All Forum Posts by: Susan Maneck

I own seven investment properties (soon to be six) in the Jackson area. Since I now live in California, I've been selling a property a year but that doesn't mean I won't pick up another property if I find a good deal. I'm still very much in touch with the real estate market there. 

 True, my understanding is that you have to pay earned income even if you are buying and selling your own property if you are a real estate professional. At least that seems to be what my turbo-tax program is telling hem. 

If your licensed as a realor doesn't all the income you make have to be reported as earned income rather than passive? 

Hi Claratisha, 

As a native Californian who invests in Mississippi, after having taught at Jackson State University for twenty years, I'd be happy to help you when you are ready to spread your wings. You can buy a house for cash there that wouldn't even be a good down payment in Oakland. 

Welcome, Stephanie. I'm in California right now but I taught at JSU for 20 years and own seven properties in Jackson. 

PIGs stands for Passively Income Generators meaning they make money from day one, usually via rental income. PALs stands for Passively Activity Losses. On paper at least, your investments may be losing money in the latter case, but they may provide tax write-offs. Normally these properties do appreciate at least whereas PIGs may not. Most of us likely have a combination of PIGs and PALs. I don't deliberately buy PALs but some properties turn out that way, anyhow. 

I've yet to see turnkey providers whose properties weren't way over-priced. 

The best way to get a conventional loan on a mobile home on land is to make sure the mobile home is placed on a stem wall. That's the only way they can qualify for FHA, for instance.

Once my cash flow from my properties started to exceed my salary, what I did was max out my retirement funds. Some of it did go into a solo401K but I only have one house left in that account. 

The first property I bought in Mississippi was a 4/2 I bought from HUD to live in but during the recesson I found to my horror it was underwater. I could either cry about that or buy up the neighborhood. I ended up wth six houses on just that street. I've since sold the 4/2.

Jackson, MS may not make sense from your "fundamentals standpoint" but for me I went from more debts than assets (including retirement funds) during the recession to over a million in assets over debts by the time I retired. Mind you, my salary was just short of 60K when I retired. Yes, I made more money when I sold my condo in Tahoe than any property I sold in Mississippi, but I never could have qualified for mortgage in California if I did not have all that rental income from those other properties. Point is money can be made off of PIGs or PALs. It is really a matter of what you need for what purpose. In Mississippi you can only make money off of PIGs in California it is PALs that will create the most wealth. For me the latter seems more risky, maybe because I've always done things on a shoestring. 

Some of us got into this without a lot of cash to begin with. I went in with my mother to buy our first property. The property cost 15K but needed about 30K worth of work. My mother put up the 15K and I put the other 30K on my credit cards. After the property was rehabbed and rented we got a first-place HELOC (WF used to have these for rental properties) and used the money to buy the next house. I now own seven properties with one mortgage and two first-place HELOCs. If I had been trying to keep my money out of cash, I'd have none. In Mississippi you buy for cash-flow because you can't count on appreciation in most areas.