All Forum Posts by: Nicholas Preston

Investing isn’t taught in school and neither is currency or debt, so for most people it’s fine advice. For the ones of us who take initiative and learn about passive income and the freedom it can bring to our families this maybe terrible advice. I think Ramsey was way over leveraged early in life and lost everything, still has a grudge with debt. He also makes a killing selling books and other things about it. If the numbers work then the numbers work, with debt or without. I want to scale so I take in the debt with a decent amount of reserves. I also cashed in my 401k to buy my first rental property which most people wouldn’t agree with. That allowed me to start brrrring. Smartest thing I have ever done, besides marrying my wife of course!!

Great advice, he also used the excuse the tenants would be upset to know he was selling the place and wanted to keep the sell low key as to not worry them, this keeping me out of their units. He has had this place on MLS for over a year so that excuse raised some red flags as well.

I’m very interested in purchasing a 14 unit apartment in my town. It consists of four buildings, three of them contain four unit one bedrooms and the other building is a two bedroom duplex. I walked the property with the owner yesterday and he showed me inside two of the fourteen units. They were all very nice and clean. He said the remaining units were in similar condition, he doesn’t want to bother everyone and didn’t show me the rest. All fourteen are currently rented in a “C” class neighborhood. My question is should I insist walking through all fourteen units before I submit an offer or just go with it because the rent rolls justify purchasing the place and the buildings   seem in fine shape. How adamant should I be about viewing them all? Thanks biggerpockets community!

If you would like to refinance sooner talk to a Credit Union. I have several where I live that require no seasoning period where as the bigger banks want 6 months to a year. It is much easier dealing with them anyway. They can typically do more loans than a typical bank of you want to scale larger.

Lots of opportunities in my area for buy and hold properties. I have 22 houses totaling 33 units but I want to scale bigger. How can I find private money to achieve this? I’ve used a combination of methods to build my portfolio but now I’m looking for outside help, thanks!!

People seem to get married to their first deal, especially if owner financing is involved. Be okay with walking away from it if they won’t budge. Make the offer, tell them you won’t haggle about selling price and pay 7% interest if the numbers work. Tell them your offer stands for a certain amount of time, they may very well come back later. I’ve done several owner financing deals, if the need to sell isn’t there it makes it real tough. 

The website doesn't seem to be as user friendly and able to operate as easily as it used to be. I'm having issues getting my user updates to save, my questions posted and also am disappointed with the lack of upgrade options available. I believe there used to be one or two mid level options available to purchase monthly that are now gone. Love the podcasts and I purchased several books but have been disappointed in how the website has been developed recently. Definitely miss the older versions. Anyone else having issues, just curious.

Most kids aren't brought up to think about assets and liabilities, their parents barely understand it. Definitely not something you are going to learn and discuss in most schools. It is a great introductory book to personal finance that challenges belief systems about money. I have read tons of books on finance and real estate everything builds upon this book. Would never hate on Robert.

Thanks everyone! Have heard a lot about deals and quite a few aspects of real estate but not much about this topic until now.

I have 5 rental properties now but am concerned my debt to income could be a problem soon to finance more properties. I know a big determining factor with banks is your tax returns and how much you actually made that year after expenses. Do I always want to take the maximum deductions and make my income lower which may look bad to a bank but better for paying lower taxes or maybe not take all deductions so my debt to income looks better but pay higher tax? What is the general thinking on this subject, I'm trying to think more long-term. Thanks!!