Mortgage & Commercial Lending News.

Suppose you have been thinking hard about starting to invest in real estate. In that case, you might have wondered whether to focus on a strategy of eventually owning multiple single homes for rent or whether to focus on one of eventually owning a few multi-family properties or apartment complexes. There really is not a clear-cut answer, nor could we recommend one over the other. What we can do is write down some points to be considered, which could eventually lead you to make the right decision for you.

Many of our potential and current clients have asked us (far too many times to remember and count): “How can I save enough for a downpayment?” The first answer that always comes to mind is: “through savings discipline and financial planning.” As one of Houston’s premier private residential lenders, and native Houstonians, we know and have witnessed how hard it is to earn enough money to make a decent living in our city, let alone to save for a mortgage downpayment. Dedicating part of their earnings to the future and the unexpected is even more critical for most people. So, we thought that we could give some pointers as to how you could save enough for a downpayment.

Maybe your brother-in-law, next-door neighbor, or a colleague at work, has told you that the real estate market "is going down the drain." They probably said to you that mortgage rates are at "unpayable levels" and that one of the following is going to happen: recession, lack of buyers, loss of equity as home prices fall, higher interest rates, and lack of lenders, among many others.

As private mortgage lenders, at AMI Lenders, we focus on helping our clients capture opportunities in the real estate market, whether it be through a mortgage for a house or through a commercial mortgage, assisting our clients invest in commercial real estate. Since we have been writing primarily about single-unit properties, we will devote this entry in our blog to discussing what we perceive as the forces and trends in commercial real estate as we enter the second semester of 2022.

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.

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.
  

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.