LIVE FREE
HOW TO LIVE RENT FREE IN NYC
By Andrew Lichtenstein
President
LichtensteinRE.com and Andrew Lichtenstein, Inc.
- Inculcation: Learning From Personal Experience:
When I was a kid growing up in Bayside Queens NYC, my dad owned an accounting tax practice in Forest Hills Queens. My father told me he was happy and relaxed because we were living rent free. My parents bought their first home in Bayside Queens New York City straight out of college. The home was a recently constructed 2 family home. Their entire mortgage payment was paid entirely by our upstairs apartment tenant. My father suggested that when I marry, that I too follow his footsteps because he felt it was a great blessing to live stress free and rent free.
My parents’ first home was on a busy corner bus stop on Cloverdale Boulevard directly overlooking one of the busiest highways in the country, Interstate 495, the Long Island Expressway.
My parents sold that house, made a great profit and repeated the same success. Their second home was in Bay Terrace Bayside, Queens NYC a quiet residential bedroom community in close proximity to beautiful waterfront, parks, and recreational fishing at Fort Totten Park on the Little Neck Bay overlooking the Throgs Neck Bridge. That second home also was a respite for our parents who again continued the American dream of home ownership but even more improved, because once again, we lived rent free in NYC.
- Spreading My Wings to Fly:
Fast forward to me, their son. Right out of college from NYU Stern School of Business I bought my first home in Manhattan and lived rent free with the mortgage paid by roommates and later by tenants.
True to my father’s wishes and advice, my wife and I bought our first home together in Riverdale NYC living rent free with our mortgage paid by our tenant downstairs. Riverdale is perhaps NYC’s closest suburban bedroom community in Bronx, NYC. Riverdale is located right in New York City, but is 7 minutes by car to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
- Teaching Others How To Fly: Teach them to fish, feed them for a lifetime:
Today I help my clients to achieve the same American Dream.
“You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day.
You teach him to fish, and
you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime.”
(Chinese proverb.)
One lucky client bought a 2 family home and vacant buildable lot in Bronx New York. This young man is a second generation real estate principal. He is applying for governmental financing which could offer up to 96.5% project financing to pay for the cost of the home purchase plus renovation costs. The monthly mortgage payments are expected to be around $3,000 a month. If the tenant apartment were rented for $2,000 a month and the vacant lot were rented out for parking which is in great demand, the parking income should be at least $1,000 a month, bringing total income to around $3,000 a month. The result would be that my client too could be living rent free in NYC.
Eventually in the future, this owner occupied buyer could move out, rent up the owner’s unit and end up making up to $23,000 nearly $2,000 a month positive cash flow with a total investment of only 3.5% of the project costs or as little as $22,715 before closing costs. That could mean making up to 101% return on investment every year! Adding back amortization $35,000 mortgage pay downs, the return on equity could rise to 154%.
Amazingly this lucky buyer can file plans to construct at least a 4 family home on the adjacent vacant lot that I am selling him. That home can be sold for profit, or as he prefers retained for cash flow.
My client can transfer the air rights from the 2 family home to the adjacent vacant lot and construct up to a 7 family rental apartment building, and resell both properties and make up to $1 million profit.
This builder wants to keep the property, develop it for maximum monthly profit, which after development, could reach $157,000 annual net income before debt service.
I wish to share my extensive knowledge and experience of commercial real estate investments, ownership and financing to help our clients to buy, sell, finance, build and fulfill the American Dream and to create wealth and success. Just as my father blessed me with this knowledge so too I hope to share it with my clients.