West Palm Beach Real Estate Investing & Real Estate Financial Planning™ Podcast

How to Analyze a New Construction Single-Family Home Property in West Palm Beach Your ability to analyze deals is arguably the most important skill as a real estate investor. It allows you to make smart investment decisions and helps you avoid making career-ending bad decisions, such as buying cash-flowing-sucking vampire properties. In this class, James will help you utilize The World's Greatest...

The 3 Strategies to Pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) Whether they're putting 15% down and buying a non-owner-occupied property or utilizing an owner-occupied loan with 0%, 3%, 3.5%, or 5% down for Nomading™ or house hacking, some real estate investors will choose to put less than 20% down. With the decision to put less than 20% down comes the choice of how to pay for private mortgage insurance...

Investing in real estate is full of truthy-sounding falsehoods: it is always better to do X than Y. However, if you were crazy enough to sit down and do the math, you'd find the truth to be much more nuanced. For example, should you take all your extra cash flow and savings and apply it to your mortgages each month to pay off rental properties faster? And if you do, is that a faster path to financ...

Deal Alchemy™ - Cash Flow to Debt Paydown There are four primary returns from investing in rental properties: appreciation, cash flow, debt paydown, and the tax benefits of depreciation. Additionally, there is a secondary return in the form of the interest earned on the reserves required to make the investment in the first place. Many real estate investors prefer the cash flow return over the othe...

Warning - The Risk of Down Payment Size When Investing in Real Estate Life is full of risks. When we choose to invest, we choose to take on additional risks. If we invest in stocks, we choose to take on certain risks. When we choose to invest in bonds, we take on different risks. When we choose to invest in real estate, we choose to take on additional and different risks. One of the risks associat...

How to Analyze a 5% Down Single-Family Nomad™ Property in West Palm Beach Using the latest version of The World's Greatest Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheet™ , we will walk through how to analyze a single-family home Nomad™ property with a 5% down payment. Learn how to analyze deals correctly and avoid buying cash flow vampires. Only buy the best deals that make sense in this special mini-clas...

What Affects Your PMI Rate Lenders prefer that you put at least 20% down, but if you push hard enough, many will allow you to put less than 20% down if you're willing to purchase insurance to protect them in case you default. This insurance is called Private Mortgage Insurance. The cost of this insurance depends on several factors. Some are primary factors and have a significant impact on the cost...

You're a real estate investor looking to acquire properties by saving up and putting 25% down. Should you buy an owner-occupied property first? What if that's more expensive than renting? Should you still do it? What if it means you'll be saving less for acquiring rentals by buying an owner-occupied property first? In this comparison class, we will put buying 25% down rentals in a head-to-head com...

Deal Alchemy™ - Lease-Options Different real estate investors desire, prefer, and prioritize different returns. For example, many real estate investors have a strong preference for the cash flow part of their return. With Deal Alchemy™ , we can manipulate returns and move them from one area to another. Or, we can move them from one or more areas to one or more other areas. For example, using Deal...

Warning - Insurable Risks When Investing in Real Estate Life has risks. Real estate investing in West Palm Beach adds some additional risks. Some of these risks can be shifted from your responsibility to the responsibility of a third party for a fee. This is often described as insurance. You choose to pay someone else to take on a risk you don't want to take on yourself. In this mini-class, James...

How to Analyze a 20% Down Single-Family Home Rental Using the latest version of The World's Greatest Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheet™ , we will walk through how to analyze a single-family home rental property with a 20% down payment. Learn how to analyze deals correctly and avoid buying cash flow vampires. Only buy the best deals that make sense in this special mini-class, which is part of o...

What is PMI And How to Avoid It You want to work with a lender so that you don't need to purchase a property with all cash. The lender is willing to lend you money, charging you interest to make a profit, and ensuring there is a safety buffer of equity in case you default and they need to foreclose to recover their funds. Your goal is to minimize the amount you need to invest in the deal to maximi...

Should you use the Nomad™ strategy to acquire properties with a minimal 5% down payment as quickly as possible? Or is it better to be a little more patient and save up for full 25% down payments and buy rentals without moving into each? By saving up for a 25% down payment, the properties will cash flow better. That may allow you to save up faster for subsequent properties and maybe... just maybe.....

Improving Cash Flow on Rental Properties by Improving the Property When real estate prices, mortgage interest rates, and rent rates are high, it can be more challenging to generate great cash flow from a rental property. However, it is also more important than ever to do everything in your power to maximize cash flow. There are 88 strategies for improving cash flow on rental properties , with some...

Refinancing Rental Property Tips There are many flavors of refinancing rental properties: cash-out refinances, cash-in refinances, rate and term refinances, and recasting loans. Understanding each one, when you might want to use them in your real estate investing, the general rules and guidelines for using them, and the impact of each are all important bits of knowledge you should have as a real e...

Financing Tips When Writing an Offer to Buy a Rental So, you understand financing for buying your next property, and you're ready to go out in search of a property to buy. There are a few financing-related tips that might help set you up for success, improve the odds of getting your offer accepted, getting the best price and terms on your offer, and make your life easier. That's what we will discu...

Sometimes buying rental properties is merely a means to an end: financial independence. Some folks don't want to hold onto their rental properties, manage them, or deal with the business of owning them when they achieve financial independence. Instead, they may prefer to have their money more passively invested in stocks. Can a real estate investor buy properties and hold onto them until they can...

Tips for Getting Mortgage Quotes from Lenders If you choose a random lender, you'll have a random chance of closing with financing. And in many markets, if your lender fails to perform, you as the buyer are in default (since your lender is not a party to the contract). Wouldn't you rather have more certainty that your lender will perform and that you select a lender that will give you great servic...

In the last few years, we've seen equity explode. Property prices have been growing like a weed in a spring. And, lower mortgage interest rates mean loan paydown has been more like the Mississippi than a backyard creek. Many real estate investors who owned property during that period will be tempted to tap into that equity to invest in more properties... leverage up. But, leveraging up is not with...

How can you speed up your journey to financial independence (FI)? In this special class, James will go over a brand-new spreadsheet and walk you through all the different ways to speed up your achievement of financial independence. James covers the following in this class: What is financial independence? How is financial independence defined mathematically? How do you know if you're financially in...

Preparing to Get Mortgages So, you’ve decided to invest in real estate and know that you’ll need a mortgage to buy property. There are some things you should do BEFORE you apply for your mortgage. You should be thinking about these things ideally for multiple years before you try to get a mortgage. In this mini-class, we will discuss the preparation you should do before getting a mortgage and how...

Accessing Equity in Properties With prices up a lot over the last few years and interest rates having lingered near all-time lows, many real estate investors find themselves sitting on massive amounts of equity in their properties. But, how do you access that equity? In this mini-class, James will look at a variety of ways to access equity in properties. Check out the video from this class here: A...

The Return on Investment on Extra Down Payments You’re buying a rental property. You have more than you need for a down payment, closing costs and reserves. One option you’re considering is putting more down. Putting more down will often improve cash flow and Cash on Cash Return on Investment. The dollar amount of returns from Appreciation and Depreciation remain unchanged but, it can also lower y...

Most real estate investors consider themselves financially independent when the income from all of their investments exceeds their personal expenses. To achieve this, they need net positive cash flow from all rental properties after all expenses, any income generated from stocks, bonds, or other investments times a safe withdrawal rate, and any social security, pensions or annuities. On the expens...

Use this special spreadsheet to track the returns on each property in your portfolio. It utilizes the Return in Dollars Quadrant™ methodology to easily allow you to track appreciation, cash flow, debt paydown, Cash Flow from Depreciation™ and the return on your reserves all in one place. Plus, see how and when each return is taxed. And, whether the return is cash now or cash later. And finally, wh...