Investment properties...
 

I am just curious as to who on the board has investment properties. Are you renting them out and if you are, are you able to cover your mortgage costs or do you have to pay out of pocket to meet the mortgage needs? How have you liked having it in terms of renters and time spent caring for the property?

Not I, but my dad has 7 or 8 investment properties spread around California and Utah. So far he has been able to cover mortgage payments with the rent. He rents out a couple of the houses to students and is able to cover rent fairly easily with them. So far he has not been burned too badly with tenants trashing the place.

Some of my friends here in Northern California are not able to cover their mortgage with rent payments, but the're okay with that and feel like it comes as part of the investment. Not a huge deficit, maybe $100 per month.

On a recent cruise, my folks were speaking with a real estate agent from Dallas. They said that the current Dallas market (2 or 3 months ago) was such that you could buy a decent sized house for ~$150K and rent the same house for $1000-$1200 per month. I've never checked to verify, but with a modest down payment you could do fairly well under those circumstances.

Check out HUD homes. These are FHA foreclosures and they are popping up everywhere. In Utah there are very few on the market and this creates a ton of competition. HUD homes in Utah often sell at auction for $20K more than the government appraisal. But look next door in Colorado and there are around 2000 homes on the market up for auction. You can get into something at or below the government's appraisal fairly easily. Speak with a real estate agent that is licensed to bid on HUD homes and they can fill you in. It's a great way to pick up an investment property.

There are going to be more and more foreclosures coming on the market with all of these exotic loans. Most brokers can get you on a mailing list for these types of homes. Often times they'll have the homes broken down into groups representing each step of the foresclosure process.

I would think that is about right when it comes to Dallas. Danimal is renting a house in Dallas, and the difference between rent and mortgage is not that much, I think.

That's right. I think that our rent is roughtly equivalent to what a mortgage payment would be. But you also have to add in property tax, which seems to be pretty high here. Our landlord told us that it takes almost half of our rent to pay the property tax on the house.

Texas has some very reasonable housing prices but your taxes are brutal. In Utah, a 3000 square foot home on the east bench has property taxes somewhere in the $2-3,000 range per year. I believe Texas is probably triple that.

Rental properties in my neighborhood are going for about 1400-1500 a month. IF you got in when they first started building the subdivision your loan amount is about 220k. So you may have about 100 a month out of pocket, which is not to bad. Most rental properties do not cash flow at first. Unless you do rent by the room to students and things like that.

My buddy owns a condo in Orem right by UVSC. It is 4 bedrooms, 2 large bedrooms 2 smaller ones. He puts 2 girls in each of the large rooms and 1 in each of the small ones. 300 each for a shared room, and 350 each for a private room.

It has been rented for 3 straight years now and he bought it for 150k. His payment is about 1000 and he makes about 1900 on it. This is pretty rare, but when you rent by the room you have a better chance of having it cash flow.

Yes, but you also get interest deductions, and if you live in it for 2 years you get further tax benefits.