All Forum Posts by: Mark French

Hello everyone, good day,

This post is for some advice and feedback into how best to invest $10k in real estate and to share some ideas for critique.

We have been building our investing cash pot for a while and we are at $10k, we have one house currently which is our homestead with approx. $100k in equity, great mortgage rate at 3.7 and if rented would yield approx. $200 dollars on top of what our mortgage payment is. We were initially thinking of renting our house and buying another that we would move into. My wife is a realtor so thinking we would drop the 3% commission from closing as a way of negotiating down the buy price since we need our mortgage payment on the new home to remain very close to what we are currently paying today (so that our life living costs remain within my salary/income so not depending on my Wife’s non W2 income Realtor income). However!! We have just learned that we are having another baby, baby number 3, a "oupsie" baby, "not part of the plan" baby, an "oh f***" baby. We are past all that now and are excited/delighted about our #3 addition to the family however it has put a pause on all the above since we feel we should hold onto the cash for security and any unexpected stuff that may come up. Another thought is to sell our house, 10.31 exchange the equity into a new house (aim to keep new mortgage close to what we are currently owing) and the $10k cash goes towards house preparations to sell our home and then moving costs etc. This hurts since we’re trying to get a head and it's taken grit to build the pot up to where it is. We are now leaning towards more staying in our home for another year and keeping things as is. My wife has a good 6 months of Real Estate prime time left before she will need to slow down and so we focus on stacking more cash and ultimately sticking to the plan of buying the 2nd property and renting our current place out, just later.

Any feedback appreciated, thanks all

Hey everyone, Posting for a sanity check - Any response will be greatly appreciated. In addition the real estate investment journey in flipping/whole tailing (no deals to date, still on the hunting mission, we’ll get there), my wife and I are considering moving out of our home (70% Ltv, been our homestead for >3yrs), getting rid of PMI to lower mortgage payment then renting it out as a positive cash flowing long term investment and buying/moving into a new home then rinse repeat in another 2 years. Aim to max out the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac limit. Think it’s 10. So whilst searching for our new Home the criteria has been pretty simple, low mortgage payment and similar square footage. My wife is a RE Agent and a new build in a different part of town in Dell Valle development (master planned community) has caught our eye. I’m just not sure this is a smart move given it’s a new build. It’s definitely a long term hold but a reservation of mine is, in ~2 yrs will the rent cover the mortgage payment and cash flow. We suspect yes but it’s a 14 year mega community build project, we are looking at one of the first homes phase 2. Also we only have neighbouring neighbourhoods for rental CMA and they seem low, around $1600 for 2000s/ft which wouldn’t cover mortgage. We will be in a stronger cash position in 2 years so a thought is to refinance by putting more down to reduce mortgage payment if needed. Any feedback or advice will be welcome. Is this silly? Many thanks.

Hi @Whit Ewen great advise and advise I’ve come across sever times over the last week, HM being last resort.  

It would be great to chat, I will send you a direct message.  

Thanks again.  

I’m a Newbie Austin Investor, a local BP meet up would be hugely valuable to me so count me in.

Hey everyone, When is the next meet up? I’d love to get involved.

Thank you Kary Arycock for your response. I see you are a Hard Money Lender in Austin, same city as myself. It would be great to spend 5mins on a call with you if you have time this week? I will direct message you. Regards Mark French

Basit: - The commission per buy is indeed a great thing. - Area of focus is Austin, 2 zip codes local to Home, properties going back to 1950’s, all single family, lots of opportunity. - Good idea re MLS alert - consider that done. - Yes I’m a member of the local REI club headed up by Phil Grove and his wife, meet twice a month, great for building contacts. - Thanks for you feedback. Sharon: - Really encouraging feedback thanks, i door knocked 10 homes today with 2 leads, feels great. After the 1st knock the rest were easy. Take that ‘FEAR’ - Thank you for the offer to contact you should Regarding financing, I have you down as a contact - much appreciated. Celeb: - Other than door knocking I will also be setting up a meeting with 2 local hard money lenders to work on pre-approval. Thanks for the feedback, great point. - Good to know you also did CPA and LLC after. Tomorrow I’m out door knocking pre-foreclosures and Friday meeting lenders. Thanks guys, feels like I am making good use of the time I have. Mark French

Thanks @Allan Rosso for the speedy response, so getting pre-approval with some local lenders would be worth my while. Makes sense, great point thank you.

Hi Everyone,

1st post from a beginner investor, here goes:

My wife is away for 3 days and my 2y/old and 4y/old will be at school from 9am to 1:30pm for 3 days (Wed/Thurs/Fri). I'm trying to come up with a plan how to spend this time so if anyone has suggestions please share. I keep steering towards, i should get my LLC, meet with a CPA, meet with hard lenders, contractors and develop my system etc. But if i truly listen to that inner voice it's saying 'walk your target neighborhood, pop postcards in letter boxes of potential flips and do the really hard thing by knocking on doors and speaking with people'.

Bit of back ground, moved to Austin from London, England 3 years ago, I've been in the tech industry for almost 20 years, i got into REI 10 years ago but hit the pause button when market went bad, my beautiful Wife has been a Realtor for about 14 months which got me all fired up and determined again. Last 4 months have been spent learning and spending as much time with active, successful investors as possible building relationships, they have taken me around some of their projects and answered my many questions. Each have offered to partner up if i locate and present a Flip investment where the numbers add up, those conversations always leave me feeling pumped. My/our big why is for this to be my exit strategy from the tech industry and to change the course for future family generations by building self-sustaining wealth through Real Estate. Also to be invited to be interviewed for a Biggerpockets podcast.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Mark French