All Forum Posts by: Loretta Chavez

@Dimitri I had professional photos taken of my corporate housing unit and the only thing that they did differently than I did is stood in the furthest corner of each room, turned on all of the lights and opened all of the blinds and windows so that as much light as possible could come in. If you can do that yourself, I do not think it’s worth the money.

Also if you take them yourself if you see small imperfections, you can fix them quickly where as a professional photographer will just snap the picture and you may end up with things in your pictures that you don’t like. For example the master bedroom comforter was crumpled at the end and that was an easy fix that I would’ve fixed. Additionally there was a empty orange juice gallon bottle container outside of the condo unit used to water the plants outside and they just left it in the picture whereas I would’ve moved it out.

@Daniel Graham (unrelated to the online lease program) What does your 5 and 10 year plan cover? I need to make one so I can have something to work towards. TIA

@Aubrey Hardman what city and state?

Bill S. Thanks for the sound advice. It's hard to pass up what seems to be a good deal but you are very right with all you've said.... All this "no money down" and "use OPM" buzz in the industry is too good to be true and there is indeed risk; and for every deal we've needed to acquire debt and put in a big chunk of money... nothing in life is free. My point is, I get a bit swept up in this fantasy and buzz and I need to look at the strain and risks it may cause also.

Thanks Brian for your input... I agree about the funny money until we sell comment. It's scary to think about how we'd get by if the place sat empty even a few months. We absorbed rental #1 being vacant for 4 months but it is 1/3 the payment of potential rental #2. I should have pointed out #1 & 2 is our current situation and #3 & 4 is what we are considering.

I am in CO. My husband and I own a primary residence. We took out a HELOC on it along with borrowing against my 401K to buy, reno and rent a rental property. I have the real estate bug in my blood and I want to build a portfolio of rentals. I am looking at a SFH for our family to move into as a primary residence. The home is somewhat better than our current home and it's a fair price. My basic question is how much risk and debt should we get in to, to build our portfolio with little money down? Should we instead hunker down a few years (while the values go up) and pay down debt and save a big lump of cash to lower the LTV and risk?

We would need to take a HELOC out on the Rental #1 to get enough for the down payment and closing costs for our new primary and rent out our current home. Without counting the rental income on rental #2 on the current SFH home we would be at about 47% DTI. With rental income it would be lower DTI but it makes us nervous to have everything mortgaged so much. Colorado values are going up a lot and the inventory is very low so that is what makes me think maybe we should acquire more properties.

How do I know that the values will keep rising and this risk it worth it. the low inventory and numbers trend the right way but how do we even calculate if the risk is worth the potential future equity?

What would you do?

1. Rental #1 Cash Flow $710 per month - Maintenance as needed (Is there a standard % for this?)

2. Rental #1 Equity = 330-197-47=86K (I subtracted the HELOC on my home and the 1st mortgage on it). Take out about 30K for closing & down payment on the next primary. That would put us at 70% LTV

3. "Turn my current Primary into a rental #2" Cash Flow 3k-2,570 = $430 - Maintenance as needed. It is mortgaged at 90% LTV already.

4. Get a 4.75% FHA loan for the next primary residence with 3.5% down due to high balance FHA loan and Fair credit scores. It would have a 96.5% LTV

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to file an extension and take these to another accountant to double-check.

Just got our first rental property last year. We put in 25k in rehab plus it was not rented until 2017. My accountant said "Because it was over 150000 (taxable income I assume), IRS carried rental loss over to next yr. I put the int and taxes from rental on personal. Helped a lot." My question is, We can't write off the principal payments that weren't covered by rent? Can the down payment be written off? I'm new to this and not sure how to make sure my accountant did all she could with our deductions... She is in another city so we do thing via phone and text. She sent my packet via mail and once I get it I will look at it but that's not saying much since I'm allergic to tax rules. ;) and am clueless...