All Forum Posts by: Allen Lopez

So I found a great off market property I want to buy with a loan, but it’s for sale by owner.

What are the steps I need to take for this.

I have already been prequalified.

I am guessing the next step would be find a tittle company, do an inspection, do an appraisal, tittle insurance.

I have always worked with a realtor but the seller wants to save money so she said either I pay for the realtor or do by owner. Property price is 110k, so should I just bite the bullet and pay that 3%?

@Mark Fries

First I want to say thank you so so much for your help. Even that isn’t enough to express it.

So I contacted there Insurance and in two days, I had someone calling me to get everything sorted out. They pretty much begged me not to file a claim with their insurance. They offer to pay whatever contractor I want to redo the ceiling and they offer me an additional $150 for my troubles. Yeah I know I’m cheap....lol

But it’s a win for the small guy

@Bill Crow

So would you recommend just telling them that if they don’t pay for it I will file a claim with their insurance or should I just do it?

@Mark Fries

So the good news is that they agreed that I get the pump repaired and they would payed for it. The bad news, is that they are refusing to pay for repainting the ceiling.

So I got multiple quotes to repaint the ceiling, and the lowest quote was $3400. Unfortunately, because my tenants have so much stuff there the lowest quote I got was $3400. That would be repainting the living room (high ceilings),kitchen, hallway, and two rooms that had water spots.

I was told that is the house was vacant, it would only be $1700.

Anyways, they are refusing to pay $3400 for the ceiling damages (multiple water spots in multiple locations) saying they only the water spots need to be painted over. I keep telling them that that will look patchy since it will be nearly impossible to match the paint color. They are threatening me with putting a Lien on my house, and taking me to court.

Has anybody ever had to deal with this or any advice?

They want to bring in their own painters but I feel these will just be random people hired from the street. Additionally, if they damage the tenants stuff I will be held accountable.

Any advice?

So I am buying my primary residential home. Purchase price is $251,900. Due to my job, I may relocate often. So far I am thinking that I will relocate anywhere between 3-5 years. I will like to keep this as an investment property with rent being $1700/month.

If I give 10%DP with a conventional loan, interest rate of 4.375, my monthly payments will be around $1400. If give a 20% DP, my interest rate barely goes down, but my monthly payments will be $1300.

This got me thinking, what’s better in the long run? To give a larger DP or to buy points to get the interest rate down to 3.5% (I think it will cost about $10k).

So my question is

For an investor what is more beneficial in the long term?

I would think we would want whatever gets us the lowest monthly payments.

@Mark Fries

Hahahahaha you are right I do. Thank you

@Mark Fries

So if I make the repairs, and pay out of pocket. How do I back charge them? Isn’t there any laws, breach of contract....ect

I mean I completely agree I should do that but I need to know how to protect my self. I don’t want to spend 2-3k and then have to pay them anyways

So last week I had hired a roofing company to replace my roof. While they were replacing it it started raining and the tart that they placed let water into my house. Now there are a few water spots on my ceiling.

Nothing too bad, but it’s there. While this happened, they left a box of nails in the roof which then fell and broken the water pump from the well.

They finished replacing the roof about a week ago, and they have yet to come back to fix the water spots in the ceiling or fix the pump. They haven’t asked me for a final payment yet.

I have spoken to them about it and they keep telling me it’s on their to do list. As I mentioned, it’s only been a week. Am I being impatient?

How long should I wait? Should I just keep bugging them about it? Or should I contact the main office about it?

Has anyone ever had to deal with this before?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

@Bob Okenwa

As an investor does it make sense to get a HELOC in order to buy a more expensive house cash to rent out. Have two incomes instead of just one?

Or would it be better to just get the a new loan for 30years for the value of the property?

Do HELOCS have a time frame? Is it fixed interest rate?