Beginner guides

You do not need to know everything to start. You need one strategy that fits your money and your time, a way to judge a deal, and a cushion for what goes wrong.

Most first rentals take three to five months from deciding to the first rent payment. Here is each step in order, what it costs, and what to do when it feels scary.

Pick a path, walk its timeline and make the calls a real deal asks of you.

Ask a room of landlords how they started and the same few stories come back. Here they are, paraphrased from investors' own accounts, with what each one teaches.

Buy a home with a small down payment, live in part of it and let the rest pay much of the mortgage. Here are the loans, the rules that trip people up, and a duplex worked month by month.

A DSCR loan is sized on what the property earns. Here is how lenders read that ratio, what they ask for, what it costs, and when it beats a conventional loan.

DSCR is rent divided by the full payment. The hard part is knowing which rent and which payment a lender will use. Here is the method, with every number worked.

Many DSCR programs lend to investors with no rentals yet, on somewhat tighter terms. Here is what changes, how to get your file ready, and when a loan you live in is the better first step.

Every lender draws its own lines, but the shape is the same everywhere. Here is what is commonly required, what moves each line, and how to check a deal against them.

A short-term rental is a small hospitality business that happens to be a house. Here is the order to buy one in, and what to check at each step before money changes hands.

A short-term rental usually grosses more. Whether it nets more depends on the costs, the management, the rules and your time. Here is how the two compare, line by line.

Furnished stays of a month or more sit between a 12-month lease and a nightly rental. Here is who rents them, why the 30-night line matters, and how the numbers compare on one house.

Whether you may host guests at an address is decided by the strictest rule that applies to it. Here is how to find every layer, read it, and get the answer in writing.

A policy written for a home you live in, or for a tenant on a lease, may not cover paying guests. Here is what to buy instead, and what to ask before you sign.

Screen it, price the income honestly, list every cost, add the loan, then judge the return against the risk. Here is the whole method on one $400,000 house, both ways.

A screen for rentals that takes seconds. Here is the math, what it leaves out, and how it scores one $400,000 house as a long-term and a short-term rental.

ARV is the number a flip, a BRRRR refinance and a rehab loan all rest on. Here is how to build it from renovated sales, how an appraiser does it, and the offer math on one house.

The number every rental return is built on. What goes in, what stays out, and how one $400,000 house comes to $20,664 as a long-term rental and $27,672 as a short-term one.

The payment a DSCR lender divides the rent by. What each letter covers, what else lenders fold in, and how one $400,000 rental's PITIA decides its coverage ratio.

The number that sets your down payment, your rate and how much a cash-out refinance can return. Worked on one $400,000 rental, from the purchase to a refinance two years on.

The down payment is the biggest check at closing, but not the only one. Here are the minimums by loan, what moves them, and the costs and reserves that come on top.

A DSCR loan moves through five stages and about a dozen steps, with five or six parties involved. Here is who does what at each one, what you need to send, how long it really takes and where the weeks get lost.

On a rental loan the appraiser decides two numbers, the value and the market rent, and both feed your terms. Here is how each is reached, how short-term rentals are handled and how to answer a low one.