All Forum Posts by: Sean Walton

One thought I had if you are in a desirable neighborhood for short term rentals you could tell the main house tenants they can rent out the studio an Airbnb. If say the main house would rent for $2500 and the studio $1000 for long term tenants then rent both for $3500 to someone. Then say the first $1000 from the STR is the tenants. After that they give you 25% of the gross above that

There are a few issues with your idea i see. 1. You are not accounting for vacancy, repairs, capX in your cash flow. Tenants are not going to treat your place as well as you would. You get depreciation on your taxes but unless you 1031 later you will pay that back 2. I would be more in favor of it if you were finding a less expensive place or if it drastically cut your commute time. With that said there are people with rent controlled places in SF who have a small rental empire earning them a great passive income

They can approach the bank to do a short sale but that in now way will help them pay off their other debts. If they don't care about their credit they could just stop paying their mortgage until it is foreclosed upon and maybe Airbnb the extra rooms in the mean time to try and pay off the other debt. It depends how much CC debt they have they may want to declare bankruptcy? I like that you are coming from a place of trying to help them. Good luck

I usually work on ground up construction and haven't done any remodels under the 2016 code so double check what I say, but if you aren't adding SF you shouldn't need to do any efficiency upgrades however it depends on the city. You will most likely need to fill out the cal green mandatory measures checklist but again it depends on your jurisdiction.

You should have your criteria clearly written down somewhere. You should review the applications in the order they are received without even peaking at the others until you have finished and made a decision on the first based on your written down criteria, otherwise you can run afoul of the fair housing laws. Even if applications were all received at the open house one was probably first and you should have made a note of the time received. I'm most of the way through Landlording on Autopilot and highly recommend it

I'm part way through Landlording on Autopilot I highly recommend it before you decide one way or another. If you had a 40hr a week job and A class neighborhood A class tenants manage yourself. B/B probably still manage yourself. C/C better to hire a PM. If you do self manage always represent yourself as the PM not the landlord and create systems. Make sure that the tenants know what is their responsibility. If the clog the toilet or sink flushing something that shouldn't be flushed they should take care of it or you can call your handy man and add it to their rent bill.

Welcome to bigger pockets! I'm not European but I lived in Denmark for 9 months for study abroad and London working in an architecture office for 6 months. That is impressive you built your own estimation program. The zestimate is often off by more than 20% so if yours is better maybe you should approach Trulia or Redfin. If there aren't a lot of renters you should look into Airbnb. If run well it can be more profitable than long term renters. Good luck

You can sell it to a cash buyer for $160,000 or its current value is $160,000? What are the estimated repairs? What would the ARV be after those repairs? Doesn't seem like much of a spread if your calculations are off by 0.3% you have no profit but I guess if your contract has an out low risk on your part other than wasting the seller and you buyer's time

You should talk to several local banks about what their lending criteria are for construction loans but my understanding is that if the land has more than a certain amount of equity at the start the bank will issue draws to pay for the construction along the way so that if the project goes sideways there is still enough equity for them to foreclose and sell without losing money on their end.

It depends what kind of property and where you found them and what kind of financing you are getting. If your offer doesn't have a financing contingency in order to look more competitive in a hot market you want to know how much you can get in financing and how quickly or have cash or access to cash in case you don't qualify.

If you have a bank or mortgage broker already they can give you a pre-qualification letter that gives more merit to your offer.

If this is an off market deal and the seller knows you will need to get financing to close you can go for financing after the offer but it is a good idea to figure out how much you can get pre-approved for anyway. @Chris Mason also recently informed me that some brokers can do "full approvals" where they more rigorously run the underwriting and as long as the property appraises as expected they can approve you for a set loan amount at up to a certain LTV

Unless you have a track record with a local bank or a line of credit you can't get actual financing lined up until the lender knows what the property is and has it appraised.