Where Should I Live?
I'm sitting here do some overall planning.
To make a long story short, I'm a single man who's paying too much now where i'm staying, and am considering taking some drastic measure to cut my costs, especially so I can use the money to do some more marketing, ect.
Is there a way I could actually live in some of the houses I'm putting under contract for short periods of time, and then move to the next one, ect? Or can anyone think of a good strategy here???
Well let me tell you where I live. I have this loft apartment on the top floor of a commercial building I operate in Chicago. The rest of th building is built out with soundproof rooms and rented to rock and roll bands to rehearse in. I have three bedrooms, two baths a greenhouse and a 6,000 square foot roof deck. My monthly contribution toward the mortgage? $0.00. 100% of my costs are covered by the other tenants.
Yes you can save a ton of money on living expenses if you are willing to be a little creative.
This is a very good topic. Commercial King, I like your idea allot - very CREATIVE. Do you do allot of business in the city, own allot of properites in the Chicago area? I am interested in investing in Multi-family homes, 3-4 units since I am just starting off. I do not know the Chicago area very well so I dont know the hot spots. I was going to invest in areas where I live or a 20 mile radius. I presently work in the suburbs so travel would be a pain everyday. I would like to get some more feedback from you on creative ideas and what you do to make your investments work, how you find them, etc, if your willing to share.
Thanks
I've always liked the idea of moving into a fixer upper, slowly working on it while you work on other fixer uppers and then selling it and avoiding capital gain taxes. (course my wife and kids won't go for that scenario)
Mark's idea is a great one if you can work it out. There's an area where I am at called Lehigh that the prices for duplexes are ridiculous but they are mainly selling them to people who live in one half of them. The good salesmen are getting them lined up with ARM's or interest-only payments to give the facade of cashflow or at least show a low negative cashflow.
Being single opens up a lot of options on living places and saving money that I know I couldn't float past the fam.
GL
Ray,
As a guy who has lived in 4 or 5 fixer uppers while I tried to renovate them around myself, trust me this is not as much fun as it sounds like it would be. Do the bathroom first. After a while one place where you can go and be clean becomes a big deal.
Mark
Just curious Mark, did you live in these fixer-uppers as a single person or married?
I couldn't see convincing my wife to live like this for any length of time
These are all great responses and invoke a lot of food for thought. Let me be a little more specific. I'm wondering if there's a way if I could say do a straight option on a house (not a lease-option) and then make it part of the deal where I could live in the house until it sells. Say like if I could work an arrangement like that with expensive houses, over $500k, especially ???
You could try a sandwich option.
Basically I would think that if you had control of the property you could do almost anything you would want with the property, besides sell it of course.
The lease option would work if you set up the option properly, say until you got another deal going that you could move to and then get renter/buyer into the previous property.
Rambler,
Commercialking has the best situation, but in absence of that, finding a duplex and renting out the other side is generally the cheapest way to go. However, I would recommend you don't manage the property yourself. If they know you are the owner/landlord, they won't just call you at 3am, but they will knock on your door.
Your idea of doing it in options sounds like a lot of moving to me, and I hate to move.
...Your idea of doing it in options sounds like a lot of moving to me, and I hate to move...
What, I can't live without my big screen for a while and live light until things get hopping and I do a lot of deals?
I'm almost certain that I heard of someone doing this on a tape I was listening to, but I can't find it now when I relisten. I thought it was on a Ron LeGrand tape, but I might be wrong.
if the money is there i will do a live-in rehabb. i am in the final stages of finishing a rehabb now, touch-up. it is rewarding when complete but a pain in the a$$ to get there. also it all depends on how much rehabb work has to be done, major const. or light work........km