Hey guys, how's everyone doing?? Alright let me give you a little back round first I guess... 21, go to UConn, just purchased a house 80/20 mortgage... What I ended up doing w/ the house was buying a 5 bedroom house so I can rent 4 other bedrooms... Already have 4 signed leases, pulled credit on everyone, and renting each room for $600 a month, and we split utilities 5 ways. So I decided since I wont have to deal w/ trying to get a mortage for a while it would be ideal to do a AOR... Did the AOR the day I closed on the house...
My goal in the AOR was to get basically sign up bonuses through cc's and through cardoffers.com
Applied for all cards on 12/28/06 Card Status CL Offers AMEXDelta - differed - approved 10k - CO AMEX Starwood - instant - 10k - CO Discover platinum card - instant - 1.5k - CO Citi American airlines - differed - approved waiting for card - CO - 6k Chase Sony - differed - $150 sign up bonus- approved 2.5k Chase united airlines - differed - approved 2.5k Citi® Diamond Preferred Rewards American® Express - differed - approved 1.2k Bank of America Student Visa Platinum Plus - deffered - CO - approved, 2k
CO = Card offers Not bad i think for a college student Previouse CL - 23k New CL so far - 34.7k total CL - 57.7k
Also ended up applying for Citi's EZ checking and 5% mma acct. I ended up opting not to do the BT as most of my cards did not have those incentives, did it mostly for flights, and sign up bonuses (Travel a lot).
Ended up also doing cli on AMEX so got a total of 39.7 more from AMEX, and got my providian randomly increased to 6k. So total CL as of now is 100.4
Now apparently this thread is more about the house I bought, so I will give a little bit of information on the house Original asking price 299k I got for 269k Leases are from Staples just edited a little, had my attorney look over it and said they are alright. All utilities in the house are split 5ways. Making it litterly free for me to live here I asked about insurance and had to shop around in order to get a company that didn't care that non relatives were living w/ me. I thank you all for the P.O. Box suggestion, but I think I am going to opt to go for a lock and key mailbox as also was suggested.
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Yeah, well I think everything in life is a gamble... But what I did is I have about 19k saved up from working past couple years plus scholarships etc that went over what I owed for school.. so instead of using that for a down payment, I figured it would be better to have that as a "back up" fund to cover the months that I don't have renters... And since there is a shortage of housing around UConn I think it was a pretty decent idea..
Along w/ the AOR i figured it was best to do it now since I can't see anything in the near future allowing me to have to use my credit for at least 6 months as I already have a house, and I own my car... But thanks i guess in retrospect it is very unusual haha
I agree about the leases. Hopefully it's not costing you a cent to live there.
You're credit scores will likely drop a good amount, but since you have your mortgage, the only other major thing you need to worry about would be a car or refinance.
I did a similar thing a bit after I closed on my house and ended up fine. The problem came when I was in sudden need for a car (at the nadir of my FICO drop). Of course if you have some on hand savings and don't want anything fancy, you're set.
Engineer said:This kid is going places. I'm more impressed with the house and finance arangements (basically letting roommates pay for house) than I am the AOR!
Absolutely awsome!
Yup, I've been doing just that for years...I'm amazed more people don't do it
b0mbrman said:Engineer said:This kid is going places. I'm more impressed with the house and finance arangements (basically letting roommates pay for house) than I am the AOR!
Absolutely awsome!
Yup, I've been doing just that for years...I'm amazed more people don't do it
Congrats on figuring this out early OP
With that many roommates, there can be other risks any landlord would have. I have considered doing this also, possibly renting the 5th room out to a roommate, and just collecting rent. I've had flaky roommates in the past, alot will bail after a month or 2, and some bring over weird characters, and lots of drama. I never bothered to pull credit, but my competition didn't either. Some realtors I know, they just collect the Credit app fee, and pocket the money, and approve everyone.
GL! You are going to need your AOR monies to cover what happens when the at least one of the other folks renting from your place will be short a month or won't even pay at all. Don't even count the damages done when one comes home drunk and does stuff they won't remember. College student, homeowner, slumlord, AOR king all at age 21. I'm impressed!
I don't even know where to start out.. I would quote all of you for praising me... thank you so much...!!
And to answer some questions...
Yeah, I made to sure to run credit checks, along w/ getting first, last, and security deposit from each of the roommates... I figured it was a pretty sweet deal.. I havn't been home yet to update the AOR but thanks a lot for all the compliments guys honestly!! I didn't really expect this much feedback.. and I hope it works out well I'll be sure to update tomorow what the status is..
Also no it isn't costing me a cent to live there.. If anything I am making a profit.. although I think I might be factoring in a little less for repairs... I am setting aside $250 each month for repairs that might occur in the house... I don't plan on touching any of the money I get from the house, other than having it in a high % account for at least a year till it's large enough where I will feel even more secure and then I will start to do other things with it...
As about the mail and the balance transfer checks, I am kind of worried about that, but at the same time I am typically the first one to check the mail so I figure it wont be too bad.. And yeah I know my credit score is going to take a hit, but I'm pretty happy I already have a car, and in my family we have a winter beater i can use if worse comes to worse so I can't say I covered every angle because there are always unknowns in the equations... but I think i took some right steps thanks to FW especially the investment/rental property thread, first thing that got me addicted to this site!
treasurebeacon said:more importantly, I'd like to know where this house is located
in the bay area, to get 600 per room, the house itself costs about 750K+, by the same reasoning, it is impressive that you saved 150K by age 21
but if this is not the case its definitely worth looking into the location
He didn't say that he put 20% down, he said that he got an 80/20 mortgage, which is essentially two mortgages, one standard mortgage for 80% of the home's value and another (usually with a much higher rate) for 20% of the home's value. It's a way of avoiding PMI.
treasurebeacon said:more importantly, I'd like to know where this house is located
in the bay area, to get 600 per room, the house itself costs about 750K+, by the same reasoning, it is impressive that you saved 150K by age 21
but if this is not the case its definitely worth looking into the location
The OP is living in the house and a student at UConn (Go Huskies!), so a logical assumption would be that the house is somewhere in the Storrs area. My guess is Willimantic.
Hopefully you have all your insurance and utilities setup and don't plan on changing insurance policies (car, health, house, etc). I know most of these companies look at your credit report before service and it can effect your insurance rates or require a large downpayment to connect services (my girlfriend had no credit history and had to put down three months for electric and one month for cable/internet).
Congrats on the house purchase and using other peoples money to work for you. I would suggest getting a PO box with all those roommates and your large influx of credit coming in, you can't tell everything from people just on a piece of paper.
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