Mortgage & Commercial Lending News.

We present to you the third of a series of articles about Fix and Flip ("F&F") as a real estate investment strategy. In the first article, we offered our readers some pointers on finding an Fix and Flip property at a discount. This was followed by an article on what to do to get financing fast before someone else does. In this one, we will develop some ideas on how to proceed carefully with repairs.

We recently published an article explaining in less than 1,000 words "how to find a property at a discount". Given the interest expressed by our readers, in this article, we expand on the topic of how to be ready to finance a Fix & Flip property fast.

It is not the same to evaluate financing unimproved versus improved properties, short term vs long term loans or the level of risk 

the borrower represents.

To put it simply, financing real estate projects varies significantly from one borrower to another, AND from one type of property to another.  

To make sure we are on the same page: in Hard Money Lender's terminology, an unimproved property means the property does not have a structure on it: for example,

• a vacant lot or vacant acreage is an unimproved property. An improved property means the property has a structure on it (regardless of its condition).
• In the residential arena, an improved property can be a single-family dwelling, a duplex, or an apartment complex.
• If it's a commercial property, an example would be an office building, a shopping center, a warehouse, or a data center.
  

Mr. Marvy Finger, an 86-year-old Houston based real estate investor, was featured this month in Forbes magazine[1] in a fascinating article about the future of rental properties.
Turns out that Marvy Finger recently sold 2 billion dollars worth of rental properties to real estate investor Greystar. Yes, you read it right: 2 billion dollars (worth exactly two thousand million dollars, and that's just half of what Marvy Finger owned before the trade). The article's central theme is that Marvy Finger thinks rents must come down, in short to midterm, from what he thinks are unsustainable levels. In contrast, Gresytar believes that rents will keep increasing, and it's a good time to invest in rental properties.

Most of us like surprises, when and if they are pleasant surprises. However, the past few weeks surprised the world in a very unpleasant way. The appalling reappearance of war in Eastern Europe. When we look back to the end of last year, we wish world leaders and diplomats had been more determined or forceful to find a solution that would have helped prevent this absurd war. We would have expected things to be different in Eastern Europe and continued to enjoy peace, however fragile. Our deepest desire today is to end the war in Ukraine and return to peace. After witnessing the ravages of war all over our media channels, our hearts go out to all those currently suffering in Ukraine.

For over 30 years, AMI Lenders has helped hundreds of real estate investors finance their investments in fix-&-flip properties. Therefore, it is evident to us that successful fix-&-flip projects start with the investor (or "flipper") doing their homework and finding an investment property, not only with a significant discount off its market value but also in the right location and at the right time. In this blog, we want to share what we have seen successful flippers do when hunting for an investment property.

In the past few weeks, we have started reading interesting articles on the future of the US economy, mainly dealing with whether trying to rein in inflation will bring about a recession. Since we write this blog for real estate investors and home buyers, and since there are some warnings of a looming recession, if not this year, maybe next (for example, read Bill Conerly's November 2021 article "No Recession In 2022—But Watch Out In 2023" in Forbes magazine), the question that has sprung to mind for us is:

We recently wrote in one of our blogs about pooling incomes in a household to obtain a mortgage. We mentioned that multigenerational households could be a trend in the housing sector. Changes in demographic behavior could lead to even more households becoming multigenerational. In this blog, we would like to assist you in thinking around some issues when you are looking into purchasing and renovating a home suitable for a multigenerational household.

In one of our weekly updates, we recently wrote to our clients that home prices might be growing faster than rents in most places across the country. But, financially speaking, homeownership still beats renting, as shown by a new study from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm. In about 6 out of 10 localities across the U.S., it is cheaper to own a home than rent, so it is still a good idea to own rather than rent, even more so in creeping inflation environments like we have been experiencing. Still, it is usually easier to sign a lease contract than to get a mortgage.

Due to a lack of industry knowledge, the general public often believes myths about asset-based mortgage lenders or Hard Money Lenders. Many people have misconceptions about their loans to real investors and home buyers. In this article, we intend to tackle these myths and misconceptions.