All Forum Posts by: Jodi M.

Jared, thanks I checked with a broker and was told I'll have to disclose that I am related to the owner of the LLC. Since most people won't ask how I'm related or care so it shouldn't be a problem.

J. Scott, I will check out those other discussions, thanks.

Thanks for all your input :) I am excited to get started. The company I talked with takes a 50% cut at first and decreases with higher yearly sales amounts. They also give me back their 50% on the first 3 deals I do for my own investment per year. They said it was there way of encouraging their realtors to become involved with investing. We have only been buying/selling investment properties for a year (7 deals so far) but intend to buy many more. We set up an LLC in my husbands name right away and plan to buy and sell in the LLC's name. I will just have to disclose that I am related to the owner of the LLC right? I am looking forward to having a jump start on new properties and being able to get in them right away.

Jennifer,
Congrats on getting your license :) I've decided to go for it too. Are you focusing on real estate full time or do you do something else also? I'm going to maintain my day job (at least for now) and focus mostly on buying/selling for other investors and our LLC.
As for a brokerage, before I looked into the required classes I had an offer to work for a Midwest company (officers throughout IA and IL) that recently opened an office here so I will start there.
Good luck :)

I am looking into getting my real estate license in Iowa. My husband and I currently invest in rentals and rehab projects outside of our day jobs. Would having the real estate license and investing be a conflict of interest in anyway and prevent us from some deals? I know there are times where banks will list saying realtors can't bid but other than that could it be a problem?

Steven Hamilton,

The property we did this on was a forclosure we bought in extreamly rough shape. We did a complete rehab of the house, and sold it 5 months later. We used the funds from the 1031 to buy 2 properties that we currently rent out and plan to hold.

Jon,

We felt like it was a pretty good deal. In all we spent about $900 in fees compared to the almost $8,000 we were expecting in taxes. The atterney said the QI's online would probobly charge me around $1,500 and it was nice to have local people to call with questions as we did it. Since we only held that property for 5 months and wanted to continue to invest it made sense for us. One thing they did tell us was not to invest the 1031 money into another rehab that we didn't intend to keep because we would have to pay the taxes when we sold it. In June we are closing on the sale of another rehab but will not do the 1031 because we are waiting to close until we've had the property for at least a year. We just finished the rehab so the will be buyers are living in it and will rent untill then. I think in general we will use the 1031 on any property that would be taxed as short term gains and take the money on properties that are considered long term gains.

Jon,

The title company we used charged us $200 to be the QI and hold the money/keep track of everything. He also charges a flat rate of $100 for any closing. (We've used his office for non 1031 closings). My atterney charged me around $400 to get all the paperwork ready. 1031's in general seem to be pretty uncommon in our area. It was the first one for my banker and realtor and my QI hadn't done one in a few years. It was reccomended by our atterney (who is also our CPA) and went very smooth. We had everything sold, declared and closed on within the inital 45 days. We would deffinitly do it again on any property we hold less than a year.

Brian,
We completed our first 1031 exchange this past fall. You do have to spend the entire selling amount. In our case we were working with smaller numbers. We sold a rehab for $67,500 and had to spend it all even though about $25,000 was profit. You have 45 days to declare your new property (up to 3) and 180 days to close. There are ways to “cash out” some of the money to put toward your own house. We wanted to pay off some other things with our profit so after we bought the new rental property cash we took out a mortgage on that property and used the cash for what we wanted. Not all lenders will do that but it’s worth looking into. Remember the money can’t ever touch your hands or a 1031 is no longer an option. Our attorney wrote up all the papers but since he works for us he could not hold the money. It has to be someone qualified that you do not closely do business with. We used a local title and escrow company which we had used for other closings. It was really a pretty simple process. Good luck to you :)

Jodi

Congrats on your 5th closing Troy! I'm new on BP too and am currently investing in Burlington IA. We started investing in 2012 and currently have 3 single family homes, a duplex and we are getting ready to sell our second rehab.

Like you we are doing this with early retirement in mind. We started buying when I was 29 and I hope to retire from my day job around 50. I know I also have a lot to learn. I have found this website and our local real estate group to be full of advice and information to help me and our company grow. Good luck to you :)