Step by step guide to buying a rental property

Cost out revisited - For Nicole

2011-01-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

In a post awhile ago (2009?), I wrote about Dave's three steps to wealth creation. Step 2 was to review and categorize your transactions. Step 3 was to have a cost out meeting with yourself (and your spouse). Once you have been using Mint.com for a month or two, you should sit down in front of your computer and go through in detail every transaction. If you don't know what it is, ask your spouse. If you still don't know what it is, you should leave it in uncategorized. You should keep working on your uncategorized category until it is less than 5% of your total spending. The uncategorized bucket is not your friend! One way of making sure that you know every expense is to check for new expenses every night. Then you will not have forgotten what it was before you categorize it. It may be seen as some as a bit obsessive, but obsession is not always a bad thing. especially if the thing you're obsessing about is important.
Note: Using your debit card for everything will help you keep track of all of your expenses, while using cash will not allow you to see the vendor for each transaction. There are benefits to using cash, but I lean towards the debit piece.
So, now you have your expenses categorized. Sit down and determine if there is anything you don't need. When our son was born in '04, we had three cars -- two were paid for (a 99 camry and a 98 ford ranger) and I was leasing a Saab for around $330/month. We got rid of the Saab. It was like giving myself a $4000 raise (after taxes), so really more like a $6000 raise.
I looked at our Comcast bill last month. I was paying $184 for Internet, Cable TV and Home Phone. We never use our home phone, and lots of telemarketers call it. And I realized that for Cable TV, I only watched about 6 shows each week, and I could either get them free on Netflix (well, included in the $7.99/month fee) or buy them per episode on Amazon Video on Demand (for my Tivo), or iTunes for my iPad. I added up the total if I bought 22 episodes/year for $2 each, for 6 shows. It came in under $300. So I cut off my Cable and Phone, and reduced my $184 to $39.99 for Internet. Even if you add in the $300, my savings this year will be ($184-$40)x12-$300= $1428. If you made that into before tax money, it's like giving yourself a $2000 raise.

Now you might not have as obviously wasteful things like these that you can eliminate from your budget, but there may be other things. Do you drive to work? I pay $80 for parking, plus another $30-40 in gas per month. That's over a thousand dollars a year in savings. How often do you eat out, how much do you spend there. Mint should be able to tell you that. If you use your debit card at Starbucks, you should be able to see how much you spend at Starbucks. Some people spend $5/day, for 250 work days/year, so $1250, or just over $100/month. Do you eat out for lunch at work? Do you pay $1.50-$2 every day for a coke with your lunch? Water is better for you and cheaper. Coffee is free at work, and even better, you could give up coffee and sleep better at night.

Ok, identify three areas where you can remove cost (take cost out) of your monthly budget.

Next post -- reducing credit card debt! I will try to get to this later today.

The Ups and Downs of being a Landlord

2010-12-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

So, things have gone well this year. I refinanced a couple places, my adjustable rate mortgages have adjusted down, I am actually cash flow positive on some of the houses, I am paying down about $3k/month in debt. I'm about to close on 8 more units in Buffalo. Overall, it has been a good year.

(that's the ups). Now for the downs. I got a call from the property manager last night (while I'm in London for business) that the rain in Seattle flooded the basement of one of the houses. She said that we'll have to replace the carpet, and even some of the drywall. The tenant, who has been in the house for over 3 years, moved out and isn't coming back. This will be an expensive week.

The good news is that they have paid for december, so we have two weeks to get the house in shape before the new year. We are also going to try to raise the rent 10%, since we have not changed it for the last three years, and the market seems to be picking up a bit. That would be +$1800 cash flow for the year (although that will all probably be spent on replacing carpet and drywall, and the remortgage fee.

Oh well. We will continue to plug along and roll with the punches.

For more suggestions, stories and strategies for real estate investing, take a look at this book at Amazon:

Increasing Net Operating Income

2010-12-14T06:38:00.000-08:00

I've talked a bunch about buying property in previous posts...the logistics of financing, the cap rates on some of my properties, finding properties in different markets. Once you've bought the property, what do you do then? Since commercial properties are valued based on the Net Operating Income (NOI), one of the best ways to increase value is to increase NOI. There are multiple ways to this, and you should do all of them.

The most obvious is to raise the rent! Keeping operating expenses equal, if you raise the rent, you will raise NOI - which affects both cash flow in the short term and property value/sales price in the long term, as property value is a multiple of the NOI. Some of the things you can do which may allow you to raise the rent:

Rehab the inside of the property. You have to do some of this when a tenant moves out anyway -- clean or replace carpets, paint the interior. Other things which I did were to install bathroom fans in all of my units. When I toured the apartment before buying, I could see and smell the moisture in the units. By installing bathroom fans, it significantly dried out the places and improved the smell. One hint if you do this: wire the fan into the light switch so it comes on any time the tenant turns the light on. This will help keep moisture down.

Install nice countertops. Ideally one could install corian, but that could be expensive. You can get nice (or at least nicer) formica countertops. These make a difference and will help you land better tenants, which in turn reduces wear and tear and tenant turnover, again increasing NOI.

Clean up the exterior. I try to stop by my apartment building at least once a month and the first thing that strikes me is how the place looks. The last time I went by, I saw some of the shrubs were overgrown, the leaves from the local tree were piling up around the place, and the stairs up to two of the apartments were very dirty, despite the painting they got this summer. I asked the property manager to have these things cleaned up. Hopefully, if we treat the property well, the tenants will too.

In addition to raising rents, the other way to increase NOI is to reduce expenses. There are several expenses that you can reduce, some of which are easier than others.

Interest expense
Principal
Taxes
Utilities
Maintenance

The first two, principal and interest, are not always in your control. Although with this economy and interest rates low, it is worthwhile to investigate whether a refinance pays for itself. I recently refinanced from 5.375% 30 year fixed to a 3.875% 5 year arm. This reduced my payment by about two hundred dollars/month and turned that property from negative to positive cash flow. The interest savings pays for the closing costs in about two years. After that, the interest savings is incremental $ in my pocket.
Reducing your principal expense can be done by moving to an interest-only loan, although these are much harder to get then they were a few years ago, especially for investment properties.

You should keep an eye on your property tax assessments and bills. Most counties have a process for appealing the valuation if you feel that the property has been assessed unfairly. I haven't been successful getting my taxes reduced, but some people make a business out of helping people appeal to the county.

Utilities is an expense you should be pretty aggressive about. Ideally, you want tenants to pay all of the utilities. That way it doesn't cost you anything if they take a long shower or leave the lights on, or the door open. In my building, the tenants pay electricity and there is no gas. Unfortunately, the water/sewer/garbage is billed as a package by the city, rather than individual units. I charge the tenants a "utility fee" of $35 per person on top of their base rent, to cover w/s/g. this comes to about $350/month total. Recently I looked at my w/s/g bill and found that it was $500/month. I sent the property manager to investigate, and she found that one of the bathtubs had a leaky faucet. We replaced that and also installed low flow showerheads and aerators on all of the taps (The city provided these for free, and would've given us free toilets too if ours were older). I am considering "submetering" each apartment for water, which would allow us to bill each tenant separately for this, and align their incentives with mine -- ie keeping water usage low. Studies have shown that submetering can reduce water usage costs by 35% because the tenants are responsible for their own usage. I investigated with one company, and they estimate submetering my seven unit building would cost about $5k including installation. I haven't decided if it's worth it yet. If I could save $50/month, the ROI would be about 4 years to earn back my money, which seems like a long time. But I also have to consider how much value this would add to the sales price. $50x12 = $600. With a cap rate of 5%, which is not unreasonable in Seattle, the $600 saved per year would turn into $600/.05=$12,000 in additional property value. With 6% cap rate, it would be about $10k. This makes it look like a good investment -- if I can really save the $50 or more.

The garbage bill is another frustration point. I pay $215/month for a 1.5 cubic yard dumpster with once a week pickup. I pay $0/month for the same size dumpster for recycling. My tenants fill up the garbage dumpster, but I only saw about four pieces of cardboard in the recycling 75dumpsters. One of my goals for 2011 is to reduce the garbage produced by half, and move that to recycling, and thus reduce my cost for garbage pickup. If you want more suggestions on how to reduce your garbage bill, I found a company called Waste Auditing Consultants. Their business model is to help companies reduce their garbage bill, and then they split the savings with the owner. The owner is a guy named Trip Topken, and they work with folks with garbage bills from $400/month to $375,000. Trip gave me some other tips on using a compacting dumpster, talking with the city about alternative carriers and reducing my expense through negotiating my rate with the city.

If anyone else has suggestions, please feel free to post a comment in response to this post!

How did I ever choose Buffalo/Western NY as a place to invest?

2010-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

After my last post, I had a comment from a realtor in Buffalo who wanted more details on how I decided that Buffalo is a good place to buy property. So here's the (perhaps convoluted) logic that brought me to Buffalo.

I have purchased several properties in Seattle over the last six years (4 single family residences, and most recently a 7-unit apartment, all within a few miles of my house. (98117 zip code if people are interested in seeing the area.) I also have a day job which funds these acquisitions, so I need to keep my time investment per property at a minimum. The problem with Seattle is that the cap rate is very low. For Single Family/duplexes, it's around 4%. For the apartment, I got what I think is a great deal at around 8%, although I had to put about $40k into it once I had purchased it. So including that, the cap rate is about 7-7.5%. The <4 unit properties are cash flow negative to start and for the foreseeable future with 30-35% down payment.

So one night I couldn't sleep, so I did a search for "turnkey investment property" in Google. One of the results that came up was http://www.cashflowwithequity.com/. This is a firm which buys properties in Buffalo, rehabs it, puts a Section 8 renter into the property and sells it to you. When you do the calculation, these end up being about $200/month cash flow positive on a purchase price of $60k or so. This is much better than -$400/month on an investment of $350k in Seattle. I was wary of finding a company like this on the internet and investing sight-unseen. So I did a search for Commercial Real Estate in Google, and found http://www.loopnet.com. I did a search for multifamily properties in Buffalo and Rochester and found many properties for similar prices (a duplex for $60k or less, with cap rates of 10-12%). I then decided that maybe this is real, and property really is cheaper outside Seattle!

I discussed with my realtor in Seattle, David Sligar, who has worked with me to purchase the 11 units in Seattle. I asked him to join me for a trip out to Western NY for a few days to look at properties. He couldn't make it, but did find me realtors in Buffalo and Rochester, through a nationwide referral service. He interviewed the guys and set up first conversations with them. He will get a referral fee on any properties I buy through them.

Next, serendipity intervened. I knew I wouldn't buy any properties remotely without at least getting to know the cities and the people I would be working with. So I had been thinking about taking a trip to Western NY. It turned out that in September, my company was sponsoring a recruiting trip for our team to Toronto. I volunteered and the company covered the expense of getting me to Toronto. After our recruiting was done, I rented a car and drove down to Buffalo and Rochester. I met with the agents there, Mark Hiscock in Rochester and Corey Rossi in Buffalo. They each had found 4-5 properties for me to walk through, and we also drove by some of the properties that I had found on Loopnet. The Loopnet properties were in somewhat dicey neighborhoods, and Mark and Corey warned me away from these. I also met with the guys from "cashflowwithequity.com" and they showed me around their duplexes for sale. Corey warned me away from them with a set of reports from ripoffreports.com, where people had complained about shoddy work from these guys.

Anyway, we didn't find anything on that trip that resonated with me. Corey and Mark both set up automated searches for me which sent me properties which fit my parameters. Corey also followed up a few weeks later, pointing out a set of four duplexes next to each other which were for sale. Assuming we close, the potential cap rate is 10-12% and the cash-on-cash return in the first year will be 16-18%. Not too bad...And as an added bonus, they're on a commercial lot so I will have the option to build something else in the future if the opportunity presents itself.

Corey also introduced me to a Property Management company, Superior Management Services, in the Buffalo area. They walked through the properties with him, and gave me suggestions for areas for improvement (although they're in pretty good shape now). I am headed out there in December to do my own walk through before we close.

If you're interested in investing in multifamily real estate, I recommend Investing in Apartment Buildings: Create a Reliable Stream of Income and Build Long-Term Wealth, available on Amazon in paperback or Investing in Real Estate which you can get on your Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6" Display - with New E Ink (Pearl) Technology or in paperback..

Property in Buffalo!

2010-10-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

Hi all, it's been a long time since I posted on the blog. I'm a Seattle native and have been buying properties in Seattle for the past few years. The one house I wrote about earlier, along with three other single family homes. Earlier this summer I bought a seven unit apartment down the street from me, and this actually is cash flow positive in months where there are no discretionary expenses (above taxes, utilities, insurance and property management). The single family houses are starting to break even after several years of losing money.

So, I started looking at other areas of the country for places which are "cheaper." How is "cheaper" defined? One measure of cheaper is the Cap Rate, short for Capitalization Rate. The capitalization rate is the Net Operating Income (NOI) divided by the purchase price. In Seattle, the apartment I bought was a bargain at 8% (I bought it for $612.5k and the NOI was around $49k. After I put about 40-50k into the place to upgrade electrical, pour a new sidewalk, rehab four units, put in new awnings, the cap rate including that expense was closer to 7%.
In buffalo, I am finding properties with 10-12% cap rates. I just bought four duplexes (8 units) for $334k (roughly half what I paid for the seven units in Seattle) with about the same NOI. Well, I haven't closed yet but I'm under contract. My realtor in Seattle found me a realtor in Buffalo, my realtor in Buffalo found me a property management company, so I don't have to fly out there so often. Looking forward to clearing $1500-2k/month on an initial investment of around $100k. We'll see if it pans out I guess!

Wealth Creation, part 2: Real Estate as a meaningful component of your portfolio

2009-12-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

Why is it good to have Real Estate as a part of your portfolio?

There are several reasons, but the main differentiator between real estate and other investments is Leverage. What is leverage? It's also called Other People's Money (OPM) and probably other things. Leverage is buying an asset by putting a small (or large) fraction of the money down yourself, and borrowing the rest. This means that not only is your money working for you but other people's money is working for you too.
When you invest in the stock market, your money is working for you, and you'll see increases of 8, 10, maybe even 12% per year on your initial investment. In real estate, you put a down payment (the standard is 20%, but I've bought houses before with as little as 3% down (although this is harder today than it used to be).

Let me give you an example:

I have $10,000 to invest. I can do one of two things with it.

1) I buy a Dow Jones Industrial index fund with my $10,000. The stock market has an exceptionally good year and increases 15%, and I end up next December with $11,500. My return on investment is $1,500/$10k = 15%.

2) I use my $10,000 as a down payment on a $50,000 house. I borrow the other $40,000 from the bank (OPM). In the next year, the house appreciates 5% (a realistic appreciation historically) and the house is worth $52,500. I still owe $40k (well, probably more like $39,500 because I've paid down a little bit of principal). So my equity (defined as the value of the house minus the mortgage) is $52.5k - $39.5k = $13k. So my Return on Investment is $3k/$10k = 30%, twice the return of the optimistic stock in the example above.

One could get even more aggressive, and take the $10k and split it and buy 2 houses, with $5k (10%) down each. If each of the houses increased by 5% to $52, 500, the total would be $105k. So your return on investment would be $5k/$10k = 50%! The more leveraged you are, the better the return.

To be completely transparent, leverage can work against you too (as it did with many people in the last year of economic downturn) if the value of the house went down 10% from $50k to $45k in example 2, you would have lost half of your down payment, and you would be down from $10k equity to $5k, or a 50% (unrealized) loss. So what do you do if this happens? Nothing! Real Estate has gone up over any 5 year period over the last 100 years. So you should just keep collecting rent, keep making your mortgage payments and wait it out.

Next post: What is cash flow?

The Rule of 72 and Intention-Manifestation

2009-12-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

I'm going to talk about one widely accepted mathematical truism and one crazy non-fact-based idea in this post.

First, the Rule of 72. Once you have started to track your net worth, you need to figure out how fast it's growing and whether that's fast enough. One way to understand the speed at which it is growing is to use the Rule of 72. It says that if you start with 72 and divide it by the annual growth rate (in percent) that you're growing, this will tell you how long it will take (in years) to double your net worth. So for example, if your net worth is growing at 6%/year, it will take 12 years to double your net worth. At 10%/year, it will take just over 7 years. And so on. This is an approximation that works at low fractions, so as you get to bigger growth rates it is less accurate. So if you want to double your net worth in 3 years, you will have to grow at 26% (rather than the expected 24%). And this compounds...so that if you are growing at 12%, it will take 6 years to double, and another 6 years to double again. So in 12 years, you will have quadrupled your net worth.
Exercise: Get out your calculator or excel spreadsheet and figure out how fast are you growing and how long it will be til you can retire. There are other variables to take into account to determine retirement age, but you can take a swag at it using a 4-5% fixed income rate of return once you retire. So if you have a net worth of $1M, you would be able to earn $40-50k/year from that.

The second exercise I think is a little nutso, but it doesn't cost much. Many, many books on wealth creation and other things say that the first thing that you should do is write down your goals. This will help you achieve them (This is called the intention-manifestation model, but I'm not going to dive too deep into that here). Choose how much you want to grow the net worth in the next year, three years and five years. Even starting with one year is a good place to start. I decided that my goal is to double my net worth every 3 years. I have a little post it note widget in the corner of my screen which says Grow Net Worth by 26% in 2010, from xx to yy. I then calculated whether this was realistic. I used a simple rate of 7% appreciation in the Seattle real estate market and a 10% appreciation in the stock market (these are not super-ambitious numbers, but not super-conservative either). So I ended up with four areas of net worth growth.

Real estate appreciation
Stock/mutual fund appreciation
Loan pay down
Surplus added to my investments

Real Estate Appreciation: The important thing to remember about this number is you take the appreciation based on the total asset, NOT based on the equity in the house. So let's say I have a house worth $500k and a mortgage of $400k. My equity (which is added into my net worth) is $100k. But when I calculate my 7% increase in the value of my house, it's 7% of $500k = $35k. So while the property only gained 7%, the net worth increase of the real estate part of my portfolio is 35%. This is what "leverage" is all about. The more leveraged you are (leverage = property value/equity), the more an increase will effect your net worth. I should also note that the same is true for a decrease. The more leverage you are, the more trouble you could get into if the property value decreases (which we saw in 2008-2009). 80% Loan to Value = 5x leverage. 90% LtV = 10x leverage. One of the challenging things about this is that as your property value increases, your LtV decreases and your leverage decreases. So you need to monitor this value over time. I should talk about that separately.

Stock/mutual fund appreciation: This is not leveraged, so just take your total amount invested in the market, and multiply it by 10% (historic appreciation of the dow over 10 year time period) to calculate the increase. You could make a more sophisticated formula, but it's probably worthwhile to keep it simple.

Loan pay down: Look at your last mortgage statement and see how much principal you paid last month. Multiply that by 12 and it will tell you roughly how much principal you will pay down this year. In general this is << the change you'll see due to Real Estate Appreciation, at least for the first fifteen years or so of the loan. Each year it gets a little bigger though.

Surplus added: This is the money you are left with after all the bills are paid each month that you can invest for the long term. You can increase this by doing a "cost out" exercise (see previous post) or by investing your bonus or other non-periodic income such as stock options which vest quarterly, and living on your monthly income. The cost out exercise is what's sometimes known as "the latte factor" or by other names.

If you add these four things up and find you're light to your goal, you should try to figure out what you can do to increase one or the other. Can you take some cost out of your everyday life and add that to your surplus? Do you need to add some higher-growing real estate to your portfolio? Can you pay a little extra down on your mortgage or credit card bills?

That reminds me. When I said Loan pay down, I should have included other debt besides mortgage -- credit card debt (that's the worst), auto debt, etc etc. Credit card companies are and credit card debt is evil. Before doing any of this other stuff, make sure and pay down your credit card debt! This deserves a whole separate post.

Dave's three steps to wealth

2009-12-16T20:36:00.000-08:00

Dave's three steps to wealth -- I am certainly not the first person to think that I have the secret to getting wealthy...in fact searching amazon for "three steps to wealth" will get you more books than you know what to do with. (I've linked a few of the search results below) But I decided to write a blog post about it. Why? The idea came from a conversation that I was having with a coworker. She was thinking about whether to buy a new house, and if so whether to sell her current one and move, or whether to rent her current house, and buy another one. This got us to chatting about whether debt is good or bad, and how you build equity (and thus wealth) in real estate. Anyway...what's the point of this. It made me think about what one can do in just a few hours a week (or less) to create wealth. So here's my crack at it.

1) Track your net worth. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins said that companies who made the jump from good to great followed a single, undiversified strategy, and happened to choose correctly. They chose a single metric (eg Walgreen's optimizes revenue per square mile) and drove that metric relentlessly. For individuals and families, the metric Net Worth is the correct metric. This measures the wealth you've created after you have accounted for your expenses. In The Millionaire Next Door Danko and Stanley talk about net worth being much more important than income in the measurement of wealth. If you doubt this, go read their book. If not, keep reading.
For years, I tracked my net worth in quicken, and spent $39-$69/year upgrading to the latest mediocre software. This year, I switched to tracking my net worth at http://mint.com. Mint.com is a free service/site (which was just bought by intuit, because they were kicking quicken's ass) in which you enter your bank accounts, credit cards, any investment accounts, loans and real estate. Mint then automatically keeps these up-to-date for you. It checks your accounts on a daily basis, and interfaces with cyberhomes.com to update property values on a weekly basis. It allows you to see your net worth transparently, and watch it change over time. This is an invaluable tool to track your success (or failure). Many people find that even though they have a good job, they actually have a negative net worth between their mortgage, credit card debt, car loans, etc. This is a sobering but important discovery.
So -- step 1, start tracking your net worth monthly.

2) Review and categorize your transactions -- Mint.com also will go to your bank account and download your transactions every day and categorize them. You probably have to spend an hour or two making sure the categorizations are correct and training it to do better, but then it's pretty sophisticated about getting them right. It doesn't do well with categorizing cash or checks, so if you're going to do this, you should set up auto-payments for as many things as possible and use a debit card (which will show the vendor on each transaction) for the rest. Watch your transactions for a month and categorize them relentlessly. At the end of the month, you will be able to look back and see how much of your money was spent on non-discretionary bills, and how much is on discretionary purchases like coffee or candy. I found that I spend on average $60/month at the little snack store in the lobby of our building. In October, it was $90. One key to being able to know this is that I always use a debit card so it shows up as the same vendor for each transaction.

3) Have a "cost out" meeting with yourself -- once you know how much you spend on different items for a month or two, identify places where you can get costs out of your life. When my son was born, my wife stopped working and reduced our income significantly. Her take home pay came to about $2,000/month. I challenged myself to get rid of $2k of expenses. The first thing I did was to get out of the $346/month lease payment on my fancy car, and start driving my (already paid for) Ford Ranger. I refinanced my house (that's probably worthwhile to discuss in another post) and removed about $200-300 of cost from our monthly bills. We then (unfortunately) stopped putting money (about $500) in savings. We stopped going out to dinner as often ($120/month), and so on. I'm not convinced that we got to $2,000, but we definitely reduced expenses by close to $1000. It would have been better if all of this money could then have been invested, but it certainly helped stop the bleeding and got us closer to breakeven for the next few years.

4) Other bonus tips that I should discuss in other posts -- set up auto-pay for all of your bills, load balance your utility bills (most gas and electric companies allow you to do this, so you don't end up with sticker shock during the winter months). The goal should be that you can leave town for a month and your financial life will continue on, you won't have a bill collector at the door, and most importantly you will avoid late fees.

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Refinance

2009-10-31T09:30:00.001-07:00

Last year I bought this house with a 5/1 I/O ARM at 6.625%. It was lame, but the best I could do at the time. I just refinanced it for 5.375% for 30 year fixed. The total payment went up about $20/month, but this includes $300/month of principal pay down. The refinance cost about $4500, so it will pay back in about 15 months, then I'm in the black.

I used Zillow's marketplace to get loan quotes. I just put in all the relevant data and got back quotes from about 15 brokers. You could sort by "total cost" over 3 or 5 years, where total cost equals total fees for refinancing plus interest rates. This will allow you to compare loans and determine what's cheapest depending on how long you're going to hold the house. I am sold on this, rather than having a loan broker I use over and over again.

$300 here, $1k there

2008-10-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Today I got an email from my property manager saying that there was a leak in the basement shower of one of the houses...apparently that was fixed a while ago. But the drywall was never repaired. So it just cost me $300 to get the drwall repaired. And the crappy shower that was in the house when we got there now apparently has gotten crappier, so we have to replace it. It's gonna cost me $1000 for a vinyl shower plus installation. I want to put in a tile shower, but he says that will cost me $3000. :(
I should have replaced the shower when we first bought it, but my wallet was getting sore after I replaced all the pipes and electrical. Oh well.

Finishing the story

2008-10-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not finishing the story. We got the roof put on, and Kevin got the property rented to a family from North Carolina for $1900/month. They wanted to rent it starting October 1, which is a little later than I hoped, but strangely enough coincident with the date of my first mortgage payment. Kevin got the first $950 as his 1/2 month (well, he had to split it with Phillips Real Estate, his company). So at least I had some income to go with my first mortgage payment.
As I mentioned before, this house is a 4 bed/1 bath. This is not the optimal configuration. We're going to ask the renters (once they move in) if they'd like for us to add a second bath in the basement and raise the rent. We'd like to spend <$5000 and raise the rent $200 so that we can recoup the cost in around two years ($200x24 = $4800) and then we get the incremental income.

We also got the house on Corliss Ave rented starting 9/15, so we ate 2 weeks of vacancy in which we had to paint the house and clean up the yard. This ends up being a quite expensive month, since the yard and paint was about $1k, plus about $900 lost due to the vacancy. All this adds up!

One additional note: I ran into a friend the other day and he asked me how the economy and housing market is affecting my houses (he calls me a land baron). It turns out it's affecting my stock portfolio significantly more painfully. Houses are down nominally about 5- 7% in Seattle, while my stocks are down 30+% from peak. Of course if I actually tried to sell my house, it would probably be significantly worse than the 5-7%.

Papers signed!

2008-08-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

This was the fastest closing yet. Jen and I got there at 9:30 and signed the last papers at 9:50. Incredible.

Apparently they file the deed and release the money tomorrow morning, and we get the keys tomorrow night. That's pretty quick for seattle as well. It seems like we often wait three days for the keys.

The painter is scheduled for Friday, so hopefully we can have it on the market Monday, and tenants in it quick and in a hurry.

Tomorrow's the day!

2008-08-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

Jen went to the bank today and got a cashier's check for $62,328.56 to close the deal. She doesn't like walking around with that much money. This was from the HELOC on our primary residence, which we're using to finance the down payment. Although long term rates are up lately, Ben Bernanke has been nice enough to keep short term rates down. I have auto-payment via my bank so our rate on the HELOC is prime - 0.50%. So this month it's 4.49%. Not so bad. I wish I could get long term money at this rate. And, it's tax deductible since it's financed from our primary residence.

Next steps, sign the paper tomorrow (tuesday), get the keys thursday, and get the painter in there (Friday)? The head roof guy is out of town this week. he offered to send over his guys, but David suggested we wait a week and a half til he gets back, so we get it done right. Probably a good idea. So we''ll get the painting done first, get the house on the market, and then get a new roof.

It'll soon be Kevin the property manager's turn to do his stuff. We've also got the kids moving out of our first rental this month, so we need to get folks back in there ASAP, or we're gonna be waaayyyy Cash Flow negative.

I learned something new today about Google

2008-08-24T09:56:00.001-07:00

I installed the Google Analytics tracking code, which allows me to see how many page hits I'm getting each day. I was doing pretty good last week...I had about 10 hits a day. All of the sudden, it went to 0 hits for the last three days. I knew that at least I was hitting my site, so there should be something! It turned out when I updated the template, it overwrote the tracking code that I had hand-added to the original template.

This isn't about the house, but is equally as frustrating as buying a house!

I just also added my blog to this Directory of Real Estate Blogs.

Ready for Closing

2008-08-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon the woman from the escrow company, Michelle, called and said "When can you come sign?" She offered to do it Monday, but I have a big meeting at work, so we've scheduled it for Tuesday morning. That was fast! I first gave the mortgage broker my application over the phone last Friday, and all the paperwork is done this Friday, and ready to sign on Monday. I guess the mortgage folks aren't quite as busy as they were two years ago.

She even sent me a pdf of the HUD settlement statement, and the mortgage broker sent me a pdf of the appraisal ($390k, $10k more than our price).

Insurance!

2008-08-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Don't forget insurance if you're buying a house...either your own or a rental! You can not get the bank's approval without it. All you have to do is call your insurance company and say "I need a binder for ....give address."

If not, you will get a nastygram from your loan officer saying that you are holding up the papers.

dave

Mortgage done -- not really!

2008-08-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today I got a note from John the mortgage broker. The subject was "FW: GLICK, DAVID". This didn't bode well...

It followed:

I lied they found one little corner of your life they haven’t poked into yet. Would you please fill out and fax back. There is something on title that they need to prove isn’t you®s .

Apparently there's a guy named David Richard Glick who has a $25k settlement against him for being a deadbeat dad. This is the same guy who the title insurance folks confused me with the last two times. The first time, it was caught at closing where they were going to take the money out of my down payment before applying it to the house. The second time, the title insurance company found it and asked me to fill out a form which included my full name and SSN. It seems like a waste of time not to do that in the first place...

So we printed the attachment, filled out my name, Jen scanned it and we emailed it back to John.

Mortgage done! For now

2008-08-19T14:33:00.002-07:00

I sent over my 1040s and Schedule E's which I found in my file cabinet (unfortunately, I didn't do them online, I did them in Turbotax desktop version) to the broker today. We'll see if that completes my part of the mortgage transaction. We'll see how the underwriters do. Next step, get the closing date, get it painted, and get a tenant in there!

Gonna give my property manager a ring now and see if he's gotten my first house rented, as the tenants there gave notice at the beginning of the month that they are moving out 9/1. I'd like to get some folks in there in September, rather than October when the market slows down.

PS. If you know of anyone who is looking for a three bedroom (plus a study) 2 bathroom house for rent, send them my way. Here are some pictures.

Mortgage Drama!

2008-08-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

As I noted below, I have a mortgage broker, Ed, who I've been working with for several years. When I came looking for a loan this time around, he told me there were no 5/1 ARMs, and no Interest Only loans. And that he could get me a 30yr fixed for 7%. I then went to Zillow to see if there was anything better out there. I found just what I wanted, a 5/1 IO ARM, for half a point less than Ed's 30 yr fixed.
As I reported below, I asked Ed if he could do that, and he said "there is NO magic money" and "good luck."

I also talked to my realtor David's guy John. John hooked me up with a 5/1 IO ARM at 6.625%. Maybe not magic, but better than 7%.

I got this note Friday from Ed:
"I’m sure sorry about what’s been going on. I assumed that you were going with the zillow lady, even though I didn’t think she could deliver, so I did not keep searching for loans for you. I was a bit surprised last night when I got your message saying you were going with someone else before I had heard from you that you were dropping the zillow deal.

I know that you bought down the rate on your loan for 12026 in February. You should know that the buydowns for a 5/1 IO ARM today look quite appealing to me. I thought you’d want to see them, so they are attached.

The par price doesn’t even show up on this sheet, but it’s over 7%. However, you can buy down the rate to 6.375% for less than one point ($3110).

Let me know if I can assist. "

I feel a little bit bad that I switched, but when I asked him to give me the same loan as I found online, he said "Good luck." And now all of the sudden he can find the loan I wanted. Oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Even moooooorrrreee financing

2008-08-18T19:47:00.001-07:00

Buying a house is easy. Paying for it is hard. Or asking someone to give you money to pay for it...

On Friday morning, I talked to the mortgage broker and gave him my info...salary, current assets and debts, name of my first born, and on and on. Friday night he emailed me 15 pages of documents to sign and send back to him. Actually, I just recounted...it's 24 pages. He misspelled my wife's name and our street on every page, so we had to fix that and initial each one where we had changed it. This morning I faxed it back to him. This was the application (5 pages) and the ancillary documents (19 pages).
Now for the actual documents needed. Thank god for the internet...

Last two pay stubs (thank you ADP for storing that stuff online)
Last two W-2s (ditto, thanks ADP)
Loan statements for all four properties (to prove the payment includes tax and insurance)

chase, flagstar bank = easy to find statements online
Wamu hard to find statement online
Morequity I found an old statement that had been sitting on my desk with only a small grease stain on it, and scanned that

Last two tax returns -- maybe just 1040 and schedule E. Maybe all 50 pages (still not sure)
Leases for all three rentals (not sure why if they have the schedule E and the loan statement)
Paystub for Aug 15 (I tried to explain that I'm paid monthly. maybe I will photoshop it)
Oh, and last two months of asset accounts at our broker Morgan Stanley (online as well)

I must say that the internet is a wonderful place that I was able to get about 80% of the documents in pdf format and email them straight over to the loan officer.

Financing Continued

2008-08-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

I am relating this saga to my realtor David, and guess what -- he "knows a guy" who can help.

I send him this note Wednesday 8/13 at 10:33pm:

My guy is at 6.875% for a 30 yr fixed, and 7% for a 10/1 IO on rental property. I found someone on Zillow who says she can do a 7/1 IO ARM for 6.5%. My guy doesn't believe it. Do you know what John is at for a 5/1 or (preferably) 5/1 IO?

I get a call from David at about 2:35 on Thursday -- his guy John can get me a 5/1 Interest Only ARM for 6.625%, with an additional half point (about $1500) in closing costs. So, I get out my spreadsheet and calculate that I save $768/year (or $63/month) on interest. I also save about $250/month in cash out of pocket by not paying down the principal. So the cash flow calculation improves significantly with this.

So I call John Thursday afternoon, and tell him I'm interested. Friday morning I get an email from him saying he needs 15 minutes of my time and he'd take care of the rest. I give him a call Friday morning, tell him my income, assets (my house and three others), debt, and rental income.
Friday afternoon at 3:27 I got an email from him -- rate is locked, and he says he can close in 10 days. We'll see if that's really true.

As an aside, I talked to my property manager, and he said it is much easier to rent a house in September than October, so bringing in the closing a few weeks may make everything easier.

So my rate is locked. Next post will be on all the documentation I need to provide...W-2's, Pay stubs, assets, etc etc.

Financing!

2008-08-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

So, I had been doing my homework. I had been watching zillow.com daily, and knew that the rate for a 5/1 ARM was 5.88%. And about half a point higher for 30 year fixed. I thought I was in good shape, because I might flip this house when/if the market picks up, so no need for a 30 year loan.

So I get my pre-qual letter from Ed Sunday at 2:12 and a credit authorization form arrives at 3:38 not even 90 minutes later. That's a good sign. I sign it that night, and send it back.

Monday evening, I get an email from Ed. It starts out:

We are starting to realize some of the fallout of the mortgage meltdown in your pricing.

That does not bode well for me getting a low rate!

It continues:

At 20% down, 30 yr fixed is at 7%, and a 5/1 ARM is NOT available, believe it or not. Probably, of course, because it’s non-owner occupied.

Doh! That's more than a point more than I had expected...or $3000/year or $250/month. Not a good start to the project. Since it is not interest only (IO), there's also another $250 or so in principal pay down. This is starting to get more expensive!

My spidey sense is tingling on this, so I go to zillow.com. Zillow has a service which allows you to enter your loan parameters and get like 10 offers back, and you remain anonymous. I love this, because it gives you a good benchmark for the market, even if you have your own guy. I stuck my parameters in, and found a woman who offered:

Loan Details

August 12, 2008 11:15AM PDT

Loan amount:$312,000

Down payment:$78,000

Loan product:7/1 ARM (Interest-Only)

Interest rate:6.5 %

Assumed rate lock:30-day

Note due in

30 years

APR:6.22 %

Pre-payment penalty:No

Interest only loan:Yes

So I wrote to Ed: Can I get that from you? Expecting that if the loan's out there, he can find it the same as she did.

He replied:

David, I see the quote but it’s hard to believe they can deliver. We’ve checked with 15 lenders this morning and can’t find anything close to that price.

Today, the 30 year fixed is available at 6.875% and I can deliver a 10/1 interest only ARM at 7%. And, over the years, one thing I have learned is that there is “NO magic money”. And the 5/1 IO ARM (with 10 years interest only) is not even getting to par on their quote, but my guess is that the par price is about 6.875% - 7%.

So, let me know if you plan to go elsewhere so I can call off the appraiser. Just make sure you get a lock and good luck on getting it closed at the quoted rate, fee and program.

I took this to mean that he couldn't get this loan. If you disagree with my reading on this, please leave a comment. I expect that if I were a lender, I would try a little harder to match a competitor's rate.

I do take his point though that finding cheap money off the internet might not be the best way to go, so I continue to investigate.

The inspection

2008-08-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

We scheduled the inspection for Tuesday afternoon. David has an inspector named Fred. I met David and Fred out at the house around 4:00. They'd been there for about an hour already and had walked through most of the house. My property manager, Kevin, who I'd never met, was there too. he was trying to figure out what we could charge for the place and what work needed to be done. We figured we'd paint the whole inside, put up some quarter-round molding, and do a few other odds and ends. We'd try to get $2000/month for it, although once he realized that it only had one bathroom he backed off that estimate a bit.
We're still trying to decide whether we should put some sort of finish coat on the hardwood (oak?) floors, or just let them be. And he's supposed to get back with me on how much rent a bathroom would add. And I have to figure out how much it would cost to add a second bathroom.

Anyway, I met David and Fred out at the house. Fred is always full of bad news. This is the fourth house he's inspected for me, and he always seems to take a perverse glee in delivering the bad news...he started with a waste pipe in the basement that had leaked and then resealed with tar. I asked if we could get the seller to fix that. David said..."umm, you better tell him about the roof Fred." That seemed foreboding. They had already decided that the roof needed to be replaced. Fortunately, David "knows a guy" who can do it cheap. We'll ask them to pay for it and use David's guy. After they tell me about the roof, Fred proceeds to drag me to the garage, and explains that the garage door with old springs is a deathtrap, because if a spring breaks, it's very dangerous. Fortunately, Fred knows a guy who can replace it cheap.
Fred then shows me the area outside from where water can flow into the house, and recommends that I do some landscaping. Build a block retaining wall, and put a french drain behind it to divert the water.
Sounds expensive to me.
Neither Fred nor David knows a guy. They suggest picking some day laborers up outside the Home Depot for cheap.
No thanks.
Then the end of inspection ritual...Fred always says "How should I write it, David?" and so far, David has always replied "Right it hard, Fred." The upshot is that we asked the sellers to put on a new $5700 roof.
On the way out the door, David notices that my truck is dented. Fortunately, David knows a guy. He can fix it for cash. It's good to have colleagues who "know a guy."

The small, small world of Facebook

2008-08-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

I found out that one of my friends new the down the street neighbor, and another one of my friends' dog sitter lives kitty corner to this house...funny.

9756 Dayton Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103 | $379,950 | Greenwood Real Estate

Source: www.redfin.com

4 beds/1 baths, Residential, 2,360 sq.ft., This mid 40's home has original charm. Ideal for remodeler or builder! Large corner lot has alley on east boundary. Level neighborhood is charming with many long-time owners. ...

The latest addition to the Glick Empire...my own personal game of Monopoly!

Amy Bates at 10:47am August 11

Dude, my friend Christine lives almost across the street from this house. Will it be a rental?

David Glick at 11:10am August 11

yep, it will be a rental...but a nice rental.

David Sligar at 10:15pm August 11

Your best rental investment to date. Are you going to name this one like the monopoly like the names on the board? Signed your Agent

David Glick at 10:27pm August 11

first step, get an affordable loan...I'm having trouble finding a 5/1. And the days of the I/O and Option ARMs are behind us.

The Hunt!

2008-08-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

As I said, I've always enjoyed walking through open houses on Sunday afternoon. In the past couple years, I've taken Toby along, and it's become a father-son bonding experience. One of the first words he could ever read was "OPEN" on the open house signs. "Windermere" came soon after. In the last few months, the market has slowed in Seattle -- not as much as elsewhere but it has slowed. I've been feeling the itch to buy another house. I found a house a few blocks away that was for sale by the estate of the previous owner, rather than a realtor, for 589k. A representative of the estate was there every Sunday afternoon for open houses, but there was not other advertising...I would link to it but it's not in the MLS. I really liked it...turn of the century craftsman with high ceilings, and a finished second floor, and a big semi-finished basement. I wanted to give them a low ball offer, so I called David and we went to look at it. We looked at it on Saturday morning, August 2nd. He convinced me that I couldn't make it cash flow (rental income - mortgage and expenses > 0), and that it would cost > $100k to fix it up and flip it. In this market, even if they would have excepted a low ball offer, I couldn't make it work.

Again, I started to get the bug. I added to my iGoogle customized google homepage a widget from Redfin.com. This shows you the top 5 houses that result from any search you choose and you can link from your google home page directly to information about the house. Pretty neat. So when I got up each morning and checked my email and stock prices, I saw what the latest houses for sale were. On Friday, 8/8, at 7:41am , I found a 3 bed, 2 bath house in Greenwood for $293k. I emailed to David and we talked about going by there Sunday morning.

That night, Jen, Toby and I went over to Toby's friend Katherine's house. (her mom Chris is another middle manager/junior executive with me; her dad Mike is the best chef I know). Uncharacteristically, I left my blackberry in the car, making for an enjoyable but slightly nerve wracking evening. Mike made hummus, greek salad, chicken and lamb kabobs. And of course wine...lots of Syrah during the evening.

When we got home at 9 with a tired Toby, there was a message from David -- "we can go see that house that you wanted to see in the morning, but there's one that just came back on the market that we've gotta see too. They're looking at offers tomorrow afternoon at 4." So I called David back and told him we'd take a look at 10am the next morning. This house was 4 bed, 1 bath, for $380k.

Timeline for Sunday, 8/10:
10:30am (5 1/2 hours til deadline) -- take a look at the house with David. Looks promising, 7k sf lot, 4 bedrooms (although one is very, very small), and a huge semi-finished basement.
11:30am (4 1/2 hours til deadline) -- called Jen to see if she and Toby wanted to come see the house, as I wanted to make an offer. She says no. But she does want to see the numbers. :)
12pm (4 hours to deadline) -- Opened up Staroffice Calc (like Excel, but better) and run the numbers:

		Interest
Purchase Price	381000
Loaded Purchase Price	392430
Cash Down	32000	0
HELOC cash	44200	-202.58
Mortgage	304800	-1493.52
Taxes	3178	-264.83
Insurance	720	-60
Prop mgmt		-190
Total Expenses		-2210.94

Income		1900

Cash Flow		-310.94

12:20 -- Jen's not so happy about the -310 at the bottom but she acquiesces. Call David and tell him to start writing an offer.
12:21 -- Call my mortgage guy, Ed, and ask him for a pre-approval letter. He says he'll get on it (on Sunday afternoon) and send it in a few hours.
1:38 -- send a follow up to Ed:
"Hi ed, thanks for putting together the pre-approval letter. You can send it to me at this address and the other address on the to: line.
When do you expect to send it? We're gonna write the offer at 2pm.

Thanks!
Dave"
2:03 -- David gets here and we sign the offer for $381k (one grand over the asking price, even in this market). We stand around waiting for the pre-approval letter.
2:12 -- Ed sends pre-qualification letters (not too shabby service for sunday afternoon).
3:43 -- David drops the offer with the seller's realtor. He likes to deliver them personally. He tells them that we're a nice young couple looking for a nice house...doesn't mention that it's a rental property.
5:55 -- Update Facebook --

David is trying to buy another house...waiting to hear back from the sellers. 5:55pm

7:57 -- David calls and says we got it!
8:03 -- Update Facebook
David just bought a house in Greenwood. Not bad for a day's work. 8:03pm
8:37 -- Update Facebook

9756 Dayton Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103 | $379,950 | Greenwood Real Estate

Source: www.redfin.com

The latest addition to the Glick Empire...my own personal game of Monopoly!

This was the easy part. Now the saga begins!