All Forum Posts by: Taz Zettergren

@Christina Baliva welcome to the forums and congrats on the first post! It sounds like you've done quite a bit of research, it depends on how active you want to be, how much you have to work with and what your goals are. @Sarah Downey gave you some great advice. 

I feel like STR's are more risky especially in this rate environment so I'd suggest either brrr or flipping simply because if the brrrr was done correctly then you could flip it if you needed the cash. I'd definitely advise holding rentals in nicer (majority owner occupied) areas because it reduces your risk of the rental clientele. I work with a lot of clients that will flip properties then use a turnkey provider for their long term rentals so the options are unlimited.

Best of luck on getting started! Let us know which route you decide and how it goes. 

@Sarah Downey I'm glad to hear, thank you for the kind words! Where are you buying the rentals you self manage now? 

That's primarily where we focus as well, home values are much more consistent and affordable. There are several turnkey companies that are operating in this part of the country, here are a few I'd recommend. Dean Harris at Crestcore, JWB, Midsouth Homebuyers or REI Nation (full disclosure I work at REI so of course I'm biased)

Feel free to reach out if I can be of any assistance! 

@Justin Loutfy Do you or your clients have a preferred market you'd like to be in? I can give some recommendations depending on the area's you're looking for

Welcome to the forums @Becca Blackwall and congrats on the first post! If you have the liquidity I would advise using an investment loan without tapping into that HELOC. I know HELOC's are a floating rate but if yours is like mine, 9.5% is tough to make things pencil. If you were to purchase with HELOC funds I would do an all cash purchase so you can avoid a negative cash flow situation. If it's your first rental you might want to consider partnering with an expert to get your feet wet with the experience.

Best of luck out there! Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions

@Troy Baack great questions Troy. You've gotten some really good feedback on here. Breaking even/positively cash flowing is definitely still attainable with turnkey companies that know what they are doing, even in this rate environment. Now more than ever you have to be careful and be patient, as cash flow gets more difficult unfortunately there are companies out there that will start cutting corners and that could put your investment at risk just to show paper cash flow.

Of course do your interviews on who you're looking at but I'd narrow it down to your top 2-3 options and visit them in person if possible. After meeting the team, seeing their work environment and even some of the finished products this will help you be more comfortable in your decision making. 

Best of luck and happy investing! 

@Quinell Dixon ,

You're getting a ton of good responses on here. Good job on the question! When you said grow your portfolio I assumed you mean with rental properties. I gave my advice earlier, but here is exactly why I think that way. I was in your shoes when I moved to Germantown, it's one of the best suburbs in TN. I thought I would buy my forever home, but started out renting. It let me learn about the area. My fiance and I bought a house in Germantown after a couple of years and I house hacked it to start with by renting rooms to good friends. Once we got married, our plans changed and we ended up buying a house on some land in North Mississippi. I was glad I didn’t buy my forever home in Germantown and ended up turning the house hack property into a long-term rental.

By being patient and renting first, I was able to make a couple of good decisions along the way and ended up with a rental property covering a big piece of my primary residence monthly note.

Hope that helps because I was in your situation. Be patient, it might be best to rent first (shorter the lease the better) to learn the area and then use your capital to purchase a home than can produce an income when you leave. When the time is right, that forever home will be there and you may be in a better position with a better understanding of what you really want long term. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Good luck as you get started.

If you were to purchase a property to be your primary residence you would be able to get into the deal with less money down. So a duplex, triplex or quadplex would be a home run but I understand those are tough to come by in areas you want to live in because I'm sure it's a tight market, like it is here. If you can't get one of those then I'd lean towards a single family home you can be comfortable in. Being cognizant of price, if you're wanting to stay liquid, you may want to lean towards something that's a 2-4 year play so you could turn that into a rental after that timeline then get into your longterm home from there. 

@Aldo Fazio I commend you on doing your homework. It's certainly a tougher market to navigate but I do believe it's a great time to take advantage of that and put your money to work. If you're financing date the rate and marry the property, the odds of rates being this high forever are slim so there's a high probability you will be able to refinance in the next 2-3 years. Personally I'm continuing to invest as long as the numbers are close and make sense, they may not be as high as I want them to be right now but if they pencil 2-5 years from now at a lower rate then I'll continue to move forward with the deal, of course if it meets all my other requirements. 

The one thing I will never do is jeopardize the areas I'm investing in to match a paper return because things always look great on paper but the clientele you work with can be a different story causing that return/experience to not be as good. In the markets I focus in (Memphis, Little Rock, DFW)and  the prices I'm looking at are typically in the 160-300k price range. We have found these price points to be more owner occupied type areas which tend to perform better over time. May want to check out a different area that's still affordable and that can pencil! Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk more about how you're running numbers, areas, processes etc

In my experience the DFW metroplex has been far more beneficial for the investments sake. South Florida is a great place to live but as far as investing it'll be more challenging with the costs involved.