All Forum Posts by: William Morgan

@Dmitriy
Great idea.

Is the amount you are able to defer related to any other 401k/IRA's or your overall income?

Jesse Livermore: World's Greatest Stock Trader
It's not a how-to book, but fascinating and filled with lessons.

I'll also second any book written by William O'neil

Good to know, Thanks Steve.

Steve,

Just curious, why would it be treated as self employment income? How is it different than buying a stock and holding it for a year+?

I'd only advocate a loan against my 401k - not a dispursement. You can take out a loan for $50k or 1/2 the value of your account, whichever is less. In my plan repayment is spread over 10 years for RE, or 5 years if other, to pay it off - or sooner without penalty. It's paid with post-taxed money plus modest interest that your own account receives. (unlike a normal loan that is also paid with post tax money, but the Lender keeps the interest).

You can get the money tax free since it's a loan and usually within a week. You can (optionally) reduce your normal contribtions into your 401K to the minimum needed to still receive your company match (usually ~4-6%) to soften the burden of the loan repayments which are typically deducted from your paycheck. If you're able to handle the increased paycheck deduction so that you continue to max your 401k contribution AND pay the 401k loan repayment then essentially you are getting zero cost financing up to $50k.

It is , IMO one of the better sources of short term financing up to $50k. Of course all this depends on the soundness of your investment, the stability of your employment and your disciplined approach to money.

Thanks for the great info everyone.

Joel, wow great info. I have been through both units very and knew what I was getting into. It was a short sale and I didn't have much leverage on terms or contingencies with the bank or the seller. The Seller being an heir of the estate had no LL experience and had been collecting rent for a couple of years without paying the mortgage (or screening tenants). The Tenants are on a month to month so the lease is immaterial, but it did allow pets. The research I have done on dog bite liability in CA matches your advice - namely if the LL fails to take action to remove a breed deemed viscous the LL may incur liability if the dogs injure someone. In all honesty I just want them out of the neighborhood. It's a family neighborhood and many of the neighbors I've spoke with express concern over the dogs since they've been allowed to moved in.

Hopefully an eviction can be avoided but I suspect he's going to have a hard time finding a new place for them too.

Thanks for weighing in Jerry, looks like I cannot automatically separate the dogs from the eviction process.

Hi James, thanks. I don't want the dogs even if they could be insured. My concern though is the dogs staying as the eviction process drags on.

I'd like to have them out sooner if my tenant decides to drag his feet and not leave.

I recently purchased a Duplex and one tenant has a pair of Pit Bulls. He was on a month to month lease I have given him 60 Days Notice to vacate. He is on day 30 of 60, has paid the moth's rent as required and has told me he hasn't found another place to live yet. I am not sure if i will have to begin eviction proceedings. If I do, it could take a month or three here in California.

Question: Does anyone know if it's legally possible to have his dogs removed ASAP , rather than waiting for the end of the eviction process? They have been identified in California as a vicious breed and my insurance will not cover me if they stay. If I have to wait an extra month or so I'd at least like to remove the hazard from the property.

Anyone have experience with this?

@Deborah B.

If you're going to involve partners or employees I don't think sharing an account is really a long term solution. By sharing an account I assume you mean sharing a single login and password. I've gotten error messages with Google Drive when trying to share a login like this (it somehow knows that you're sharing an account).

You could share folders and this is probably the best way to start since it's free. But check, I think there may be issues with saving or editing.

What you may eventually want to do is pay for a business account with either service. Google is $5/user/month, Dropox is $99/user/year. Both of these allow an administrator to define access, sharing and editing permissions. You can segregate files better this way. I went with Google due to added features (calender and gmail intergration) they bundle with the deal, plus it's overall cheaper.

But honestly just start out sharing folder access at first.

One note on sharing files. Dropbox is a great file sharing service, but if you are producing "living documents" that are being regularly updated and shared then it's not so good.

The Google Docs software allows you to create, update and share access to files which and is compatible with Microsoft formats.

For example we have an assistant help with CRM. We maintain a Seller database that we update every time there is contact or an action with a Seller. All parties can add/update informtion so there is no duplicated effort or confusion. This can be done from a laptop, tablet or smartphone anywhere that there is internet access.

I use both Dropbox and Google drive. I find a "Cloud" based file service to be essential now.

Google drive's advantage is it's document programs - a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and other programs. Google drive has better internal search capabilities too.

Dropbox's advantage is it's is a little easier to use due to it's layout. This can be important when sharing or pooling information. For example, I am using currently one Dropbox folder to collect and share all closing documents with relavent- loan, title, Realtor, insurance, Apprasors, etc for a closing I'm working on. None of the parties have reported any difficulty (although Google Drive is pretty darn simple too).

A second advantage to Dropbox is that it has a cool feature that enable all the photo's (and video I think) taken by my smartphone to be immediately uploaded to my Dropbox folder. I can walk through a property, take photo's and those photo's are now avalable on all my devices. I understand Google has this too using Google Photo's, I just haven't used it to know it's benefits.

Overall I give the Google Drive the nod and this is where I keep most property related documents. The differances are somewhat negligible though.