Buy and Hold ? Yes at least for now.

My belief is that you probably need to do more flips initially in order to accumulate the equity to be able to put money down for rentals. In this down market, buy and hold is probably a better strategy as it is hard to do quick flips when the property is not appreciating. JMHO.

I have been on this site for about five months reading blogs and doing research which gave me the convenience to take action my question is, when a person is going to look at a house for the first time do they need to walk with a Pre-Approval bank letter? Thank for the help

If you are going to look at a house, you do not need anything. You are just there to look, you don't know if you will be making an offer or not. It might be good to have one if you do find the property to be a good deal and you want to make an offer, but it is not necessary. Jeremy

This is not the market for flipping....in order to flip a house you have to find SMOKIN' deals that leave room for mark up that is STILL below FMV.....In order to get the equity that you need to aquire more properties....you find properties that have EQUITY.....you don't need to SELL a house to use that EQUITY to purchase other homes. HELOC is the term used for a Home Equity Line of Credit. The first House that I have closing will have at least 100K in equity. A $50-75K + HELOC will allow me to borrow against that property to aquire another property. Then the NEW property HELOC will repay the original houses HELOC and then we are even. This can be done OVER AND OVER again. So don't waste time trying to flip a home in THIS market unless you are just looking for bottom dollar cash. I want the BIG cash and I am willing to wait a bit for my cash out. Until then......it's AQUISITION hardcore. At least for me.

My wife, who is a tax professional, informs me that if you are in the 15% tax bracket that you do not have to pay capital gains tax on anything you sell in 2009 or 2010. Therefore there might be some tax advantages to selling during that period if you are in that tax bracket and you can profit from the sale.
Of course, you will want to consult your own tax professional about this.

I agree with Samuel 100%. I want to buy and hold and rent for now.
The problem i am having is finding a legit HML. I had one who approved me and all that was left was a copy of my drivers license. So I was not sure about it and confided in a friend here and followed the advice not to go through with it. But i am working on a owner finance now. Which if it goes through I will refi a little down the road.
Richie.

Try this link BC... http://www.reiclub.com/hard-money-lenders.php

I have tried to look for HMLs lately but all I have found are lenders that do 1 day loans for double closings. Since i don't have a buyers' list yet, they don't really help me as much right now. Not to mention that I would like to hold some properties to start. Any advice?

Stephen

Right now the credit is so tight, it is very difficult to get HELOC if even you do have equity in the home. I called several loan officers and tried lendingtree.com, they all require income to be three times of total expenses including mortgage and other debit payments. We took money out of our HELOC from our first house before they cut/cancel it so we were able to buy a REO last year, but even this REO is owned free and clear, we still can't get either refi or HELOC because our income on tax form last year was not enough. Any advice on that? We're stuck, that's why we are looking at HML now.

Though you may be having a tough time of it now.....the credit picture changes all the time, and there are ALWAYS some lenders out there that will lend depending on the interest rate and fees involved. Try opening a business line of credit.....B of A just approved me for 30K without documents. Try that with several banks.....don't let one bank, or a few walls get in your way......go around them.

Can't get a HELOC or a refi on a Property thats paid off FREE and CLEAR, is it really that tough out there, has anyone else come across this? Or has anyone been able to get a HELOC recently without having 3 times the amount of total expenses? Please share....

To quote Dave Lindahl, a successful real estate investor, "The more properties you control with the least amount of money out of your pocket, the quicker you become rich."