All Forum Posts by: Rafael Floresta

Can i ask you a couple questions?
Do you own single families or mostly apartments?
I'm just starting and I'm thinking about getting a single family for my first rental.
Do you shop around for your own deals or let a real estate agent do the leg work?
When doing byy and hold, do you think leverage is agood thing? If so, what is the down payment percentage you target to cash flow positive?

Steven Hamilton II, doesn't that eventually get you broke? Eventually you will make a bad deal and be in a hard spot. How do they manage to do it? Did they survive thru 2007?

When I calculate my cash flow, I calculate the cost as mortgage (principal + interest) + other values. By my calculations, I consider 1 month vacant and have a 5% (80 bucks) repair cost.
So I would be counting on appreciation and build up on the principal of the loan as profit.

Getting money out is a way to get money for cheaper than the investor Interest rate I would get as first time landlord.

Still not worth it?

Steven Hamilton II, I remodeled before I moved in. That took around 2 months. Should I account that as well? How can they measure if I never rented it?

Joseph M, Yes on both. I would buy my home and a rental in SD.

There are still houses that would cashflow in San Diego, given you can get a good rate on the loan and do 25%. Rent here is really high.

Thank you! I wasn't aware of that.

Michael P. can you explain what you mean by tax free?

August of 2011 I bought my condo for 175k. We did 5% down and spend quite a bit of money remodeling it to meet our needs. Back that time we couldn't find anything we liked, and this was cheap enough that we could spend a little extra to make it comfortable for us.

The neighbor was pending for 30 days, and today it finalized the sale for 289k. It is the same floor plan, same level, pretty much the same. He didn't remodel, mostly have the 1983 kitchen, and old appliances.
Another neighbor is also pending, it went for sale after the one above, for 315k and after talking to their agent, he said it will close escrow in a couple weeks for 315k.

I don't have plans to move right away, but in a couple years I will need a bigger place. We planned to rent this condo, when that time came. Now we are considering between selling and realizing the profit or refinancing and getting money back, and buying a second condo/house to rent.

So far the pros of refi and buying another place as rental are:
- we don't have to move, nor remodel our next place
- we don't pay taxes for what we cash out (until we sell)
- we don't have to pay real estate agent fee

What I'm afraid is to pass the opportunity to sell at a good price.
If we refi and leave 25% only (we have 50% equity), we would be able to rent it with cashflow close to 0.