Seeing Greene: Is Paying Off My Mortgage Early a Mistake?

Abstract

These questions range from when to take out a loan and when to pay off a property, how to get started in real estate in your early twenties, how to build more cash flow as your expenses increase, how to get a HELOC on your rental property, and how to raise money for a down payment. I'm thinking, should I get cash out refinance from the current two properties that I have already paid off to buy more properties? Also, I don't know, should I pay them off or should I just, I mean, for the new property, should I just do a 25% down payment? Also, for the 200,000 cash in hand, the same thing, do I find more properties, just pay the initial down payment? Or should I just buy one property within the $200,000 range, pay them off and receive rent coming in as the positive cashflow? Currently I'm still taking care of three kids. Should each property have a separate bank account or use one account for all properties? Set everything to autopay, et cetera. So if someone lives in the property, it's their home, it's perceived as being more secure because people would let all their properties go except for the one they live in. They're literally investing the down payment that they already have into a property, which is where they set it at 20%. But you're looking at investment property from a different perspective. So if you're going to be putting 20% down on a property, what if you put down 10% and you borrow the money from somebody else to put down the other 10% and you split ownership 50/50? That's another option if you don't have a ton of cash. If you're worried, instead of putting 20% down on one house, what if you put 5% down on a house to live in and then next year do the same, and then next year do the same and spread that money out over several properties and just house hack it? That would be the best way to reduce your risk if that's what you're looking to do.