All Forum Posts by: Zaid Badabwan

Thank you all for your informative comments. Very much appreciated.

Hello

I have made an offer to a property using 203K loan to buy and renovate the property. I have come to know that the contractor should be approved, and I have some questions:

1. Can I take only the purchase part of the loan, and use other funding for renovation? and in this case can I do the renovations myself?

2. If the answer to question 1 is NO, and I had to stick to the approved contractor, then can I do parts of the renovations, or buy the material and deliver them to the contractor to reduce cost?

3. Any advise to reduce renovation cost?

First: Private funding is very expensive.

Second: Any lender will require you to put 20-30% from your own money, therefore you may think about starting with something smaller and less expensive. Try a duplex and expand little by little.

Hello Friends

I am planning to build a 4-plex building and need an engineer who would do all  sealed plans needed for permitting. I have contacted some companies and received very high quotes. I would appreciate your help in finding an engineer or architect who would do the job, and your feedback on cost from your experience. This will help me understand the market since this is my first time trying to build something. Thank you

Hello

I am starting to use Stessa software for my multifamily LLC instead of excel sheets I am using now. I used to have an excel sheet for each property, but I am not sure now if I have to allocate every expense and income to their property, or do I treat all properties as one body since they are in one LLC. this will be easier, but I do not want to be surprised at the end that I should have allocated income and expenses to each property.

 Thank you for your response.

Hello

About two weeks ago I made a post looking for rental property accounting software. I have selected Stessa because of the possibility to have separate portfolios each one with its reports including P/L and balance sheet. Does that mean I can use one bank account for all portfolios since rents and expenses of each one will be categorized separately? Or do I have to keep a bank account for each portfolio?

Hello

I have been using spreadsheets for few years, and it has become a time consuming task. I was looking for accounting software and looked at "Rentastic" and "Stessa". The first one with a reasonable monthly fee, and the later free. However; I found that Rentastic does not provide balance sheet while Stessa does. There might also be other softwares out there that I am not aware of; therefore, I would appreciate your advice about a simple and efficient software that would produce financial reports (specially P/L and balance sheet) and that would accept several portfolios for different LLCs. Thank you

 Thank you, that looks good.

I understand your concerns, but I told both lenders that I will be shopping for best rate and both said that this understandable. The rates they quoted upfront are very different, and I understand that what matters is the final rate they come up with in the final offer. 

My question was about my financial obligation toward the offer I don't take.