All Forum Posts by: Andy Collins

I've meet two listing agents, and it was to get keys after close, and I've bought several houses that my agent has never seen,,, she is the one that puts things together with the sellers agent,,, and I doubt she has seen or knows most of these (REO's)

What one person calls in "improvement" and what another calls "ugly" can be the same thing.

I wouldn't do it based on it being in great shape when you get through, they might think a room painted purple and pink was the most beautiful thing ever...

They can get out of the lease (in many or most places) by losing the deposit,,your on the hook,,,I would give yourself some sort of out,,,and you could still sell it even though its under lease

Basically yes, I do want to buy below market, but with the market so strong right now, many deals at a 10-15% discount still fit my model, and I'm covered for the cost of selling if I need/want to sell.

You will find most buy and hold investors are very picky about where a house is, what school district, etc,,that is more important to me than getting a 25% discount vs a 15% discount.

That's what contractors are for,,you don't have to be a contractor to do very well in real estate

If a house has major issues, you can't get a conventional mortgage on it,,not FHA, Fannie or Freddie,,they don't want the collateral to be a house that needs repair at the time of the loan.

For investment properties I use hard money, then refinance to conventional financing after the repairs, but that's investment property and expensive.

A 203K is designed for what your doing, but you pay PMI, and I think the only way to do it would be as your mortgage broker outlined.

I will say my experience is in investment property, so there may be other options for an owner occupied that I am not familiar with, go talk to a local band and see if they can help.

I've had a husband and wife that one had really bad credit, so I ran background checks on both, but financially I was only worried about the one, and made sure they qualified on just that one income.

I listed the spouse as occupant,,,so the one spouse is on the hook, the good one,,but still keep to whatever rules you use as far as felonies, etc

When I've seen this it is usually the husband with the credit problems, and normally they are the one that have the income needed to qualify,,in this particular situation the other spouse qualified on their own.

I have one tenant that pays in cash, I just make sure to deposit the money without any other cash I might have. When you go to refinance a property the under writter will often ask to see all payments for a few properties for the past 12 months, you want to easily show the cash deposits are the right amount paid at about the right time so they don't question if its really the rent for that property

even if the person is never late on a payment, its a potential liability and could/would effect your qualifying for other loans/mortgages

if you have been in the rental business and show it on two tax returns you can claim that as income (if you have had a house less than two years they will use 75% of lease amount toward PITI until the house has been on two tax returns), however they want you to have cash in a new deal, equity in another property won't help unless you can get the cash out of that house and use the cash

You need to establish your own rules, and I am very upfront what my rules are.

I won't accept anyone with any violent felonies, or any felonies within the past 10 years. Any evictions are an automatic 'no', but I will consider someone with a foreclosure/short sale.

Establish your rules, and go by them, that way you won't be accused of discrimination,