All Forum Posts by: Trent Stone

You must read "The ABC's of Real Estate Investing" by Ken McElroy. The best book I've seen for multi family investing. Also, check out any resources from Michael Blank, he's pretty legit. Biggest thing, is make sure your numbers are airtight and ask your broker exactly how they will be determining your rates and terms.

For loan shopping, just vet experienced, investor savvy loan brokers. Ask around for referrals in your area, I'm sure the BP community has lots of good ones. Good luck!!!

@Cameron Tope Thanks for correcting me, totally misspoke. Yes, 10 conventional NOT FHA, sorry!! I still don't think you have to worry about disqualifying yourself. Find an investor savvy mortgage broker and sit down and make a plan. You also have to remember, the government is always changing mortgage laws too, so you will always be making adjustments as you go no matter what :)

Turnkey operations are not fantastic IMO. A lot of the turnkey companies suck, and the rates are meager at best. If you can thoroughly vet a company and you are sitting on boatloads of cash and you don't really care for high returns, then sure, they make fine investments. Putting together a core 4 takes a little more work but will be far more profitable. I live in Utah and my partner in Arizona, both are fairly overpriced right now so we are doing all our investing in Indianapolis. Price to rent ratios are fantastic. There are some good markets in Florida. KC, Birmingham, Ohio, Austin, DFW, are some other good choices. They have decent appreciation and good price to rent ratios. Good luck!!

No, you won't disqualify yourself in the future for a mortgage on your primary residence if you start buying rentals, especially if you go traditional over FHA. FHA has a limit of 10. As far as DTI, lenders will count 70% of your gross rents as income. Which is great because usually your expenses are more than 30% on rentals, so you will get to count more of the rental income towards your DTI than you are actually netting. No better time than the present to get started, I say go for it!! Good luck!!

Really depends on the market. If it's an area of young professionals, then 3/1 or 2/1 is fine. If the area has mostly families, then they will want at least a 3/2. Call and talk to local property management companies, they will tell you what mix is in the highest demand.

Well....You will never see interest rates this low again in your life, so I think it's a great time to open a HELOC. Nothing says you have to use it if you don't want to. Depending on your current mortgage rate, a refi might be a great option too. If the RE market starts tanking then your home might not appraise for as much in 6 months. If it's me, I take action now. Best of luck to you!!

Putting money in the stock market short term is just gambling. It might stay down for awhile or it might rebound 150%. We shoot for around a 35% ROI on our flips and we could recycle $100k about 3 times in a year. So if I had $100k for 12 months I would flip houses and turn it into $200k. But that's just my opinion. Good luck!!

It's always a good idea to have a lawyer look at the contract template you are going to use, but you don't need to have one look at every deal you do. Each state has different laws so it depends on what state you want to wholesale as to what specifically needs to go in your contract. Double check your state's wholesale laws, but typically all you need is "Equitable Interest" in a property to be able to market it. Which means you just need some kind of skin in the game, it could be as little as $1. You can use a custom purchase agreement from an attorney or just the basic purchase and sale agreement from Association of Realtors. If you have equitable interest you can simply assign your purchase contract to another party. The other option is to sign a purchase agreement with the seller, buy the property, then perform a separate contract with your end buyer. It's called a double close. It's more expensive but can be useful in certain situations. Hope that helps!

What would you like to know about your report?

Grant Cardon's rule is "When the crane is in the air, beware". You have to take into account the amount of new inventory being built and how it is going to impact the demand for your product. I little town in Utah is scheduled for 35,000 new dwellings over a 5 year period. You couldn't pay me enough to invest there. It might look like a decent investment now, but those developers are going to get caught with their pants down in the near future and I want to be far away from it. Also, as it stands, those units are renting for below a 5 cap. So sure, if you are sitting on massive amounts of wealth and you are just looking for long-term appreciation, then go for it. Otherwise I think you would be FAR better off buying something in an established neighborhood with a relative fixed supply. That also keeps you from speculated what the market will do with the changes in supply v. demand, you will have a ton of historical data to support your investment. Much safer IMO.