All Forum Posts by: Frankie Woods

I used to sign up for a new card every 2 - 3 months.  The credit inquiries will impact your credit score, but not significantly (I maintained between 700 - 770 depending on the credit bureau with an average of 730).  I have 16 over the past 2 years, and about 11 over the last year.  The inquiries from the last year have the biggest effect.  The biggest issue is that some credit card issuers (e.g., chase and american express) will not approve you if you have too many inquiries in the last 6 - 12 months.  Discover and Capital One generally won't approve you if you have a lot of open accounts.  There are several nuances.  The generally strategy is to start with Chase due to their 5/24 rule (five personal cards opened in last 24 months) and finish with AMEX (has a one bonus per lifetime rule).  BoFA, Wells Fargo, Barclays, U.S. Bank etc. are good for churning in the middle.  It's a fun hobby but can be frustrating and trial by error at times.

That is true.  I believe that only American Express now doesn't allow mortgage payments.  You will get notified if the transaction can't be completed with the card.  All you need is your payment information from your bill, which you enter into a "new recipient".  They charge your card and mail a check to the mortgage company.  It generally takes 5 - 8 business days for the payment to post to your mortgage account.  It's fairly easy and a good way to meet your minimum spend.  If it doesn't work, just pay ahead on your utilities (phone, electric, insurance bills, etc.) 

@Mark S. no problem!  The southwest card is amazing but I don’t have a significant other so its less useful for me.  You can transfer UR with the chase preferred card (95 annual fee) and that allows you to transfer points from the freedom as well.

@Mark S. I love Chase (Reserve, Ink preferred, Ink cash, and Freedom) as well as American Expresss (Platinum, Gold, Blue Cash, and Hilton Aspire).  I’m military though so I pay no annual fees, but I’ll keep them when I get out in a few years.  The business cards don’t show up on my credit report which makes them extremely valuable to me for rehab projects in order to keep my overall utilization down and not affect my credit score for new loans.  The ability to travel hack with my normal spending is so awesome to me.  One sign up bonus can generally pay for an amazing trip on the right card.  

Some of the sign up bonuses are worth way more than $500.  I just flew round trip to Europe in Biz class using points.  Retail value of tickets were $9k each way.  $2k in economy.  This is simple and straightforward to do with plastic.

I've done this twice.  As @Andrew B. stated, the third time I tried to do this with an FHA loan got held up because they didn't believe I'd actually move. I used the same lender and was told that it was the reason for the hold up. Generally though, this is a reasonable strategy. Just be up front with your lender.

Another option is business credit cards (except Capital One and Discover).  I have several and none of them report to the consumer credit bureaus unless you default.  It's workable, but if you don't pay them within the introductory period, you'll end up paying more interest than if you went with a hard money lender.

legalzoom offers physical addresses.  They will scan all documents sent to that address and upload them to their website tied to your account.

Conventional mortgages require 30% down on 4-families. So, at the lower ARV ($175k) you can refinance into a $122.5k loan, which would mean you'd have to bring more money to the table. However, the new payment would be $685.96 @ 5.375% (I just refinanced at this rate with a 720+ credit score), cutting your current payment almost in half. At the higher ARV ($190k), you can refiance into a $133k loan which still requires some out-of-pocket funds to cover some of the closing costs, but ~10k less than the lower ARV. The new payment here would be $744.76. Both of these options would greatly increase your potential cashflow.

Since this is an investment property, there are only a few banks that would allow you to get a HELOC (e.g., PenFed and NFCU), and most will only allow you to pull out up to 80% of the property's value.

If I were in your shoes, I'd refinance now to get into a longer term loan with lower payments. It greatly increases your flexibility down the road, will significantly improve your DTI for future acquisitions, and will supercharge your savings rate for the next round. Not quite the "home run" BP members talk about, but this is nothing to snuff out. You're doing better than 99% of the "investors" out there...

Hope that helps!

Frankie

@Santino Lauricella you nailed it.  Negative cashflow in a house hack is ok if the numbers work with you not living there.  When I house hack, I actually "charge" myself market rent when running the numbers each year.  It always makes me smile at the end of the year :).  Besides, you have to live somewhere; might as well pay yourself first!

Best of luck my dude!