All Forum Posts by: Kerry Baird

I love that goal!  My 16 yo wants a property before her next birthday.  We're working on it...

A few of us get together every two weeks down in Palm Bay at the Knowledge Exchange.  Email @Priscilla Z. if you are interested. 

There are a few experienced folks who attend, to include:

@Scott Schuetz who is a Realtor, working the beach-side area and has been doing rehabs.  We've got a retired agent, who also does fixers, but in Palm Bay.  And a title agent, who can address closing issues. Priscilla and her husband also have a number of properties under rehab at any given time, and provide a wealth of knowledge.

A few thoughts come to mind:  you could offer to buy the house from the owner using a lease option, or subject to the existing financing, or owner carry.  Not all funding options have to be cash out of your pocket.  You could line up a hard money lender, or transactional funding.  You could partner with someone who has cash, while you find the deals.  You could "bird dog" for an investor who is looking for a particular kind of property and would pay you for the lead.  

With a couple of pre-foreclosures that I was mailing, I did have to come up with funds to make up the late payments and stop the foreclosure.  And I did the rehab on credit cards when I started out. Then again, I still use credit cards to keep track of the receipts of my improvements. 

At any rate, there are a number of options available.  Handwrite a few letters to neighborhoods in which you'd like to buy houses, and see what comes up.  Be a problem-solver.  

There are a number of us here who have been thriving in real estate, while on active duty.  There are a few successful strategies.  For one, did you know that we can exclude capital gains taxes when we hold a property for any two years out of TEN, not the five years that civilians are entitled to?  

One of our strategies has been to find a cosmetic fixer, occupy it while rehabbing, and then rent it out, and move to another house.  So your tenant pays down the mortgage, while the house generally increases in value, and you sell at the end of the 10 years, and keep the gains tax free.  

We can also use our VA loan to buy up to 4 units, live in one unit (for a year minimum) while renting out the other units. That's a great way to get in for very little down, and begin getting experience as a landlord.

Be sure to look into meetups, or your local REIA, real estate investing association. And find a Realtor who is investor friendly, when you do go shopping for property. All the best, no matter which path you choose. Be sure to set up key word alerts so you can learn more about the aspects of investing that inspire you.

When we started out, we were young military troops, trying to make ends meet.  Here is my plan to improve my world, one house at a time:

First, we had to clean up our debts/credit score (we used Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover).  

Next, we save up for our first owner occupied house.  We bought a house that needed cosmetic repairs and lived in it while fixing it up.  We sold the first house after repairs.

We bought another owner occupied house, with low-down payment.  We rented this house out, and bought another low-down owner occupied house that needed repairs.  We improved this, while the first one continued to be rented.  Banks need 2 years of rental history to count the income toward acquiring the next.  

After a few like this, we got bold and began to do direct mail marketing to neighborhoods in which we wanted fixers or rentals.

Wash-rinse-repeat.

My thoughts, out the gate: If you don't have a Realtor who is experienced with investors, you may have the wrong person. Have you joined a local BP Meetup or REIA? Or even a CashFlow group? These places will have Realtors who can guide you through the type of property that works well for investors. You need to know what that first deal looks like...even a fellow rehabber. I'm assuming when you say "flip" you mean a fix-and-flip, not a wholesale deal.

Instead of going the auction route, I would pick a few neighborhoods that you intend to buy in, and begin to do direct mail marketing.  Search the threads for these terms.  Most of my deals have come through direct mail.

It's been a few years since I lived in Arizona...so take this with a grain of salt...we really got a lot of mileage out of attending AZREIA meetings.  We could attend classes, meet others, find people who were working the same sorts of deals, find other team members such as Realtors, lawyers, title agents, wholesalers, rehabbers, etc.  

Not "either...or" though.  It is Both, And.  Use BP to answer questions, for deal analysis and reports, for accountability.  

Hubby and I were to mil-to-mil, and we bought our first owner occupied house in England.  When assigned back in the US, we used funds we'd saved up (tax free from deployments, bonus installments, tax returns, extra duty pays, the 10% savings plan on offer during deployments, etc.) to start buying rental homes.  The number of acquisitions, often fixers, went up when we began to market to pre-foreclosures (that I found in the local public newspaper).  I got out of service and worked real estate full time, while hubby remained on active duty.

We moved back to the UK for 10 years and determined that if we wanted to keep buying houses, we had to buy from across the pond, using boots on the ground in the States. Lastly, we bought another owner-occupied house with one of our VA loans. All this to say, that the VA required at least 5 years of serviceable life on the roof. We did have to sign a confirmation that we would owner-occupy for a year (as stated above). We looked for a multi-unit to occupy, but we didn't find one in time. We'll be able to use the other VA entitlement in the future, or could combine the two VA entitlements into a bigger property, down the road (and after we sell or refinance the current VA).

Serial moving has worked well for us, too, because we can get owner-occupied rates when we buy.  We occupy for a year and then move to another house, turning the past house into a rental. 

Don't know if anyone else can see what you posted, but I am not able to.  FYI

We are also a military family...our recent move (assigned for a decade to the UK) hit us hard in the pocketbook, as we'd had about half of each year with tax-free income, and a nice COLA to offset the dollar to the pound.  So we are running about $25,000 a year in salary behind where we were last year.  I am working to get scrappy!

Here are the ideas I have:

-When we were young airmen, we knew a mil-to-mil couple who continued to live on their entry level salary, while they saved the rest.  Set aside any "gift" from Congress in the New Year.  

-Re-enlistment bonus? Use it as down-payment funds. Others buy flashy cars, we bought houses.

-Deployment? Set aside up to $10k in the military savings account, at 10%.

-Promoted? Set aside the extra for down-payment money.  You are used to living at the current rate.

-Switch your extra income over to something that is portable.  I'm thinking an Amazon business.  Or Amway.  Or Pampered Chef.  Scentsy.  Child care? Teaching (subbing pays $100 a day at the DoD schools in the UK)

-Can you prepare now to increase your income? College classes? Language pay? Flight pay? Temporary duty?

-Owner carry.  Start up a direct mail marketing in your chosen location.  I'd be looking for small multi-family owners.  5 units are the entry out of conventional mortgages and into commercial.  Therefore, these are harder to sell, they are largely owned by investors, who expect to carry back.  Alternatively, you can find older folks who may want to carry back at 5 or 6%.  It is hard for them to find income, and oftentimes they don't want to take the capital gains hit of selling all at once, so income over time works better for them.