Category Archives: Real Estate Investing

I’m Confused

I have to say I’m a little confused. I keep hearing on the television and some other real estate agents that the housing market is slowing down. Why am I getting busier? Oh, I’m not complaining. No, no, no. I’m just saying that it seems to getting busier, at least for me.

***

A fellow agent of mine let me know she has a developer out in Shawnee that is going to be releasing 95 (I think that was the number) build able lots this weekend. If you are a builder or investor interested in such a project, let me know.

***

If you are looking for homes that can be purchased at 50% of ARV, please no more calls. I have enough people on my list unhappy with me as it is. Folks, these properties don’t grow on trees. Now if you are looking for Rehab & Hold properties or rental homes or longer term investment properties…opportunities abound. Buy & Hold real estate investing is where to go, now. The short term gains are tougher to find.

Leave a comment

Filed under Real Estate Investing

Depreciation And Your Rental Property

Yesterday over at my other blog on ActiveRain I authored a post titled How Are Your Current Real Estate Investments Going? To get background for this post it might be wise and go and read that post.

But the gist of the post was that if you’ve owned the same income property in Kansas City for 7 years or longer you are probably no longer maximizing your returns the way you should be. That in fact;
  1. You are no longer maximizing your leverage
  2. If you are properly bifurcating your depreciation you have already exhausted your personal property portion (with the exception of new personal property added)

Leverage was discussed there. We’ll talk about your depreciation here.

Depreciation
Bifurcate is just a $10 word for cost segregation. There are actually 4 ways you can segregate your depreciation on your investment property;
  1. Land (which of course doesn’t depreciate)
  2. Personal Property (over 5 years)
  3. Land Improvements (over 15 years)
  4. Building (over 27.5 years)
Most people are probably only utilizing #1 & #4. They are overlooking (or your accountant is) #2 & #3. But if you are maximizing your depreciation you can see that by year 7 you have already exhausted all your beginning personal property depreciation and 1/2 of your land improvements.
Why is that a big deal? Because if you have broken out your costs you will probably find that personal property depreciation accounts for between 40% – 50% of your yearly depreciation total. At least at first.
Now as you change carpet, appliances, lighting fixtures and the like you can start a new 5 year schedule on those items. But about 1/2 of your beginning depreciation number is now gone. It’s not coming back.
In addition, you are also 25% of the way through your building depreciation. That investment property that used to give you overall returns of 22%-24% is now generating overall returns of 13%-15%. And it will continue to slide down from there. No matter how much your cash flow continues to build. (Well, there might be exceptions that I haven’t seen.)
It could be that you just don’t want to change houses or there are sentimental reasons you don’t want to exchange or you are just happy with the money you have. But if you are still in the growth phase and you are looking to maximize that Retirement Worth Having, you may wish to consider sitting down with knowledgeable investment real estate agent or tax planner and figure out what to do next.

4 Comments

Filed under 4 Benefits of Real Estate Investing, Real Estate Investing

Your First Investment Property

Yesterday evening Jeff Brown over at Bawldguy wrote a post titled Your First Real Estate Investment – Often The Most Critical. As always, it is an excellent resource for the real estate investor.

His title really got me to thinking. And while I agree completely with his post, especially since he mentioned Kansas City, the other side of his title should say something to the effect of how important that first property is that it doesn’t run you out of real estate investing.

I love working with all real estate investors. But there is a special satisfaction with working with “newbies.” They come all excited and are ready to purchase just about anything. An experienced investor I seldom have to say “WAIT!!!” to. But a newbie? I’m constantly talking them OUT of properties.

This may sound very self serving. But the whole experience reminds me of what gold-fever must have been like. At this time or your real estate investing career, having a professional’s opinion matters more than ever.

It doesn’t matter how much those rental homes will appreciate over the next 25 years using tax deferred exchanges if you buy an investment property that drains money from your grocery bill every month, has tenants that need evicting and other issues you never even considered. You’ll sell, take your losses and tell everyone how hard real estate investing really is.

When what you really needed was a proper education, a professional consultation, and a clear head. Take this advice, tag it on to Bawldguy’s post and get ready to go. We’ll see you at the top.

2 Comments

Filed under Personal Real Estate Opinions, Real Estate Investing

Conventional Loan v. Interest Only Loan For Your Income Property Investments

Today we are going to have a little fun with math. I used to hate math. But in my business now, math is my friend. So sit down. This post might be a long one.

As you know, I’m real big on knowing what the outcome of your 4 Benefits of real estate investing will be BEFORE you purchase an income property. And sometimes my clients like me to advise them on different financing options. So today we are going to compare conventional non-owner occupant financing with interest only non-owner occupant financing.
The first note to make here is that when you go with an interest only loan you immediately reduce your 2nd Benefit, Principal Reduction, to zero. So I’m not crazy about that. But is that a bad thing?
First we need some ground rules:
  • $175,000 duplex in play here
  • 20% down payment ($35,000)
  • Financing based on $140,000
  • 6.95% interest, amortized over thirty years
  • 5% appreciation (on average)
  • Rents are $1,500/mo. (not escalating)
  • Expenses are $6,920/yr and include property management, taxes, insurance, a healthy reserve fund and 5% vacancy
Conventional Financing
With the conventional financing for our sample rental duplex the monthly debt service will be $926.73. Or $11,121 per year. Plugging in our numbers from above we know that our formula goes something like:

18,000 GRI
6,920 Expenses
11,080 NOI
11,121 Debt Service
( 41) yr Cash Flow Before Taxes.

So the property is paying for itself. And that’s great! California real estate investors would kill for these numbers. Same is true in Florida and Washington and New York.

At the end of the 6 year holding period we are looking at a investment property that is worth somewhere around $234,500. (Remember our 5% per year average appreciation.) So we should be thinking about an IRC 1031 exchange to re-maximize our leverage.
The Principal Reduction over these 6 years has been $10,317.
So when we measure only the first 2 Benefit we have a gain $10,071.
Interest Only Financing
With interest only financing for our sample duplex the monthly debt service will be $810.83/mo. Or $9,730/yr. Using the exact same formula from above (we’ll start from the NOI) will look something like this:

11,080 NOI
9,723 Debt Service
1,357 Cash Flow Before Taxes

So now this property is generating a fairly substantial monthly cash flow. At the end of the 6 year holding period the house will still be worth the same as our conventional financing house. Let us take the 6 years CFBT and we’ll show $8,142. We cannot add to that any principal reduction so the entire benefit from the first 2 Benefits only is $8,142.

So conventional financing wins, right? I don’t really know. Only you can make the decision of which is better for you. I can tell you this, however.
If you were to take those same monies that you put down for a 80% ltv on your interest only loan and bought two houses with 90% ltv on interest only loans I bet you would find a completely different story.
Now that you know how to do it. Why don’t you work out the numbers and let me know what you found.

Leave a comment

Filed under Financing Options, Real Estate Investing

Yahoo! Says Real Estate Sky Isn’t Falling

What? A rational article from the “media” about real estate values? Congratulations to Yahoo! for using their heads.

I read a funny article in the USA Today a few days ago, that I believe I referenced, and they just couldn’t say enough negative things about real estate. They were comparing real estate investing to investing in the stock market.

Never mind that they forgot to mention leverage. Or principal reduction. Or depreciation. But to each his own.

Kansas City isn’t going through a negative growth period. In fact, many areas of Kansas City still have very fair to reasonable growth. A couple areas are doing very nicely, thank you. The sky isn’t falling. Real estate was never as good or as easy as the media were making it out to be a couple of years ago.

And it’s not as bad as they are making it out today. Just my humble opinion…again.

1 Comment

Filed under Personal Real Estate Opinions, Real Estate Investing

Current State of the Kansas City Real Estate Investing Market

Here are my opinions on the current Kansas City investment market for real estate:

Buy & Holds – This market is in great shape. There are several values out there right now and many, many homes priced at a realistic market value based on their community. I’m high on duplexes and fourplexes and lukewarm on single family homes. Several apartments for sale right now have grabbed my attention, as well. I’m forecasting a 5-7 year hold period for maximum use of depreciation, appreciation and then an IRC 1031 exchange.

Rehab Properties/Flipping – This market scares me at this time. Sure, there are some good properties out there. I just haven’t seen them. Many foreclosures right now are aborted rehab situations. Not enough appreciation and housing demand to make this a lucrative enterprise at this time.

Buy, Rehab & Hold – I’m very high on this strategy. Very high. There are many a house for sale right now that are value priced but not lean enough to do buy, rehab, and sell. But if you can buy, rehab and have $12,000 of equity before you hire a property manager and put a renter in, why not?

Rental Market – In many parts of the city the rental market is extremely strong. Only a few pockets of weakness that I have seen. Most of the property managers I speak to have the same opinion. Gone are the days of long vacancies and rental incentives to get people in. Unless you are a pioneer on the outskirts of town. Then you are probably running high vacancy rates and banking on end-game appreciation. I’m not thrilled with that idea as housing growth (building) has greatly slowed.

Lease Option Market – I do very few of these. But three different real estate investors I know have successfully entered into lease option agreements with their “tenants” within the last 45 days. So there are people out there looking.

Personal Note: I read yesterday in USA Today that many real estate investors are leaving real estate and going back into stocks. Finally in the article, they distinguished between the Buy & Hold investor and the real estate speculator. They also based all of real estate’s benefits on appreciation only.

Don’t forget there are 4 Benefits to real estate investing:

  1. Cash Flow Before Taxes
  2. Principal Reduction
  3. Depreciation
  4. Appreciation

Of course, plan with your financial advisor. Diversity is the name of the game. Bawldguy did a great post about using insurance to gain the funds for real estate. Of course, out there you are paying $750,000 for the same duplexes we can get for $175,000.

Leave a comment

Filed under 4 Benefits of Real Estate Investing, Kansas City Real Estate, Real Estate Investing

Lording the Land: Doubters Inc. (or: Should you Incorporate?)

Lording the Land: Doubters Inc. (or: Should you Incorporate?)

Take your time to go over and read this explanation on LLC vs sole proprietorship. I seem to stand alone on my conviction to have not formed an LLC for me and my property. At least I know there is someone else out there that thinks along the same lines as I do.

I found this blogger through the Carnival of Real Estate Investing on Equity Scout. Take a look.

Leave a comment

Filed under Legal Issues, Personal Real Estate Opinions, Real Estate Investing