.6%. That ratio sounds like Queens to me lol.

@Lorraine Patterson Hi Lorraine, I wouldn't say a STR is necessarily a bad first investment. However I'd ask you what your goal is with your investments without knowing how sophisticated of an investor you are. I've began about a year and a half ago and I've taken the out-of-state route as you've been looking as well.

Today I have 4 long term rental properties and it's very consistent in terms of revenue. Though I've dug into the possibilities of investing in STR's as well, it's a little less predictable and that might impede with your goals or timeline (depending how you answered the above).

I'm from Queens as well!

I found all of my deals on the MLS. There's no secret..if I like the deal I offer..if I don't get it, I move on. The best advice I've ever gotten was from my agent, "there will be another one" and you know what? He's right..every..single..time.