All Forum Posts by: Sterling Chapman

@Erin Connors The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner is pretty basic and easy to understand guide to rental property investing. There are so many good ones I could list 100 but a 19 year old starting out just trying to grab the basics I would start with that one. (I’m assuming if they read Cash Flow Quadrant that they read Rich Dad Poor Dad too, if not its a must) good luck! 

@John Oh love the enthusiasm and I bet you learned a ton managing other people’s flips. I imagine you already know this if you have been in the business a while but I would talk to a few banks before you quit your job. They tend to be a fan of W2 income. Even if you do knock it out of the park in wholesaling, my understanding is they will want to see two solid years of income on tax returns before they even count that. And if your plan is to use hard money on a flip and then sell it and never use a bank, you might consider what if it doesn’t sell or the market takes a turn? If you are bankable you can always refinance into some longer term debt and rent it out while the market turns back into your favor. I’ve heard it’s always wise to have multiple exit strategies. Please don’t misunderstand stand me, I think real Estate is awesome and I’m in no way trying to deter you from pursuing your dreams (I hate it when people do that to me). Just trying to make sure you thought it all through, but then again at 24 you pretty much have time to bounce back from anything lol. Good luck and I look forward to seeing your documented journey!

@Cory Melious I’d keep the old ones, no real science behind that decision, just my opinion. Good luck!

@Michael J. I don’t know if I’m doing it right or not but I’ll tell you what I’m doing. For my single family houses I do a whole months rent as a deposit but for my small multi family units I do about 60% of a months rent deposit. I don’t want to make a generalization about all renter but I find with most of my potential renters they don’t have $2-3k saved up to move and that requirement would be prohibitive. So in my opinion 1.5xrent for deposit is high and requiring 100% rent at sighing is also prohibitive. Now my units range in value from $50-$100k in value and rent from $750-$1200 a month, if I had higher end properties with fancier tenants I would probably run it more like the model you just described. Something else I started doing this year out of either necessity or impatience, that allowed me to rent out 9 units in two weeks is I tell them to pay half the deposit and sign the lease and I’ll take it off the market. Then when they pay the other half the deposit and the full rent they can get the keys. It’s worked every time so far. I just found its easier to get a smaller commitment and they typically have that much money at the time and then after they put it down they are not walking away from it. I just found when I tell them to come back when they have all the money they never come back, they get distracted by some shiny red ball along the way. Hope this helps and good luck!

@Robert Duffer I recently pulled census info to perform a market analysis on Birmingham and Huntsville (along with 8 other cities in the South East). I don’t have the data in front of me so by all means pull your own before making a decision but I’m almost positive that I found Huntsville to be a more promising rental market based off of indicators such as population growth trend, unemployment trend and vacancy rates. I would have actually preferred Birmingham because it closer to where I live and I have other business there that would give me excuses to visit but the numbers that I pulled pointed me more toward Huntsville. Good luck!

@Shawn Ziegaus great question! I personally manage all 18 of my units. With a full time day job, a family, and trying to scale my investing business, self managing can be a time consuming headache that I would love to out source. The problem is not the 10% fee that I would happily pay someone else to take this on. The problem is that most encounters I’ve had with local property managers were less than favorable; high vacancies, lower than market rents, lack of responsiveness to tenants for maintenance requests and prospective tenants with viewing requests. Bottom line is I don’t feel like I can trust any one to take care of my properties the way I do. That being said this is something I am going to have to figure out or get over sooner than later if I want to scale any more. Good luck!

@Johnny Accardo I would BRRRR personally, shouldn't take you "years" to refinance, if done right you can get your cash back in months. Vacation rentals sound sexy and I am intrigued, however I have two main concerns on them. 1. They don't seam very recession resistant as when the economy turns I would fear luxurious vacations would be the first industry to dip. 2. I'm always concerned that the local laws would change restricting or forbidding or heavily taxing short term rentals. That being said there are a lot of people that are way more successful than me making a ton of money on them so that's just my risk intolerant opinion. Good luck! 

@Maya Torres I’ve gotten more tenants from listing my properties on Facebook marketplace then signs, Zillow, hotpads, Realator.com and Craig’s list combined. Give it a shot! Good luck!

@Dan Colantonio I find there are very few "hard No's" out there. Someone will do it even if the first 10 people or banks you ask tell you no one will. I've done cash out Refies on appraised value on day 1, I did it into a commercial loan with a 20 amortization and a 5 year balloon and will refinance into a 30 yr later because I thought that was my only option at the time and I wanted an 80% LTV but I have since been approached by several companies that would do a 30 year fixed refi 75% LTV on my LLC on day one so it's possible. Banks telling me "no one will do that" is my pet peeve. Nooooo you won't do that, doesn't mean no one will, you are either lying to me or ignorant. Either way I don't usually go back to those banks. Good luck and keep looking till you find what you want

@Rebecca McDonald tough crowd! Good luck girl, don’t let them get you down.  i’m not a big fan of going to work for other people either but if I was in the situation you just described I would probably commit to going back at least for a year while I got my house selling business off the ground. There are definitely some people out there that are more hard-core than me that would flip with other peoples money and wholesale their way out of that situation but in my opinion some Kush dependable W-2 money would probably make for a smoother transition.