Open House – Rants & Raves

[surveyor]

Long answer (cont’d)

2) First year scenario……

As everyone knows here, it is difficult to make predictions over the long term. The ROE calculation of 43% is meant to be something that you examine year after year and make appropriate actions to keep your ROE that high. There are going to be some years where your ROE is low and your property isn’t generating as much money as it should. Steps should be taken to counter that. There will also be years where the appreciation of the property will be higher than the 4% I anticipate. If it happens, great. If not, oh well. Real estate is a slow moving beast so you can direct it properly. Still, the ROE calculation is meant to be a barometer of a 10 year cycle.

As for the mortgages being paid, I pay all the mortgages myself and I do all of them on auto-pay. I could have the property manager of each property do the payment of the mortgage for me, but the banks send the statements to me, and I find it helps if you get your hands into the nitty gritty.

Vacancies… The property is already fully rented so I did not account for vacancies in the first year. The rent is low, at $375 per unit and there is room to move that up to market (which has been running at around $425). I have learned that I have to aggressively rent my units out, so I have instructed my property managers that if a unit is vacated, immediately place an ad offering a rent discount on the first month. This helps generate interest right away and keep vacancies to a minimum. If vacancies happen, that’s the fact of life. However, I have minimized the vacancy risk by the aggressive discount and by the fact that the property is a 4 unit (SFRs have a vacancy disadvantage because once the tenant is out, you’re out the full rent amount, as opposed to multi-units, where if you have one vacancy, you at least have some rent income still available to come in).

3) Miilitary tenants

One of the things that attracted me to Huntsville was, like Jumby said, the fact that BRAC was closing a base in the midwest and expanding operations in Huntsville. There were other aspects to the BRAC report too, because they are moving defense contractors as well as personnel over to Huntsville. So the long term area prospects are good.

I will tell you that I am not specifically targeting military personnel as tenants (and certainly not officers). A lot of investors make the mistake of going after high value tenants (military officers, high income people), and as such buy expensive rental properties as such SFRs. Many investors will buy rental property based on the question, well if I had to live there, what would I like to live in? I avoid that line of thinking entirely because I pursue properties that have cheap rents. Cheap rents allow you to appeal to a huge population of minimum wage earners, vs. having to fight for high income tenants, which are few in number and are chased after by most everybody.

Let’s also remember the “high number” of foreclosures affecting everyone in the country. If Huntsville does go into a situation where there are a lot of foreclosures, forcing owners to rent instead of own, where will they go? WHERE THERE IS CHEAP RENT.

Also another advantage of cheap rent is that you are able to keep vacancies to a minimum.

And lastly:

4) Are the hassles worth it?

Um, let me see, I am able to make an asset which was previously doing jack to all of a sudden generate a 43% return.

I am able to pay ridiculously low taxes even though I have a household income of over $200k.

I’m sure there are others who will pick holes into my investing and will say, well you’re too risky, or you’re a sucker for buying into the real estate makes people rich crowd, or any other comments. And I don’t doubt that this is risky. However, you can minimize risk several ways (as I’ve outlined here) and you can use the factor of time to both make you money and minimize your risk.

[surveyor]

hmm after reading all that, I’m probably scaring more people away from real estate investing. Hahahahaha.

[surveyor]

hmm after reading all that, I’m probably scaring more people away from real estate investing. Hahahahaha.

[surveyor]

hmm after reading all that, I’m probably scaring more people away from real estate investing. Hahahahaha.

[surveyor]

hmm after reading all that, I’m probably scaring more people away from real estate investing. Hahahahaha.

[surveyor]

hmm after reading all that, I’m probably scaring more people away from real estate investing. Hahahahaha.

[NotCranky]

Your portfolio has cash flow positive that is what I would look at, not one property. Sure it is risky, but it isn’t like your approach lacks reasoning.

The math is very basic, applying it to your investment strategy a little complicated but it makes sense. The return on equity and “cash on cash” calculation just looks like a component of ROI to me,a substituion for takign the investmetn capital from somewhere else in your net worth. In fact it might prove to have been better just to take the down payment from your liquid assets, depending on what your returns are.Of course, you could always pay off the HELOC if rates go up.

Maybe I am seeing something wrong and you could say why using a very small portion of your liquid assets for the DP isn’t just as good?

[NotCranky]

Your portfolio has cash flow positive that is what I would look at, not one property. Sure it is risky, but it isn’t like your approach lacks reasoning.

The math is very basic, applying it to your investment strategy a little complicated but it makes sense. The return on equity and “cash on cash” calculation just looks like a component of ROI to me,a substituion for takign the investmetn capital from somewhere else in your net worth. In fact it might prove to have been better just to take the down payment from your liquid assets, depending on what your returns are.Of course, you could always pay off the HELOC if rates go up.

Maybe I am seeing something wrong and you could say why using a very small portion of your liquid assets for the DP isn’t just as good?

[NotCranky]

Your portfolio has cash flow positive that is what I would look at, not one property. Sure it is risky, but it isn’t like your approach lacks reasoning.

The math is very basic, applying it to your investment strategy a little complicated but it makes sense. The return on equity and “cash on cash” calculation just looks like a component of ROI to me,a substituion for takign the investmetn capital from somewhere else in your net worth. In fact it might prove to have been better just to take the down payment from your liquid assets, depending on what your returns are.Of course, you could always pay off the HELOC if rates go up.

Maybe I am seeing something wrong and you could say why using a very small portion of your liquid assets for the DP isn’t just as good?

[NotCranky]

Your portfolio has cash flow positive that is what I would look at, not one property. Sure it is risky, but it isn’t like your approach lacks reasoning.

The math is very basic, applying it to your investment strategy a little complicated but it makes sense. The return on equity and “cash on cash” calculation just looks like a component of ROI to me,a substituion for takign the investmetn capital from somewhere else in your net worth. In fact it might prove to have been better just to take the down payment from your liquid assets, depending on what your returns are.Of course, you could always pay off the HELOC if rates go up.

Maybe I am seeing something wrong and you could say why using a very small portion of your liquid assets for the DP isn’t just as good?

[NotCranky]

Your portfolio has cash flow positive that is what I would look at, not one property. Sure it is risky, but it isn’t like your approach lacks reasoning.

The math is very basic, applying it to your investment strategy a little complicated but it makes sense. The return on equity and “cash on cash” calculation just looks like a component of ROI to me,a substituion for takign the investmetn capital from somewhere else in your net worth. In fact it might prove to have been better just to take the down payment from your liquid assets, depending on what your returns are.Of course, you could always pay off the HELOC if rates go up.

Maybe I am seeing something wrong and you could say why using a very small portion of your liquid assets for the DP isn’t just as good?

[surveyor]

The choice of using HELOC and other equity is a way of diversification.

The $400k of liquid assets, a portion of it is emergency funds and the rest of it is 401k, Roth, IRA, and other investments making good money. So the $400k is called for. Also, there are tax disadvantages if I use the $400k for real estate.

The idea is to make all of your money work harder for you. The liquid assets are holding their own. The equity in the real properties are generating a decent return and then our household income exceeds our expenses.

Even the choice of going to Huntsville is an exercise in diversification.

I have thought of cashing in my entire 401k and using it to invest in real estate, but even that is too risky for me. It is better to have it as a way to diversify the entire investments that I have.

[surveyor]

The choice of using HELOC and other equity is a way of diversification.

The $400k of liquid assets, a portion of it is emergency funds and the rest of it is 401k, Roth, IRA, and other investments making good money. So the $400k is called for. Also, there are tax disadvantages if I use the $400k for real estate.

The idea is to make all of your money work harder for you. The liquid assets are holding their own. The equity in the real properties are generating a decent return and then our household income exceeds our expenses.

Even the choice of going to Huntsville is an exercise in diversification.

I have thought of cashing in my entire 401k and using it to invest in real estate, but even that is too risky for me. It is better to have it as a way to diversify the entire investments that I have.

[surveyor]

The choice of using HELOC and other equity is a way of diversification.

The $400k of liquid assets, a portion of it is emergency funds and the rest of it is 401k, Roth, IRA, and other investments making good money. So the $400k is called for. Also, there are tax disadvantages if I use the $400k for real estate.

The idea is to make all of your money work harder for you. The liquid assets are holding their own. The equity in the real properties are generating a decent return and then our household income exceeds our expenses.

Even the choice of going to Huntsville is an exercise in diversification.

I have thought of cashing in my entire 401k and using it to invest in real estate, but even that is too risky for me. It is better to have it as a way to diversify the entire investments that I have.

[surveyor]

The choice of using HELOC and other equity is a way of diversification.

The $400k of liquid assets, a portion of it is emergency funds and the rest of it is 401k, Roth, IRA, and other investments making good money. So the $400k is called for. Also, there are tax disadvantages if I use the $400k for real estate.

The idea is to make all of your money work harder for you. The liquid assets are holding their own. The equity in the real properties are generating a decent return and then our household income exceeds our expenses.

Even the choice of going to Huntsville is an exercise in diversification.

I have thought of cashing in my entire 401k and using it to invest in real estate, but even that is too risky for me. It is better to have it as a way to diversify the entire investments that I have.

[Author]

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