All Forum Posts by: Nick Hulme

@Caleb Brown I like your idea about buying as many properties as possible while we're young. We plan to stay in this house for more than 5 years unless another great opportunity arises, but maybe it is best to allocate a bigger portion of savings to our real estate investment savings account than our home improvement savings account for the first few years. I want to avoid falling into a mindset of thinking we can't afford to invest because of the needs in front of us. Instead, investing should be a means to taking care of our needs and improving our life style.

We would prefer not to be landlords in California unless it's a house hack (like what we plan to do with the RV pad). We live in the bay area because this is where our jobs are and we have family in the area, but we prefer to invest in landlord friendly states. We plan to stay in the new primary residence for a long time because we love the location, the neighborhood, and the land.

Trying to find a way to expand our real estate portfolio while also improving our own home.

My wife and I lived with family for 2 years, which allowed us to save quickly. In 2024 we bought two homes - a duplex rental in Utah and a primary residence in Santa Cruz County, California. The duplex is cash flow positive, but not by much. We bought it because it is in a great spot for long term appreciation and rent growth.

Our new house in Santa Cruz County was a deal we couldn't pass up on. It is on 1.2 acres of property in a very nice neighborhood and it has an RV pad that we can rent out for $1500-$2000 per month. The only problem is that the house is old (built in 1957) and small (1039 sqft). We will have lots of renovations and additions to do over the years, so I'm worried that it will be hard to save up for more rental properties.

Any suggestions?

Thanks Masyn. I will reach out to both of them for the next job.

Does anyone have a handyman recommendation for a duplex in Orem?

Quote from @Basit Siddiqi:

You can have an attorney draft up a sale of one person's share to the other then making it a single member LLC.

The "partnership" is just my wife and me. We don't need an attorney. We just want to make it a single member LLC.

My wife and I bought a duplex in Orem, UT a few weeks ago. Immediately after closing, we registered an LLC so that we could protect our personal assets as landlords. Initially we set it up as a partnership LLC, but after consulting with our CPA we realize that we could have and should have done it as a single-member LLC so that we don't have to file a 1065. Do we need to do anything to change it or can we just file a 1040 next year and claim it as a single-member LLC on our return?

I appreciate the quick replies. A couple follow-up questions:

1. What all needs to be accounted for in the agreement? Sister's rent amount,
term (date of refinance), mortgage payment responsibility, insurance responsibility, utilities responsibility, tenant selection responsibility (since this will be a multifamily property), property management responsibilities including repairs, maintenance...

2. When the property is refinanced a year later, after it has been owner occupied for the required amount of time, will the rate then increase to that of an investment property?

Background: My wife and I live in San Jose, California, where we are renting a basement apartment from family for a great discount. Both of us have corporate jobs with decent salaries, so we are saving about half of our income every month after all fixed and variable expenses and we have no plans to move in the foreseeable future. We would like to buy property in a strong market with good appreciation potential and Utah is a place that we are very familiar with (my wife grew up there and I lived there for 6 years). Although Utah is much cheaper than the Bay Area, it isn't the bargain it used to be, so we are looking for creative ways to optimize our rate and reduce our down payment.

Plan: My sister lives in Provo, working as an ICU nurse. She graduated from college a year ago and though she does not plan to stay in Utah long term, she likes her job, she is dating someone, and she has no plans to leave within the next year. She has no interest in real estate investing and she does not want to buy a house for herself. However, she is willing to do us a favor by stepping in and co-borrowing on a loan so that she can live in it as the primary resident. We would be the cosigners with terrific credit scores and a solid DTI. We would also provide the down payment and manage the property so that my sister could simply live in it for a year and pay rent until she decides to move. At that point we would refinance and take complete ownership of the property.

Questions:

1) It is my understanding that in Utah we are allowed to split the title of the property. Ideally, we would divide it 99:1, with my wife and me as the majority owners. Am I wrong in this assumption?

2) Has anyone done something similar to this? Are there any factors we might be missing? What advice would experienced investors offer for our situation.

Cashflow is hard to come by and Utah is a tough market for that. My wife and I are planning to purchase our first small multifamily rental property in Utah County this year and we would like to hear others' thoughts on what we should have as an optimistic yet feasible goal for rent/price ratio.