Show notes
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 your life - housing payment, minimum credit card payments, minimum car payment - if that sum is $5,000 and your gross monthly income is $10,000 - that's a 50% DTI. You can't exceed that. Of course, before a bank is willing to loan you money, they want to have a reasonable assurance that you aren't weighed down with debt elsewhere because their fear factor goes up that they won't get paid back. Next, let's talk about your credit score. We dedicated an entire episode to this back in Episode 54. If you can remember back that far, Philip Tirone was here with us and you learned more about credit scores that you probably ever thought you would … … and he even went on to call the credit scoring system a total scam. He was quite opinionated - it was interesting and eye-opening, but ... Playing within the scam here - as it might be. There are many different credit scoring models, but the FICO Score - F-I-C-O - is a respected one that you're probably going to see your mortgage lender use. It stands for Fair Isaac Company. Their credit scoring range is 300 - the worst, up to 850. 850 is essentially a perfect score. Importantly, 740 is the highest score that helps you here. If you have a 782 or an 836, it doesn't help you qualify for the loan or get you a lower mortgage interest rate or anything else. 740 is where you're optimized. Now, just a quick overview of FICO credit scoring ... There are five primary ingredients that make up your credit score. In order of importance, they are your payment history, amounts owed, length of your credit history, new credit, and finally credit mix. That first one, Payment History, is the most heavily weighted one. It's 35% of your score. As you might expect, the repayment of past debt is a major factor in the calculation of credit scores. It helps determine your future long-term payment behavior. Both revolving credit (i.e. credit cards) and installment loans (i.e. mortgage) are included in payment history calculations. Although installment loans like mortgages take a bit more precedence over revolving credit - like credit cards. This is why one of the best ways to improve or maintain a good score is to make consistent, on-time payments. The next way, your Amounts Owed – 30% This category is basically credit utilization or the percentage of available credit being used - or borrowed against. Credit score formulas "see" borrowers who constantly reach or exceed their credit limit as a potential risk. That is why it's a good idea to keep low credit card balances and not overextend your credit utilization ratio. So if you've got just a $1,000 balance on a credit card with a $10,000 credit limit, that's seen as a good ratio. You're staying well within your limits then. The third FICO credit score ingredient is the Length of your Credit History – 15% This factor is based on the length of time all credit accounts have been open. It also includes the timeframe since an account's most recent transaction. Newer credit users could have a more difficult time achieving a high score than those who have a long credit history. That's because if you have a longer credit history, FICO has more data on which to base their payment history. The fourth of five FICO ingredients is your "Credit Mix" – Now we're down to an ingredient only comprising 10% of your score. Credit mix just means that it helps your score if you have a combination of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. Finally, "New Credit" makes up the last 10% of your FICO score. Don't open too many new credit accounts in a short period of time. That signifies a greater risk to lenders – and that's especially true for you if you're a borrower with a short credit history. And you sure don't want to open up any new lines of credit, down the road when you're in the qualification process for buying a new property unless you check with your Mortgage Loan officer first. Knowing what factors make up your FICO® Credit Score can help you qualify for more loans and get better mortgage interest rates. That's the bottom line. This helps you get pre-qualifed or pre-approved with your Mortgage Lender. To get prequalified, you just need to provide some financial information to your mortgage lender, such as your income and the amount of savings and investments you have. Your lender will review this information and tell you how much they can lend you. After pre-qualification, you can seek the higher-level status and that is getting pre-APPROVAL for credit. Pre-approval is better than pre-qualification. If you think about it, it makes sense. Qualifying for anything in life is not as good as getting approved for something - I suppose. Pre-approval involves providing your more detailed financial documents - like W-2 statements, paycheck stubs, bank account statements, and your previous two years tax returns. This way, your lender can VERIFY your financial status and credit. Now that you're pre-approved with a lender, you can focus on the market and property that you're interested in. RidgeLendingGroup.com is the mortgage lender that we recommend most often because they SPECIALIZE in income property. They don't have any seasoning requirements. Seasoning means that the person selling YOU the property needs to have held onto it for a certain length of time - or the lender won't finance the property for you. While you'r…
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