Author Archive
Real Estate IRAs – Special Considerations for Vacant Properties
Posted on October 3, 2017 byWe are seeing more interest among real estate IRA enthusiasts in purchasing distressed and vacant properties. Many times, the real estate IRA investor can purchase a promising vacant property at a substantial discount to its intrinsic value, which make these properties attractive value investments – especially for those real estate IRA investors who have the capital to upgrade these properties and make them once again attractive to tenants at a reasonable rent.
But as long as a property is vacant, there are some special considerations that investors need to consider: Read More→
Three Misconceptions About Building Wealth Through a Real Estate IRA
Posted on August 7, 2017 byBuilding wealth is a bit like dieting, in that everyone has different advice for you. “Cut up the credit cards,” personal finance gurus say, “and don’t buy that morning latte every morning.” Others say that stocks are the one true—and only—way to achieve prosperity. But is there any truth to these ideas, or is an option like a Real Estate IRA just as valid as any other path to wealth?
To figure it out, we’ll have to cut straight through the clutter. Let’s debunk three misconceptions about retirement investment in real estate right off the bat.
Misconception #1: The Real Estate IRA is Unpredictable
True: real estate is an investment that comes with risk. But if you know of any investments that don’t involve risk, please, tell the world—because we’d like to hear it. Read More→
Four Critical Mistakes to Avoid with a Real Estate IRA
Posted on July 10, 2017 byA Real Estate IRA is a great opportunity. It’s freeing. It’s invigorating. It’s a thrilling way to potentially build up a major retirement nest egg so you can build wealth over the long term and enjoy the peace that comes with financial security. But that doesn’t mean it’s fool-proof, either. If you want to make the most out of a Self-Directed IRA in which you invest in real estate, you have to avoid some critical errors along the way. Here are four you need to be aware of:
Mistake #1: Not Hiring a Property Manager
Hiring a property manager is critical when you have a Real Estate IRA. Not only will it help take care of any problems with repairs, tenants, and other issues like that, but it will keep you from participating in a prohibited transaction since you are not allowed to provide services to your Real Estate IRA. Read More→
Three Eviction Mistakes Real Estate IRA Owners Make
Posted on June 5, 2017 byIf you invest in residential rental property in your real estate IRA for any significant length of time, sooner or later you will probably need to consider evicting a tenant.
There are several possible reasons you may need to evict someone: The most common, by far, is the non-payment of rent. Other common reasons include drug or other criminal activity or material violation of lease terms. Sometimes you can resolve these issues painlessly, by giving the tenant a little extra time, or by sending a notice to cure or quit the premises. But when these measures don’t work, a real estate IRA owner will have to ‘landlord up’ and begin eviction proceedings to get the tenant out.
Before you begin evicting a tenant from your real estate IRA-owned property, read this first. Read More→
Homeunion Survey Identifies Most Promising Markets for a Real Estate IRA
Posted on May 1, 2017 byLooking for a great place to invest your Real Estate IRA dollars? Start right here in the Southeast. The 2017 Homeunion 2017 National Single Family Rental Research Report is out and Atlanta was named the #1 top city in its “Opportunity Ranking” metric for real estate investments in the single family home market. The number two city was Orlando, Florida.
Overall
The Opportunity Ranking indicates markets that provide a “strong balance of supply/demand fundamentals while offering favorable entry prices and limited threats,” said the study authors. The markets in this index were measured by a combination of cap rates and entry prices, as well as projected job growth in 2017.
Lots of construction activity counted against markets in this category because of the risk of overbuilding.
The remaining cities in the top ten for this metric were, in order, Seattle, Las Vegas, Chicago, San Diego, Oakland, Detroit, Dallas-Fort Worth and Memphis. Read More→
7 Due Diligence Tips for Real Estate IRA Investors
Posted on April 3, 2017 byThe difference between a successful real estate IRA investor and a not-so-successful one often comes down to due diligence. The investor who understands what goes into valuing a property, to include historic and expected cash flows coming in and out as well as risk – is able to make better decisions than a less skilled investor. If you’ve been blindsided by the unexpected as an investor – or if you believe you could be – here are some tips from experienced professionals to improve your due diligence and help you avoid getting caught unaware by the unexpected ever again.
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Don’t rely on pro forma financial statements and projections that you get from the seller. This is a common rookie mistake. But most of the experienced and successful investors we speak to have never seen a case where the actual cash flows from a real estate investment were better than the pro forma. Any such information you get from the seller should be considered, at best, a wildly optimistic scenario. You want to pay a fair price for the property’s actual performance, not the best-case but highly-unlikely scenario. Read More→
How To Own Real Estate In Your Self-Directed IRA
Posted on March 6, 2017 byDecade after decade, it seems like real estate keeps coming through. While any asset class can have a down year – or even several down years in a row, as the real estate investment community saw between 2008 and 2010 – real estate remains a proven long term wealth generator year after year, decade after decade, and generation after generation.
That’s what makes real estate an ideal investment for your retirement portfolio – and even in a special kind of IRA, called a self-directed IRA.
Some people still believe the myth that IRAs don’t allow you to own real estate. This is because Wall Street companies that only sell stocks, bonds, funds, annuities and other kinds of paper assets. They aren’t compensated to sell real estate, and so they don’t pitch it, other than to sell real estate investment trusts, or REITs, which are still securities, rather than direct real estate assets themselves.
But it is very easy for you to own real estate assets of all kinds within a self-directed IRA – even direct ownership of rental properties. Read More→
Real Estate IRA Corner – Investing In Properties With Fire Damage
Posted on February 6, 2017 byThe recent series of wildfires here in our own Smokey Mountain region of North Carolina and Tennessee has been devastating. The fires around Gatlinburg, Tennessee late last month resulted in at least 2,460 structures that were damaged or destroyed, and the death toll has reached at least seven.
Lots of people have lost their homes and businesses – and surely many of them were uninsured for wildfire damage, or will find that they were woefully underinsured.
The real estate investment community, including real estate IRA owners, can and should be active in this environment. By offering a fair price for fire damaged properties that we have the capital to repair and resell or rent, investors will be vital players in helping a traumatized community get back on its feet and rebuild. Read More→
Self-Directed IRAs and Real Estate Notes
Posted on January 9, 2017 byExpected returns are hard to come by. Stocks are at elevated P/Es on a historical basis, and yields are near all time lows. With economic growth sluggish, at 2-3 percent per year, any major gains will have to come from multiple expansion – and who can count on that? Earnings multiples can fall as easily as rise. This is what caused many of us to gravitate to self-directed IRA strategies in the first place!
Bonds aren’t much better, in the publicly traded market. There’s some downside protection, in theory.
Fortunately, electing to use self-directed IRA strategies allows you to transcend the limited publicly-traded stock and bond world, and explore hidden opportunities that are invisible to most investors – but which still offer reasonable yields – at acceptable risk levels, or at least with some security.
One such opportunity for self-directed IRA investors: Discounted Owner-Financed Real Estate Notes.
Here’s how it works: Read More→
Insuring Properties in Real Estate IRAs
Posted on December 5, 2016 byLike all Americans, we were deeply saddened and distressed by the recent widespread flooding here in North Carolina and elsewhere in the Southeast. We know that beyond the property and investment losses, many people lost their homes, property and heirlooms that no insurance policy can replace.
But torrential rains and flooding is an ever-present risk here in the southeast, America’s Hot Corner when it comes to hurricane and tropical storm activity and a place that certainly gets its share of ordinary thunderstorm and tornado activity as well, even apart from the tropical cyclone risk.
But according to industry sources, less than 10 percent of South Carolina homeowners carry flood insurance. That’s well below the national average of 14 percent, which is still distressingly low. Read More→
How to Watch Your Fees with a Self-Directed IRA
Posted on November 7, 2016 byMaximizing the return you get out of your retirement investments is a question that’s on most peoples’ minds. So how can a Self-Directed IRA help?
One word: fees. Fees are important for any investor to pay attention to—keeping them at a minimum will allow you to have more cumulative growth over the years, and avoiding major fees will ensure that you cut your direct expenses as much as possible.
In the world of real estate investing, fees can be very difficult to deal with. Here are some steps to ensure that you can maximize the value of your account no matter how much money you currently invest with: Read More→
Why Nervous Investors Can Benefit from Real Estate IRAs
Posted on October 3, 2016 byWhen stock markets are volatile, investors (rightly) get nervous. After all, many people have most of their wealth in the stock market. If the stock market goes down, then they see their wealth shrinking…and for people close to retirement, this is a scary prospect indeed. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With Real Estate IRAs, many people learn that retirement income doesn’t have to depend on the quality of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Instead, retirement income can depend on your strength as an investor, and the wisdom it takes to know what true diversification really is.
And just what is that “diversification” we’re talking about? Some people will tell you that investing with diversification means having the right mix of stocks and bonds, of having stocks split up into small cap, medium cap, and large cap equities. But all that really means is that you’re invested in two different investment categories, all the while ignoring all of the very real possibilities for retirement income that are out there.
If you’re sick of feeling nervous every time that stock ticker heads into the red, then it’s time to broaden your horizons as a wise retirement investor and look into what diversification really means. Read More→
