All Forum Posts by: Nicholas L.

@Shannon Park find a market you can drive to.  It will be so much easier to get started there than to try to get started in Texas.  I have to believe there's a market within 2-4 hours of you that will cash flow.  You can go look at properties in person, meet agents, meet property managers, etc.

@Greg R. I think "buy or wait" is a false dichotomy.  This assumes "buy" means you walk outside your house and close on something today, and that's now how buying real estate works - even if you decided to move forward it could take months.  Every deal should be evaluated on its own merits.

@Austin Olivas get the highest paying W2 job you can when you finish school. Minimize your expenses. Rent for a short time. Build up some savings. Use an FHA loan to house hack. Use credit cards and pay them off every month. After a couple years, move out of the first house hack and refinance it, buy another house hack, and repeat.

@Ethan Augustus like Joe said, you don't need any of that on smaller properties.  All you're looking for is monthly cash flow - rent minus expenses - but including ALL expenses, not just the mortgage. 

For example, in addition to Capex and Vacancy and other long term costs that should be factored in, here are a few items that are often overlooked:

-Property management (even if you start by self-managing, you want to know what it costs)

-Utilities that the landlord has to pay (for example, water or sewer in a small multifamily that is not split) or utilities that cannot be transferred to the tenant

-Landscaping / groundskeeping costs

-Cost to place a tenant / renew a lease

Some of these costs are hard to get if you're not under contract, so you have to estimate based on information that is publicly available, or by asking an agent, a property manager, or the local jurisdiction.

Hope this helps.

@Sean MIddleton it depends.  If you find a property that needs everything fixed when you buy - you'll do the rehab and then your capex will be low for a while.  If you buy a property that needs a new roof, new furnace, new windows... those are your capex.  And some markets have mostly older houses, some have mostly newer.

@Samantha Stevens I like what Jake Wiley said.  Can you find a market within 2, or even 4, hours drive to get started in?  This would let you make trips to see properties, meet folks in person, etc.  Make a network in that market - go to REIAs, find agents, find lenders, visit properties.

@Matt J. yes, there are tons.  For example, check out the Rental Income Podcast with Dan Lane.  He seems to focus on experienced but smaller landlords with small to medium size portfolios who have been very successful.  They often get into great detail on a variety of topics like the earlier BP podcasts.

@Zachary Himes in addition to the down payment, there will be closing costs, and there will be expenses associated with living in and owning a house.  No one ever wants to wait... but having more cash will put you in a stronger financial position and make you better able to weather a major repair or some other unanticipated life event.

Good luck.

@Davis H Son I think managing a rehab in Richmond from Northern Virginia is a viable strategy - it makes a lot more sense to me than picking a market thousands of miles away.  You'd want to plan on lots of trips there, though.

As you noted it's going to be tougher to find candidate properties for BRRRR in Nova - tougher to find, higher price points, more competition, etc.

@Lucas Musil you can also ask an agent for actual rental comps.