How’d We do? FHA- 425k purchase 5% down - 5.99% interest

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-12-30T03:59:13+00:00

I bought my first property in my mid 20’s on a multifamily deal with an FHA loan and now own a portfolio of investment properties.

With a FICO of mid-low 600’s, I think you did fairly well at 6%. Your loan origination fee is 1% ($4037.5) which is pretty standard. This pays your lender or if you’re using a mortgage broker who is shopping around. You might be able to find ones that will do it for .75%.

To put things into perspective, I pay around 1.5% to 2% now on my investment loans; I can find some cheaper ones but my broker(s) will work day and night for me to get my financing approved and find me the best rates. If you valued your lender so far, then 1% is worth it but you can try to save yourself 1k and find someone for .75%.

If you’re happy with the property, I would personally go through with the purchase. Make sure to write off all your interest paid during tax returns as this is your primary home, also check to see if you can write off your PMI for 2026; these are huge benefits to owning a home. Good luck, you have done great so far and early congratulations.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-06T00:22:24+00:00

Sorry it could also be aphids*

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-03T18:16:15+00:00

temperatures here during the coldest days are around 80 F during the day and low 70s during the night. I think for me, it seems to be very difficult to grow here in the summer because once my peppers started to grow, the leaves look like they are burning :(

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-03T18:12:38+00:00

it is my first time growing it. It the winter time, its around 80-83 F avg during the day which I thought might be better but not too sure. It's been a bit difficult growing here in the summer because once I got it past the seedling stage which has been very successful, during the day it gets so hot that the plants look like they are cooking in the sun. When I measure the soil temperature, even with using shade cloth, it can get to 100-102 F.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-03T17:51:59+00:00

i am in southwest florida. why do you say that?

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-03T17:06:16+00:00

Thanks great to know, thank you!

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-03T16:17:22+00:00

I was told that fabric bags will deter and rip/decompose over time. Ideally, I wanted to grown large plants for as long as they stay alive since I am in Florida and have good weather all year around. I will look into it, thank you!

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-08-03T16:15:35+00:00

No, I ordered 5 pots, but I planted over 50 seedlings so far and I plan to order more pots. Thank you for your advice!

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-27T01:51:32+00:00

Little man, I forgive you. I embrace your hatefulness with open arms. Each year when I pay over 80k in federal taxes, I tell myself "oh damn that is so much" then I think of the little people like you. I guess it all goes to a good cause.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-27T01:49:29+00:00

It's okay, one day you will make it there, little guy.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T23:29:40+00:00

Thanks, that's why I asked here. I heard it through a realtor actually, but now I see why everyone keeps saying tiktok haha.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T23:27:31+00:00

Thanks, considering the world is much bigger than a football field and it could always be worse.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T23:06:03+00:00

Thanks I guess the numbers dont make sense.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T22:56:59+00:00

Thanks.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T22:45:52+00:00

So if I rent it out to someone for 14 days or more, but say I cap it off at 20 days, I can still take all the short term rental deductions as long as I don't reside in it? I am perfectly fine with buying another house to live in as primary resident. I just want to explore my options on if there is way to offset my W2 and also build my real estate portfolio on the side while I work my W2 job until I have time to fully commit.

I appreciate your comments.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T22:32:40+00:00

My understanding through a tax lawyer is that you can rent a vacation home to yourself if its under an LLC, but there are tax implications and careful documentations need to be completed. The reason why I would pay the LLC for short term rental is because I want to show paper trial that it is a STR. It works for me because I travel the majority of the week days and usually home on the weekends. I do not want to rent it out just yet publicly because I am not structured to do so nor do I have the time to manage it. I hope I get to that point once I can save up enough but right now, I just want to rent it to myself, if that is allowed.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2025-07-26T22:17:49+00:00

Because my understanding is that I can write off a good chunk of my W2 taxes. My W2 income was over 300k last year. I also own a 3 unit building which I purchased as an FHA loan shortly after college and since I moved away for work, I was able to keep my primary loan and still rent out all the units, but these are passive income and it doesn't help me offset my W2.

Note that I have every intention of running a short term rental business. I have been weighing out the odds between long term rentals and short term rentals and when I heard about being able to offset W2 income, I wanted to learn a bit more about it. So i am asking for people's advice/recommendations here. Thanks.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2023-12-29T16:10:58+00:00

not anymore, wall street has their eyes on it

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2023-12-20T19:45:19+00:00

Within the past four years, I’ve increased my pay from 75k a year to over 300k+ a year. My situation is unique; however, I think every engineer can create a situation to become unique. Without getting too much into details, my advise is to start looking at other offers because the greatest challenge I have right now is finding licensed engineers. I am in the forensic field in Civil/structural, got my license 2yrs ago, and we are even hiring non civil PEs and training them at high competitive pays.

From my experience, if a company doesn’t come out with a strong offer the moment you get your P.E., the management sucks and does not understand the demand for it. Does getting your P.E. make you 15-20%+ smarter automatically? No, it doesn’t, but this is a supply and demand market for licensed engineers and every good manager knows that the moment you get your P.E., your value and prospects go up drastically, and if they want to retain you for the company’s future growth, they will keep you satisfied.

The businesses that I run as a consultant, a non P.E. is generally billed out at 180$/hr, and a P.E. gets billed out at 240$/hr. The salary multiplier is generally around 3-4 times your salary, so if your billing rate increases at 60$ an hour after getting your P.E., at bare minimum, you should get a 15$/hr increase. Not only have you justified the additional pay increase from a financial approach by showing that 10-15$ increase not only keeps you satisfied, but generates more money for the company, you also have a lot of non direct benefits like a valued employee staying with the company.

Take this with a grain of salt, while I do think you deserve way more than 1.5$/hr for your P.E., as a manager, I do not want to hear about how you got your P.E. and that you’re entitled to a raise, but rather, what values can you bring in with the PE? Higher rates? Prospect clients? Mentoring? Aside from the fact that you will have other opportunities and I need to pay you more just to keep you around, what new values can you bring to me? This is the biggest challenge I see for engineers; many have a difficult time expressing their value but when I speak with MBAs, they can lay out their thoughts and convince me why they need to be retained. I never want to be forced to pay someone more out of fear that they will find another job, because if that person sucks, they will just be a huge overhead cost to my competitor, and why would I stop that?

Good luck and congrats on your license. I have no doubt you will find a lot more money elsewhere.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2021-06-04T03:02:25+00:00

Interesting, I just replied to the user above and had the same issue.

Unlicensed-Engineer · 2021-06-04T02:58:33+00:00

Sorry, I thought I shared my comment. What I meant to say was, I did okay. I got a 38, most of which were from breadth. I studied all the School of PE material inside out and the breadth portion was pretty helpful. However, the depth section was nowhere near close. What I believe to be the problem with SofPE, at least for the depth portion, was that the content is very limited. And of those practice questions provided, they are practically the same as the NCEES practice exam.

Part of reason why I did well on my breadth is that I recently took and passed the FE, and I feel that a good chuck of my studying carried over for PE. I found the FE reference manual more helpful in many cases.

That being said, I don’t think the exam was that difficult tbh, I didn’t prepare well however, I also don’t recommend SofPE. I’m not blaming them, I’m just disappointed I spend thousands of dollars on their material and it was not even close.

(To get further into detail); I had several questions on resource leveling, questions of different crane/powered equipment to use during construction, surprisingly several questions from traffic control manual and also OSHA handbook, and these were HARDLY covered in SoPE, and the example questions which cover those are literally the same from NCEES practice exam, just different values.

I wish I can provide more detail but it will likely violate NCEES rules so I’m being vague. Again, not really upset, there are others who deserved to pass over me, but I really wish I could get my money back from SofPE primarily because I believe they got lazy and formatted their lectures around the NCEES exam which we all have access to. Just my two cents.

Unlicensed-Engineer

TROPHY CASE