All Forum Posts by: Michael Albaum

You can also get online and see who the best of the best in the area are (agents, property managers, lenders, insurance reps) and just pick up the phone and call them.

If you do decide to make a trip down there, make sure to have meetings setup in advance as opposed to just walking into folks' offices. Spend time on the phone and then setup the in-person stuff. 

Also, if a buyer comes in down the road, they may want to know that permits were pulled and lipstick wasn't thrown on a pig. I've passed on deals before because there was no permit trail. Some may scoff at that, but I come from the insurance world, so I play it more conservative than others. 

Make sure you don't need that cash flow as the margins are razor thin as is. You're also NEEDING appreciation to continue as you're paying 12% over market value today. If you can afford to keep this long term and don't need the appreciation, than a loan at 0% interest is tough to walk away from...

House hack FTW!!! You'll likely refinance your current rate at some point down the road and can look at HELOCs or cash outs to leverage the appreciation on the primary into additional investments. And if there is no appreciation, then at least you've gained experience as an investment property owner as well as solved your need for housing...it's about as safe as it gets from an entry perspective IMO.

Hey Dan, I'm a bay area local as well, so let me know if you'd like to connect! But I'd check out Fresno/Bakersfield if you don't feel like you HAVE to go out of state. There are also numerous markets that you could invest in for cash flow outside of CA, so it comes down to why you want to invest there (do you travel there for work already, or vacation there?) Or do you believe in the long term growth potential of said market?

Is there the opportunity for you to move and possibly even rent somewhere cheaper than what your portion of the mortgage is?

Sometimes, if you move out and fully rent your place out, and have super cheap rent elsewhere, your DTI actually becomes more favorable.

I’d investigate the actual cost of doing one with several companies before writing it off as not worth it. DM me if you’d like a recommendation as I think you’d be quite pleasantly surprised 

Hey @Sakib J., it's beneficial for me to take accelerated depreciation on the front end which helps my tax situation massively! 

So for these particular cost segs, they were on commercial multifamily properties, but you could absolutely do a cost seg on a SFR and a turnkey one even. All the seg does is break out the different components of a property and depreciates them based on their life spans as opposed to the overall property's of 27.5 (for residential). So I'd chat with a cost seg company about what the benefits could look like for you even if you had exclusively SFRs, since the depreciation is based on the purchase price (building portion only), if the purchase price was large enough, they can often make sense to do.

Hope this helps!

Hey Sean, I’m a big fan of Covington! Been investing there for the last several years and I’d agree with nearly everything that others have shared. I’m in the midst of a major redevelopment project on Madison Ave and the city has given me tons of money for the project...you read that right, given me!

So the city is clearly investing in creating nicer units for folks as well as spending a ton on infrastructure improvements. Small MF is tough to come by, but definitely look into something that needs work as it’ll be much easier to find

Best of luck

Hey Darryl, glad you finally decided to jump in! There are tons of books out there to help you analyze deals. Check out the BP bookstore as many of them are there. There are also plenty of course that can help hold your hand thru the analysis of properties to determine which avenue may make sense for you. Check out different ones and the reviews of them to see if there are any that are a good fit. Just make sure the provider stands behind their product with some sort of satisfaction guarantee. 

Hope this helps and best of luck!