All Forum Posts by: Nicolas Middleton

@Shari Mokhtari  Thanks for reaching out.  I wish you the best on your search to find a good deal in the St. Pete market, it is very hot here now.

@Ham Merritt I appreciate your comment, that is just the information I was looking for.  We will look into a local mortgage broker!

Hi everyone,

My wife and I live here in St. Pete and I wondered if anyone has a good recommendation for a local bank that was easy to deal with for getting a loan?  We currently bank at Bank of America but customer service hasn't been that good and I'm wondering if we could do better with a smaller, more personal bank.

For context, we are looking to purchase our first property, hopefully a multi-family that we can live in one unit and rent out the others.

Thanks in advance!

-nick

Hi Joe,

I was curious why you had the Repairs & CapEx as two separate categories?

Your numbers show making about $100/door which seems to be what a lot of people aim for.  However, that is with the 25% down payment.  

Are you hoping to house hack, or is this purely an investment opportunity?

My wife and I would like to purchase a multi-family property to house hack in the St. Pete / Pinellas Park area in this next year.  Good deals are few and far between it seems.  I'll be curious to hear how this property works out for you!

I moved to St. Pete last Fall.  I'm an engineer and didn't think I'd be able to find an engineering job here.  However, that proved not to be the case.  There are several fairly large engineering firms, including Jabil Circuit and Lockheed Martin.  I found a job at a smaller firm close to downtown St. Pete called Space Machine.  

This is anecdotal info; my experience.  Good luck in your decisions!

Hey Chris,

Great to meet you.  I live in St. Pete over by the High School in Historic Kenwood District.  My wife and I are looking to do our first deal this upcoming Spring... house hacking most likely.

Looking forward to getting to know you better and seeing you around the site.  

Will you be looking for your deals primarily through the MLS? The duplexes I see on the MLS are barely hitting the 1% rule.

btw, I'm a total newbie!  Thanks for responding.  I don't yet know anything about anything.

Ha! I'm looking to buy a multi-family with as little down as possible. With FHA I'm under the impression I could purchase with as little as 3.5% down whereas a non-FHA type of loan could require 20-30% down. So I was thinking if it were re-zoned from "Apartment House-Boarding House (5-9 units)" which it is currently, to a Single Family Dwelling then I could get a low money down loan.

I would like to house hack and get my expenses down.  I understand the concept, but don't know much about the details.  

Also, it wasn't only this property, I've seen others as well that are 5 or 6 as well.  Then I see duplexes and some tri-plexes (a detached upper/lower unit in the backyard is common) but not many 4-plexes.  My first choice is a 4-plex to maximize cash flow.

Did that all make sense?  

Ok, thanks for the answer JR, that makes sense.

So as I understand it, duplexes, triplexes, and 4-plexes all still can qualify for an FHA loan. I've seen several properties that are 5-plexes, such as this one:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3230409342-1533-Car...

So I'm wondering, if my plan was to purchase and convert the 5-plex to a 4-plex, would it then be possible to still qualify for an FHA loan?

Any input is appreciated, thanks!

Hey everyone, thanks so much for taking the time to welcome me!  

@TomOtt, to answer your question, I would like to stay in this general area for now (Pinellas County).  We won't be doing buy and hold at first (unless a flip goes bad!) but in the future I could see investing back in Kansas (where I'm from originally) for buy and holds.  

@JeffCopeland, great to meet you and thanks for offering to help!  That's crazy about the Haiti connection.  What were you doing down there?  My brother is in the Army and has friends who have gone down training UN forces or something.  I never saw a US soldier in Haiti, though I saw plenty of forces from all over Latin America.  

As far as what part of town, I'm thinking of following the deals, wherever they are.  Or deal, singular, I only need one to start.  I talked with a drywall contractor recently who does work for a flipper in the area (maybe you!) who told me over the last few years they have had to go further North to get deals and now they're up in Clearwater and Dunedin.  I'd prefer to stay within 20 minutes of our house (Historic Kenwood).  

As far as price range, now THERE is the question.  They say on here you shouldn't say it can't be done, but rather ask, "How can it be done."  So that's what we're doing.  We've decided on January.  Our financial house should be in order by then with a few bucks to spare, but honestly I don't know how on earth we're going to do a flip!  Creative financing I guess.  The long and short is, in my mind I'm thinking something in the 40-70k range that we can put 20-40 in and flip for profit.  Is this even realistic? 

My wife is finishing her Master's degree next month and is planning to get her Real Estate's License in the month of August. I figure that will give us access to the MLS.