All Forum Posts by: Andy Mink

I think the eviction rules vary state to state.  I know here in Vermont there is online information about the eviction process. I would check your state website and google around, I bet someone from your state with experience will advise soon

Not a big deal.  Any mason worth their salt could take out the affected blocks and patch it back in.  The hardest part would be finding block that match that.  The crack is probably from a lack of an expansion joint in the wall.  Expansion joints are typical in commercial masonry construction, every 20 feet or so because no matter what masonry needs to move a little, its so heavy.  Hopefully the block are hollow core, and not grouted solid.  You are looking at a day or 2 of work for a mason and a helper. maybe $100 in blocks and mortar.  I have a masonry company in Vermont

If you DONT sell it to him, and he owns all the land around it and you make him angry it could be hard to rent.  He might decide to spread manure on the land around the house while you are trying to rent it, run tractors at 4am on those fields, etc. etc.  Farmers are usually great people but don't tick them off, they are crafty....

Heat is a huge factor up in this area.  One approach is to install Rinnai Direct Vent heaters hooked up to stand alone propane tanks and make the tenants pay the heat.  Should be around $2500 net to get a new one installed and running per unit.   It makes the unit a little less attractive but it keeps the tenants from doing stuff like opening windows because they get to hot, or leaving the thermostat at 76 ALL DAY.  We have been going through 700 gallons of propane a month.  Somethings flowing in the winter in New England, and its certainly not CASHflow

From what I understand about Home path REO's, there are certain criteria for how they sell. They list it at a price, they will accept or counter up to 85%-%100 of the list price. After it sits on the market with no offers/bad offers for a set amount of time (30, 60 days) they will make price cuts to create interest in the property. The price cuts can be big. They try to create multiple offer situations so they can get a highest and best letter out there, to create competition and get the most money for the property from investors. If it is an Owner Occupied offer, everything listed above goes out the window and it moves to the highest priorirty offer. There is a program in place to get the propertys to Owner occupy because the theory is that the house will be fixed up more and have a stable tenant to better the community. A lot of this is dependent on the asset manager that is responsible for the property.

Forget that place, Find a legal 3 or 4 unit, buy it FHA if possible/desired - Owner occupied with $5000 or more back for closing costs. Bite the bullet and save the cash for a year and buy yourself another place with less units as your new primary, claim you need more space, just make it have less units then the last one. Learn how to paint and listen to excuses. My feeling is a duplexs are tough because all of your eggs are in one basket, if your other unit is vacant you are losing money. The idea with a house hack is to have the rents of the other units pay for ALL of the housing expenses (and hopefully a little cash flow) so that you save your current month-to-month housing expenses (and hopefully more). with a 3 or 4 unit you can have a vacancy and still be in neutral for a couple months, not going backwards. 2 months vacant on a duplex at $800 a month missing rent takes a year and 2 months to recoup your losses if you are cash flowing $200 per month (which you should be at least and I doubt a one bedroom apartment is going to get you there) I wouldn't go crazy on the rennovations ethier, fresh paint and fix the worst few things and put it on craigslist. Go big or go Home! Good luck

There are a few, not much, people just tend to move slow and hang on for the long haul up here.  Union Bank is a good bank.

good to know, the place needs a lot of work, and I expect it to be at least a one year project.  We put in an offer and we got countered and are basically under contract as of now.  I'm just looking for potential options down the road and y'all have have given me some good ideas.  

I'm wondering if anyone has a general time frame for how long it takes to close an Fannie Homepath REO from acceptance of offer to closing time, on their end. Cash Deal, nothing held up from buyers end.

we ended up adding $5k to the purchase price (up to $115,000 from 110$k I misspoke before) for the seller to contribute $5k back at closing and are going to put up $23k and change to get a 20% down payment on the 115,000 loan. The appraisal is today and the financing was pretty easy to get based on the lower purchase price. You could ask the question in the creative finance forum there are people there that might know better then me. I guess I would need to know some figures (what is owed in property, market value,) but you are going to want 20% of whatever your purchase price is to avoid PMI. Then if you close and you live there you could get a HELOC And use that money to invest. If you didn't have a lot of cash you could have her sell it to you at market value minus your 60k in equity and get an FHA loan, then refi to get out of the PMI and get your money back on the new mortgage? I'm kinda spitballing I'm pretty new to this. We are hoping to close on this duplex and get a HELOC and then buy a REO cash with the HELOC and fix and flip or refi and rent and hold it. Fun stuff....