Are you sitting on a pile of cash and fresh out of ways to increase your wealth even more? Are you wealthy enough that you have become bored with your job and need something new in your life to bring the excitement back? If you answered yes to both of these questions perhaps now is the time to make a change and try your hand in the investment property business. Investing in real estate will offer an extremely challenging but rewarding endeavor. Depending on your level of available funds for investment, you may want to strongly consider investing in an apartment complex.
Apartment Lending
Though many think obtaining apartment financing is difficult, that is not necessarily the case. So long as you have substantial capital around you and can bring in a partner with experience in property management most of the banks concerns will be resolved. As always, cash is king, but experience is equally valuable. Thus, if you can bring both to the table than apartment financing will be made available to you.
As you are checking out the variety of options available with apartment financing you should keep a couple of things in mind. It is important that you can service the debt on any apartment building loan you might take out. This may seem like an obvious point, but if you have not determined your estimated monthly revenues from rental income for the apartments, it will be extremely difficult to know if you can service the debt on an apartment loan. For some reason many new investors fail to remember this fundamental principle as they are looking for apartment financing. Rather than concern themselves with their debt coverage ratio as they should, they merely look for the apartment loan with the best rates. Favorable interest rates are important, but if the length of the loan is really short, each payment will be higher and thus relatively more difficult to cover with your rental incomes. Thus you should understand your inflows of cash before you decide the amount of monthly debt you will be able to service. Once you determine this amount you can look for an apartment building loan that fits your scenario.
It is also important to keep in mind the amount of up front equity the commercial lender requires to issue the apartment loan. If the bank really wants your business then they will do their best to keep the up front equity as low as possible for you. On the other hand, if a commercial lender is not really interested in booking your apartment loan, then they might quote you a high up front equity amount to scare your business away. If you should run into such scenario, it is probably best to look elsewhere. First, you don't want to do business with a commercial lender that is not willing to work with you. Rather you need a commercial lender that really believes in you and will help you out with consultations and the like should you run into trouble meeting your apartment loan obligations. Second, you want to pay as little up front equity as possible. The less money you have in the project the less risk you expose yourself to.
The most important thing to remember as you look for apartment financing is to look around and negotiate with the lenders. Be forthright with the lenders, and let them know if someone else is offering a better apartment loan package. Often times lenders are not willing to lose business to their competitors and will match their terms, or even offer better terms than their competitor. If you play your cards right you will be able to secure great apartment financing terms and be well on your way to increasing your wealth while working in an industry that is both new and exciting to you.
