All Forum Posts by: Pablo Mendez

Bought our first home last Friday, June 2nd. Listed for $188K, purchased for $188K, It appraised for $202K

Now Realtor, Zillow etc have updated the info on this home and placed the value at $229K 

I've heard that they are often not accurate. Here is an example of how off they become so quickly. 

Covington. Nice. sure will. 

Had not thought of that. Good info. Thanks

Hello BP, 

My spouse, Amy, and I have just purchased our first primary home. Moved in yesterday :-) While we get settled in, we've been planning on what to do over the next few years as we start in real estate. 

Recently, been talking about start doing rental property management. 

Our long term goal is to have buy and hold single family properties mainly for cashflow and to pass it on to our kids later on. 

We made a list of friends of family who have rentals and conservatively may be able to start with managing 5 to 10 properties local. Our thinking is this would be hands on learning about all things rental management, screening tenants, leases, turn overs, etc. So when we eventually have our own rentals, we will be experienced managing them. 

Considering this as our education. We could charge a lower rate than normal to get started and help out our friends. We are both Nurses and each work 3 days per week, so we would keep as a small second job. 

Last week listened to BP Podcast show #52 with Ken McElroy. He started in real estate doing property management. This got us thinking about going this route. 

Anyone have any tips or resources specifically about property management? books, blogs etc. 

Any tips or advice about getting this started?

Thank yall!

Wow, great position to be in. Congratulations. 

I am a noob so my advice is limited. 

The way I would think about it is... if worst case scenario happened and I had a mortgage on my vacation home and on my primary home... and I had to loose one of them... which one would I loose?

I'd rather loose the vacation home... and be safe in my free and clear primary home. 

this does not take into account numbers and interest rates etc, just an exercise in the feeling of comfort. 

Having a paid off, free and clear primary home must be such an amazing feeling. I would feel relaxed and comfortable and would be able to really focus worry free on growing my real estate. 

Hello BP!

We have had a long journey already to get to this point. Amy (my spouse) and I were $85,000 in debt when we met. Seven years ago we decided that a debt free life was one we wanted to achieve and live... so over 3 years we paid off all of our debts (this while we were students and had regular jobs.) 

After that, we cash flowed paying for all of our big expenses... cars, birth of our two daughters (home births at $7K each), tuition for both of our Nursing School tuition, wedding / honeymoon, big tax bill we had this year etc. 

Our original plan was to save up and pay cash for our first primary home, something modest for our area. We have been renting for a long time while we cash flowed and saved up. 

It has taken us longer than we had planned... so we are closing this Friday June 2nd on our first primary home using a mortgage. Our plan was to attack this mortgage with a vengeance and pay it off fully in 5 years (mortgage is $1700 month, but would send $3400 per month.) We just love the idea of having a paid for home. It must be an awesome feeling. 

However, over the past weeks, we have been thinking of adjusting our plan. We could be in a small real estate bubble right now and there could be a correction coming in 4, 5 ,6 years perhaps. 

So right now we are asking ourselves... in 5 years during a market correction when properties are selling for a discount, would we rather have a paid for house, or $150,000 cash available to purchase a few properties. 

We talked about having a 100% debt free life, now we are considering finding a conservative balance to where we could use small amounts of "good" debt. We are both Nurses; it is a rewarding but demanding profession. We love what we do but we see ourselves not enjoying it in the long run. Real Estate will be our vehicle to the lifestyle life we will achieve. 

Anyway, excited about our closing this Friday and about the beginning of our real estate journey. 

P.S this is the property that we are buying as our primary home. Purchased for $188... appraised for $202. A little bit of equity for our first real estate deal, we plan on being here +10 years, purchased here for access to quality schools in a great neighborhood. We are in the Covington, Louisiana area (50 miles north of New Orleans)

We are buying our first home. This will be our primary residence. 

They offered Lender Credit to lower closing costs up front but end up with a higher interest rate. Have not gotten the exact amounts yet. 

Loan will be $188,000, interest rate 4.0% with no credits or points on a 15 year. Closing costs about $6,000. 

We will pay it all off in 5 years. 
So I'm thinking getting lender credit may be worth it since we will only pay the higher interest rate for only 5 years as opposed to 15 years. But I believe you pay the bulk of the interest the first few years, so actually I'm not sure.