249: Beginner's Real Estate Investing Guide

Published: July 15, 2019, 8 a.m.

Two big mistakes are: 1) Renting out your former primary residence. 2) Only being invested in one market.  This Beginner’s Real Estate Investing Audio Guide also helps you step-by-step with buying an income property: Credit Scoring Mortgage Pre-Approval Writing An Offer Inspection Vetting A Property Manager Appraisal Insurance Closing LLCs  **The entire audio from this episode is transcribed into words and can be found at the end.** People set up LLCs for asset protection, anonymity, or tax purposes. But there is a lot of administrative work. Is it even worth setting up? Your FICO credit score has five ingredients. Down payment, debt-to-income ratio covered. Mortgage pre-approval is better than pre-qualification. Select income property in: job-growth economies, high rent in proportion to low purchase price. Cash flow = Rent Income minus “VIMTUM”. Why would someone sell you a cash-flowing property? “Turnkey” defined. Should you make a lowball offer to a turnkey provider? Also discussed: Negotiation Strategy, Earnest Money, Purchase Contracts, Management Fees, Management Agreements, Mobile Notary, Title Company, Rent-To-Value Ratio, Collecting Cash Flow. __________________ Want more wealth? 1) Grab my FREE E-book and Newsletter at: GetRichEducation.com/Book 2) Your actionable turnkey real estate investing opportunity: GREturnkey.com 3) Read my best-selling paperback: getbook.at/7moneymyths __________________ Resources mentioned: Mortgage Loans: RidgeLendingGroup.com Find Properties: GREturnkey.com Memphis & Little Rock Property: MidSouthHomeBuyers.com Turnkey Real Estate: NoradaRealEstate.com QRP: TotalControlFinancial.com JWB New Construction Turnkey: NewConstructionTurnkey.com Our Tampa Real Estate Field Trip: RealEstateFieldTrip.com Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold     Complete Audio Transcript:   Welcome to Get Rich Education. I’m your host Keith Weinhold and I’m here to help Beginning Real Estate Investors Today.  The biggest beginner mistakes to avoid, when you make an offer - can you lowball a turnkey provider, and all those buyer steps like LLCs, mortgage pre-approval, inspection, appraisal, and closing. Today, on Get Rich Education. _____________________ Welcome to GRE. This is Get Rich Education Episode 249 - and this is your Beginner’s Real Estate Investing Audio Guide. Hi, I’m your host Keith Weinhold. We’re talking about how to get into long-term buy & hold RE investing - and that’s because it’s the most generationally-proven way to build wealth. First, let’s talk about a couple of the biggest mistakes that real estate investors make - it’s being invested in only one geographic market. Often, that’s the market that they just happen to live in.  There is more risk with being in only one market than most realize, because you’re now tied to the fortunes or misfortunes of just one area’s economy. Another substantial, common real estate investor mistake is that they continue to hold onto one - I’ll call it - special - property in their portfolio that they usually need to get rid of - but they have either sentimental ties to it - or they just hold onto it for convenience, and do you know what that property is? I’m actually talking about a specific property here. It’s the home that THEY YOU USED TO LIVE IN yourself. Well, what’s wrong with renting out the home that you used to live in yourself?  You might still have the preferable owner-occupied financing locked in on that one - and afterall, that’s a better rate than you could get on a non-owner-occupied rental. The problem is that the property probably doesn’t perform BEST as a rental. But you might be clearing, say $500 per month by using your former primary residence as a rental today.  Look, for you, it’s often about the cash flow - and yes, it is about the cash flow.  But there’s something even more important than cash flow - that’s because nearly any property will cash flow if the loan were paid off. That’s why it’s really more specifically about the rent-to-value ratio of a property. If you’re renting out the home that you used to live in, and it wasn’t strategically bought as a rental, if your rent-to-value ratio (or RV ratio) is 0.6%, meaning that for every $100K in value it has, you’re only getting $600 of monthly rent income, then you’re losing cash flow dollars every year - and every month. Look, let’s give a real life example of the .6% RV ratio. Say that you can get $1,800 rent out of that $300K property that you used to live in.  But instead, three $100K homes bought strategically as rentals can have a combined rent income of $3,000. Yes, you can still find that full 1% rent-to-value ratio. So it’s either one $300K property at $1,800 of rent income. Or three $100K properties at $3,000 of rent income.  So you’re losing $1,200 dollars of cash flow every month - you’re only getting $1,800 rather than $3,000 - by not buying and owning strategically in markets in the Midwest and South where the properties make sense as a RENTAL on the day that you buy it. Your primary residence only made sense as a primary residence on the day that you bought it.  Now you can see that the only reason that you own it, is because you defaulted and “fell” into it. Don’t fall into things. Be intentional.  You are a better investor when you’re intentional rather than emotional. It’s even better for you now. Beyond your $1,200 of additional cash flow with some repositioning, now, with three properties instead of one - now you’ve also taken care of the first real estate investor mistake that I mentioned. WITH three rentals rather than one, now you can be diversified across multiple markets. Two birds are killed with one stone. Now with some re-positioning, you’ve increased your cash flow by $1,200, AND you’re in multiple markets. One property isn’t divisible. We’re talking about real estate investing for beginners today, so let me clearly guide you through step-by-step on just how you go about buying your first property - writing an offer, inspection and vetting your Property Manager which is known as due diligence, appraisal, and onto closing and receiving cash flow from the tenant. As you’ll see, much of today’s show pertains to any investment property at all. But we’re talking mostly about how to buy single-family turnkey homes, especially homes outside your home market - as most of the best deals are not found where you live. Like they say, the best investors live where they want to live, invest where the numbers make sense. Get Rich Education is heard in 188 world nations.  Today’s content is primarily geared toward United States real estate investors - but those that live outside the United States will benefit here too. Here’s a question that you might have - “How do I go about setting up an LLC - a Limited Liability Company - to hold my investment property in?”  I’ll tell you - I don’t think “How do I set up an LLC?” is the best question to ask. The best question to ask is, “Should I set up an LLC?”  The three main reasons people set up an LLC are for either anonymity, tax purposes, or asset protection. Now, if you know that you WANT to set up an LLC - I’ve done three episodes on that topic with Rich Dad Legal Advisor Garrett Sutton. You can go to GetRichEducation.com, type “Garrett Sutton” in the search bar, and those three episode numbers will appear so that you can listen. But the reason that the question is, “Should I even SET up an LLC?” is because: Setup of LLCs complicates your life. Maintaining a registered agent, Articles Of Incorporation, having separate accounts, tracking expenses with separate credit cards, paying annual fees for everything - depending on how many LLCs you have and how you structure your life - it can wear you out.   The second reason you should ask yourself, “Should I even set up an LLC?” is because you might not have many assets for a litigant to go after. Retirement accounts have certain protections already. Equity in a property could be low-hanging fruit for a plaintiff attorney if someone gets a judgement against you. But since the Return From Equity is always zero, what would you have much equity in a property anyway?   The third reason you should ask yourself, “Why should I even set up an LLC?” is that frivolous or slip-and-fall type of lawsuits are rare. Not only have I never been a party to one, I’ve never even heard of any investor friend or associate having one - and I talk to a lot of people. You probably haven’t heard of one either.   Now, note that I’m not saying you can’t get an LLC or shouldn’t get one. I’m saying, prioritize those questions to yourself. First, it’s “Should I get one?”. If that’s a definitive “yes”, only THEN ask: “How do I set one up?” Why do you think you have to? Did some attorney use fear tactics to get you to? If the result of the LLC’s administrative overburden provides a greater reward in the form of asset protection, anonymity, or tax benefit - which is typically a flow-through taxation type anyway, you might then … get an LLC. So, as a beginning real estate investor, understand that real estate is a credit-based asset - meaning it’s usually bought with a loan.  So let’s talk about getting your finances in order before you contact a lender or select an income property.  That begins with you having enough cash liquidated for a 20% down payment on the property - add about 4% for closing costs, depending on the state that you’re buying your property in - and on the lowest-priced property that’s still in a decent area of a low-cost city - which might be a $60,000 property … 24% of that then is about $14,000 that you’ll need. You should have some extra on top of that as reserves.  Now, let’s look at another part of your finances - your DTI - your debt-to-income ratio. It cannot exceed 43% to 45% - maybe up to 50% in some circumstances.  So if your monthly minimum debt payments - everywhere in