All Forum Posts by: Rufus White

Hello Eric,

I think that may depend on your personal preferences. Personally I prefer investing locally, and through house hacking. In my opinion this can be a relatively conservative way to start out. You can leverage existing knowledge of preferable areas based on preferable school districts, lower crime areas, etc. It also lets you network and grow your team in person.

Hope that helps, best of luck to you.

Keaira Huffman is an agent that works for Allen Tate Realtor, and with investors here. Her husband has done flips as well in the area, and has an Instagram page as well that shows his completed flips.

@Dave Rav

Congratulations!

@Kevin Reid

I actually did this earlier this year. We purchased a new house, and are currently renting out our other house. We have a trusted realtor we have used multiple times now, and below are a few things we did to accomplish our goal

-Asked our realtor to setup email notification for houses on the MLS that fit our criteria, like price, bed/bath, and area in town

-Scanned Realtor.com, Zillow, and Craigslist regularly

-Went driving on weekends and evenings after work to look at houses in the areas we were interested in, and then sent direct mail to the home owners

-Called and visited websites of Banks to see if they had any foreclosures, as well as local property managers

Unfortunately we did not think to look at home path.com, which I now kinda wish we had. I don’t know how active you want to be, but I think Zillow and Realtor may show you foreclosures, you may be able to lookup the owners information and call them to see if they are still able to sell the property. I tried that once, however that particular call was not well received.

Hope everything works out for you!

@Thor Sveinbjoernsson

I have a question, have you seen that the savings rate has increased? It is possible people are electing to save money now and out off making mortgage payments as they are not sure if their jobs will be around much longer. Additionally both Forbes, and Newsweek have written articles on people electing to not go back to work, when called back by employers, because they are making more currently on unemployment. Which would mean not all cases of unemployment would result in people being in financial distress, and may mean that oddly enough, they come out of this in a stronger financial position. This may also be impacted by any additional stimulus the government may provide.

Regardless, it will really be interesting to see how this unfolds.

I don’t know if anyone else has come across this, or knows what might be causing this, so I thought I would ask. While my wife and I are looking for properties, we are noticing that when looking at previous sale prices as recorded in realtor, or Zillow they are sometimes all over the place. For instance, we were looking at a duplex and it states it sold in 2008 for $250k, then in 2009 for $1,035,000, then in 2015 for $559,500. Rent in the area is only $750-$850 per side, and other duplexes are valued at $135k - $150k on the same street, so I am not sure what is going on.

@Matt Devincenzo

Hey sorry about that! 

@Alina Trigub @Alex Kim

I am sorry I did not follow up! About 2 days after this post the sellers agent called me back and said the owner was willing to do owner financing. However when I asked about the other owner, and if there was anything in place, or how singing would be resolved if there was an issue, the sellers agent only said they did not know the other owner. They also did not respond to my question as to how any issues would/have been resolved. They have not contacted me back. The seller apparently lives out of country, but has relatives with POA that can sell the property. I have not pressed the sellers agent any further.

@Jason Dillard 

The listing agent said there is no HOA. However I feel it may raise questions as to who is responsible if an upper story has a unit and it spills over into one of the bottom floor units.

@Alina Trigub

Thanks! I will ask the listing agent if she knows who owns the other two units, and if not, I will look into it via property tax records.

@Wayne Brooks

Oh woah, I was unaware that would not even be possible. But that makes sense.

Hey,

Just had a question, there is currently 2 lower units of a small 4 unit apartment building in my area for sale. They are the Bottom 2 units. Would you ever consider purchasing part of a unit, if another owner still owns the other two? It is not the seller.

My thoughts are this is a foot in the door to possibly owning a full small apartment building.

@Heath Ryans 

Thanks! I did have to call around to several lenders and managed to find one that will be able to do a re-fi after 30 days of seasoning. I was unaware of the prepayment penalty, so I will be mindful of that going forward.