All Forum Posts by: Elizabeth S.

I need some help thinking this through and making the best long term decision. I have 2 commercial mortgages that are on 5 year ARM loans with 15 year terms and 3 personal mortgages with 20 year fixed rates.

I am a buy and hold investor and plan on keeping my properties for 40+ years. 

I would like to refinance my properties so they are all on one loan with one bank and with one fixed rate and eliminate the variable rate loans. If that isn't the best idea though, my main priority is to eliminate the variable rate loans. 

• Would it be better for me to only refinance the variable rate loans into one loan or all of them into the same loan? 
• My husband is the only one working a W2 job, if we refinanced into one portfolio loan, would he be able to get 4 more personal loans with Fannie or Freddie?
• I would like to cash out refinance in this process so we could buy a couple more properties with that cash, my husband is concerned that having all of our loans and all of our properties with one bank would put at us at more risk if we weren't able to pay or the bank called the loan. I have a hard time thinking of any reason we wouldn't be able to pay our loan but on the other hand only have my 5 years of boom market experience to reference. How would you approach this?

Any advice you can offer would be great, thank you!!

I also use Google Voice as a secondary number when I'm renting a property. It helps me to be able to answer my primary line and have confidence that it's someone who I want to have my number and not a potential tenant calling to ask about renting my house. 

As an investor that hears people talk about wholesale deals, I haven't found new wholesalers to have very good deals or to be that vocal about promoting them. They all seem to be more about building their list than getting great properties. So my advice would be to focus first on getting the great properties and then tell everyone you can about them. Investors at REIA meetings are a great source of buyers.

I agree with Tyrone, the best investment at this point you can make is into your education. Read through the BP website and find local investors or an investors club so you can meet people locally. 

You're right, you wouldn't want to quit your job as soon as your passive income covers your expenses BUT that is when how you think about your job will change. You will go to work every day and instead of thinking about how you don't like your job and you wish you were doing something else, you will think about how that pay check will all be gravy and helping you get ahead to reach your next goal. The first goal it to get started, then to reach the point when you're covering your expenses, when you get to that point and pretty much only then, you need to decide how much cushion you want and how you're going to make money after you quit that job. Maybe you'll check out a new field and make a lot less money and it wont matter anymore. Maybe you'll start flipping properties and you'll need big cash reserves to do that with...it will really be up to you at that point. Buy and hold real estate is a boring business though. It doesn't create uddles of cash but it does create slow and stead cash flow. 

Another option you could consider is selling some of your properties over time and investing in the next higher tenant base. Not because the tenants you have currently are a problem but because you can purchase more home, increase rents and then have a more savvy tenant base all at once. Plus, if it allows you to use the same overall dollar value of properties but have less roofs and similar or more rent, it would be an equal trade with less work. 

For example say your properties are worth $20,000 each and you sold all 105 properties (slowly!) and purchased say 50 properties worth $42,000 each, and the rent increased to $850, you would increase value and decrease the work. 

I've never used a business plan but I see the benefit of one if you are working with a lender or a business partner and they want everything in more detail. I plan on owning my properties until I die and passing them along to my kids. Until then, I plan on adding to my portfolio to increase cash flow until I have hit the cash flow goal I've set. I have criteria on the types of properties I purchase, but again those can be adjusted based on the actual numbers of a property. This is in summary...my business plan! 

Do a land contract type sale and pay her over a couple of years. She would need to check and see how many years she would need in order to make the numbers work.

I have a unit coming available on the 20th of October. The tenant is leaving on bad terms but I would be interested in this advice regardless of the terms.

What steps do you take to make sure you can get a property ready to rent quickly? 

Do you start advertising the house for rent and then keep a list of who is interested for when the house is ready? I always feel a little awkward at this point because I don't want to have a house unrented for 30-45 days but I also don't feel like I'll know the true condition of the property until the tenant is completely out to tell people when a place will be available.

Any feedback on how you do it would be great!

@Chris Jones buying with leverage and buying with cash aren't any different, well except that cash is A LOT easier. You are still going to have you basic ways of investing which are buy and hold, flipping, notes etc. I believe that there is a BP article on like 100 ways to make money in real estate, you can focus on the ones that interest you to narrow it down.

Do you know which area of real estate you want to focus on?

Having cash just means that you skip the financing steps and when you look at your profits, there is more in your pocket.

What brought you to the real estate field considering it as an investment option?