All Forum Posts by: Matt Moldenhauer

Is a personal website for your properties really needed these days? I see people still have them, but how many of your tenants really come from them? With free sites like Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, etc do you think your site does a better job of getting your units out there than the sites I mentioned? I could understand it if you had 20+ units and wanted to offer a way for you tenants to pay online or have people fill out applications, but to just find the unit, I would think the big sites would be better?

I'm with @Jay J. on this on, @Account Closed. It takes CASH to get in the game. You'll be hard pressed in my opinion to find someone that will let you cut your teeth on their money. I think at this time your best bet would be to find the best deal on a house you can, finance it with an FHA loan at a 3.5% down payment. This will get you in a house and hopefully build some equity. Live there for a few years while you save all of the cash you can. If you have a 401k plan, the money in that can be counted as your six month reserves. After you've built up some equity, try and refinance the house with a conventional loan to achieve 80% LTV. This will lower your monthly payment and get you out of PMI. The house won't have the best cash flow, but your COCR will be good. You need to refinance while it's your primary residence though. After that, buy another house and live in it. Do the same. Keep building your cash until you can make a 20-25% down payment and have the cash to close, cash to make improvements/repairs and cash to make the payment WHEN it sits empty. Are there other ways to speed up this process? Sure there are, credit cards, various lines of credit, etc. Will you be able to sleep at night worrying about it though? I wouldn't. Screw up on any of those and your chances of securing a loan just got a lot harder.

There's my two cents. Hope it helps!

@Derek Lacy I know this is an old post, but I too am interested in a policy like this. What would be the downside to grouping all of your properties together like this? When it comes time to closing on a property, does it have to be done under its own policy and then switched over to this sort of policy? Thanks!

@Dan Gongora $94,400 loan amount including $1,640 in prepaids and reserves and $1,773 in closing costs. 

@Dan Gongora We just did something similar, although it was not a cash out. 

Purchased price 101k

Loan amount 101k

Balance 91k

Appraisal came in at $118k, putting us at 80% LTV with wrapping closing costs up into new loan. Was able to eliminate PMI.

Went from FHA 30 year @ 4.5% to a conventional 30 year @ 3.75%. Total monthly payment dropped $140, improving our cash flow when we turn it into a rental in a year or two. It also freed us up for another FHA loan on our future primary residence.

Hope this helps!

So we're buying an investment property for $78,000. It was never brought up and I made a stupid assumption that closing costs would be paid by the seller. Wrong. Now we're on the hook for $2,700 in closing costs that we weren't expecting. We can pay it, thankfully, but what would be the smarter decision? Pay them and be done with it or roll it into the loan? Are there any tax benefits to one or the other? Thanks!

Are you looking at turning it into a rental property at the end of five years? Are you looking at buying rental property in general? If yes, I would buy the house with the least amount of money out of pocket and save the cash to buy investment property. In five years you can refinance the house while it's still your primary to improve cash flow.