All Forum Posts by: Susan Maneck

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.

I bought all of my properties between 2012-2019. In Mississippi it took the pandemic to drive prices up much. 

 Speaking as a native Californian who has lived in Mississippi for twenty years, yes there are great opportunities here, but buying there can be very tricky if you don't know what you are doing. Some of the prices now are unsustainable and it is easy to think you're getting a great deal only to see the neighborhood totally disintegrate. Too often I've tried to talk Californians out of deals where I knew they were going to get burned. At least run the deal past someone who is local if you can. 

Hmmm. Doesn't sound like you are a beginner to me! If some of that is empty forested land you might think about selling the lumber on it. I know of people with inherited land in Mississippi that have done quite well with that. 

So are we up to three properties now? 

So you have two properties? One near Starkville and the other in the Free State of Jones. ;-}

Is the land in Mississippi solely your own now or is it an heirs' property, meaning land that is owned jointly by an extended family? I've seen a lot of that in Mississippi, especially among African-Americans.  It is fine for rental purposes but difficult if you ever need an exit strategy. 

As for house hacking that, of course, has to be done where you live. But if you know Mississippi well I think it is a great place to invest overall. Where is your property located?