All Forum Posts by: Mindy Jensen

I have a lot of mishaps by the toilet. I like when you drop something down the toilet hole before you remember to plug it up. This time it was a chunk of drywall. Thankfully the vacuum was strong enough to pick it up. Ugh.

@Rob Randle, I think you only have to season the rental for one year, but it may be two. I don't think you have to wait for 5 years, but start talking to your local banks and see what they require. Good luck!

@Madison Hauver, I am in the same boat. My husband just switched over to 1099 employee and had to start up his own LLC. This was in December, so we **only** have 18 more months to go. Sigh.

Do you have any sort of relationship with a local bank or credit union? They will sometimes offer portfolio loans, which is where they give the loan knowing they will keep it in house rather than try to sell it. 

Have you heard of Hard Money Lending? Perhaps this could be the road you take while waiting for your LLC to mature.

I would open the LLC now, because it will always take two years of income to qualify for a loan, and at least you will get started.

@Derek Francisco, what is the market like in Utica? What sort of property prices are you looking at, vs your current income.

@Linda Weygant is right, you may be pre-approved now, but if you have a large amount of debt at the time of closing, you may be denied down the road. 

Is there any chance of side income while you save up for your downpayment? Are you going FHA? You may qualify for an FHA loan, which allows as little as 3.5% down, if your building is less than 4 units and you owner occupy. More than 4 units and you no longer qualify for FHA. I don't think you qualify for residential anymore either. I think it changes over to a commercial loan. That could be a good thing too, because commercial loans take your income as well as historical rental income into account when qualifying you for a loan. Of course, you would need a higher down payment, which was the whole question here to begin with...

I love the BRRRR approach to financing rentals. I think it's brilliant. You can even try to get a hard money loan to buy it, or use a combination of your own money and hard money.

10% will take 10 years to get all your cash back out. Any equity in the first rental that you can pull out to help finance the second one?

The Detroit market is mostly in decline. At the height of it's population in the 60's, there were something like 1.6 million residents. Now there are less than 700,000 and shrinking every day. All that extra housing just sits around vacant.

There are some good neighborhoods, but you really have to have someone you trust, boots-on-the-ground if you hope to make any money.

Lots of seemingly amazing deals, but if you don't know what you are doing, you will lose your shirt. Tread lightly in Detroit. (Sorry D-Town!)

I love it when I don't quite remove all of the wax ring during a bathroom remodel, then step in it and track it all over the house. Or worse yet, step in it with bare feet! Yes, I know, no bare feet during construction. This is my personal house, and I was just checking on something... What is that wax ring made out of, sap?!?It is so sticky...

What are some of your funny DIY mishaps?

Welcome to BiggerPockets, @Roy D. has some great advice and linked to a couple of good articles.

One thing I have heard over and over is to tell absolutely everyone you know or meet that you are looking to buy real estate. Tell them you don't care about the condition, or give specific criteria that you won't purchase. But tell everyone. You never know when someone has a property they want to get rid of. Have cards made up with contact information, and carry them on you at all times. 

Welcome to BiggerPockets, @Beverly Lang! 

Getting your feet wet? A great place to start is the Podcast. Listen while you work or commute. 

There is a ton of great content over on the Blog. It is separated out by category, so the information you want is easily accessible and grouped together.

You have already found the Forums. You are well on your way to real estate success.

If you haven't already, try to find an REIA meetup in your area. Networking with local investors can net you some really great deals. Good luck!

From what I remember of the podcast, the bank wants the property "seasoned" for a year before refi. Then they will refinance to 80% LTV.

I believe the magic number of traditional mortgages one can have is four. Then you start running into limits. The way around that is through a portfolio loan, where the bank keeps the loan in-house, rather than selling it off. Large banks don't really participate in this - it is more of a local bank or credit union scenario. So start building relationships with them for when your real estate empire really gets off the ground. Good luck!