Eager to know how to invest in real estate despite the increase in interest rates?
You have landed on the ‘RIGHT BLOG’.
Like every other American investor, the issue for the last couple of years has remained the same.
There is a low cost of money, rates are at an all-time low, and enormous amounts of government infusions of capital concerning 50% more dollars have been printed in the last year compared to the prior 24 years combined.
All these financial issues have led the assets to be profusely appreciated, however as an investor you may consider this opportunity a blessing in disguise.
You could buy anything at bearish prices with the confidence of selling or making the return trade at higher prices and even apply for a loan with the outcome of generating a steady cash flow.
Though you may have observed the rising measures and changes from the side of the government and federal departments owing to the shortage of workers.
And, when put in numbers more than 11 million vacant jobs currently exist in the market causing a plethora of economic impacts consisting of the cost of wages have risen, work is there but workers are not, etc.
And among all of these issues, low-cost rates have caused assets to just over-inflate making the stock market at an all-time high.
Most importantly, the performance of real estate for all of us has come as a huge surprise.
The real estate market has been appreciating at 10 to 20% a year and you will not believe that with my own eyes I have seen it go up to 50%.
APPALLING, right?
1. FEDERAL BANKS and RISING INTEREST RATES
Here, you all would agree with me for the past 2 months the rates have almost doubled.
If you are an owner-occupied buyer, the rates you used to deal with 3 months ago were 2.75% to 3 % and now they are performing at 5%.
As an investor, we were getting returns at 4% but now it has gone up to 6.5%.
These sudden surges will eventually slow the market growth rate, moreover, it’s essential to build an action plan in which you could lay down your future investment-related steps to make sure your deals are locked and sealed against any sort of adverse market anomalies.
Therefore, to ensure such a thing you would want to be highly attentive and have the attitude of a risk taker.
Now, you may ask, what does that even mean?
It means that for any sort of property you purchase you need to make sure that the walk-in margins are greater than the past 2 years, as before that margins were very weak.
And, the properties you may be buying were at a return rate of 12% to 13 %.
But, now you are looking to buy them off at 15% to 17%. This extra cushioning in your investment portfolio would allow for any type of price adjustment from the cost of money being more expensive.
One thing you should keep in mind is the cost of a mortgage is currently 30 times more than it was 3 months ago.
This means that the next buyer buying your flip property would be paying a lot more, despite the low performance of list prices.
2. ROCK – SOLID COMP (Comparable Company Analysis)
Coming on to the second thing, you need to make sure that your analysis is ‘rock-solid’ because you mustn’t be dealing only in peak comps (comparable company analysis) rather you will be facing a cluster of comps.
The reason for targeting clusters of comps is very clear, when the market was appreciating using peak comps made sense as the market was still breaking down and had the same selling attributes.
Now, what you are doing is we’re going directly to the comps clusters to seek more buyers with more activity.
3. RENOVATING to GET A NEW LOAN!
Thirdly, when you look at the style properties you’re packing performers with higher rates and when you have bought it you need to renovate it and refund it for a new loan.
Though, it can be a time-consuming process, especially in a market where the federal banks keep on increasing rates ultimately gives you a lot of exposure as an investor.
You would like to mitigate this sort of risk by factoring further down the line.
To make you understand more explicitly, let’s take an example if you are looking at a property right now, and you would like to purchase it, where you would have to renovate it first and for the next three months, your current rate would be 6.5%.
When you go and do your re-finance at the same time the federal banks could do additional rate increases and so, in your pro forma under your refinance calculator at 7% rate (to make sure you’re factoring all the future possibilities).
You would understand that federal banks were not lying when they said they would do additional hikes and it would be foolish to buy at the current rates.
4. FULL-PROOF EXIT STRATEGY against RISING INTEREST RATES
Until now what you were doing was targeting different types of deals for the last 2 years and going after the higher profit through the aid of expensive properties.
And, a lot of times, you were paying $800,000 for a property, in which $200,000 to $250,000 goes to the renovation and then selling it at 1.5 times higher rate.
Though, you may encounter some roadblocks to the appreciation but in a transitory market that can be a high-risk investment.
If you purchase the next property for $800,000 and put in the renovation cost, you’re into a straight million-dollar deal according to the current market.
In the pacific northwest, your rent will only be about 2/3rd of what the actual debt cost would be which makes this deal at a higher risk.
Now, you have only one exit strategy for this sort of flip, so you go into a transitional market where things are starting to adjust and get more expensive.
Furthermore, you would also want to take a look at the deals that can be dealt with in different types of ways.
Similar to a bought property where you are targeting low acquisition properties the total cost which is the purchase price and rehabilitation is at 75% of the new fixed-up value which gives you a 25% buffer for any type of market condition change or affordability factor.
5. FLIP STRATEGY for GOOD CASH FLOW
Now, it’s time to introduce to you a full-proof flip strategy that you would be doing right ahead by putting the right renovations and for some reason, if the market stalls out, you’re gonna be able to keep this thing and still cash flow it all right, guys so you are at your full-proof flip out.
You may pose a question now, why is this kind full-proof against any kind of economic downturn well, the first reason is, that, you bought it right, as you have paid $325,000 for it, that was below market value but the reason you got such a good price, despite it needed tons of repairs.
As you would be putting a hundred thousand dollars into the renovation which is rebuilding this house from the inside out that gives us a total cost basis of $425,000 on the project which is worth $600,000.
According to the comp, that’s only three doors down right now, you would be anticipating after all of your leverage cost, your purchase price, your renovation, and your sell cost that you are going to net out around $90,000 on the flip.
So, you may ask, why is this a full-proof investment, if the peak pricing of $600,000 comes down to 10, you would still have $35,000 making room for a profit.
In addition to this, the deal works in all different ways, let’s assume the market drops 20% and now, you’re gonna break even or lose a little bit of money, you can refinance this property under the bought method and refinance it up to capital that you have.
You must also remember that your loan to value, currently at 70% loan to value the banks, lends us up to 75% so the mortgage cost if you refinance all the cash back out at 71% is going to be right, around $2600 a month, market rents in the area are at $2800 to $2900 a month.
So even if the flip goes sideways and you can’t sell in a rack of return, you can keep this property which is fully renovated that you’re not going to need to put any more additional into the building and still cash flow over $300 a month then once the market starts rebounding and rates settle down then you can sell it later and get a short-term capital gain rather than a long-term capital gain.
As you go into this transitioning market as an investor you can protect yourself by looking at a deal with multiple different exit strategies.
If you’re buying more expensive properties and you’re concerned about the market either pay that extra walk-in margin or go into a little bit more affordable projects like this to where if everything goes awry, you can still rent it and keep it without it being a liability.
Though, you may ask, how do you buy in that cheap when the market’s this hot, remember as rates start to go up inventory will start to increase which is going to give you more opportunities in the market.
In addition, as the market starts to cool down, so does investors’ appetite.
You can better understand with an old Warren Buffet quote for investors like you, “ Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
As investors exit the market it’s going to bring more opportunities, look for the cheaper opportunities that fit you by box, make sure that you can get qualified for a conventional loan, and then have multiple exit strategies on each deal either way.
SUMMING UP!
Like any other conventional investor, you would be extremely ecstatic with this property whether you get to keep it in cash flow of $200 to $300 a month or sell it and rack up a $90,000 profit.
I hope this blog must have helped you in the way you wanted and provided you with much-needed financial clarity regarding your real estate investment decisions irrespective of the rising interest rates.