All Forum Posts by: Brian Spitz

We have a great house in houston that is an ideal wrap. ARV is REALLY $260k. Principal mortgage balance is $159,531. Rate is 4%. Payment is $1780. Rents $1950. Not going to kill it on the rental income, but if you sell it subject to, there is a lot of equity. Especially if you have an owner finance buyer. I am proving something to my dispo team here. Do you think we will easily sell this house? No back payments due, but there is a HUD loan for $7k from a previous forbearance. Any ideas on who might want this? Comps available. 77088 in Houston -- good house on a good street.

You also have to report the revenue differently to the IRS. If you double close your deals then you are better off having an accountant do your taxes (if you don’t already). Assigning transactions is infinitely easier and cleaner. 

Long story short, no. Are you trying to determine if you should increase an offer on a house you're considering acquiring?

@Maggie Tasseron: We don't own the house - we are wholesaling it - though the market value has gone up so much on it since the buyer in place did an assignment with us that it's gone from a very good deal to a stellar deal - we just need to get this lady out. We have covered all the legal expenses to help the seller get her out of the house but the poor guy just keeps getting beat up by his ex even though his original intentions were generous. Some people just take advantage of the system in any way they can - unfortunately we see a lot of that in this buyers.... 

If you can learn how to work with estates and how to solve the myriad of complex issues that can come up on title with a probate related deal then you will define lye position yourself to be an authority on something that very few people understand. When you decide to reach out to people who've files probate to buy their house then you've got to have some thick skin and be armed with experience on how to address their specific issues. Estate related sales make up some of our most profitable transactions so I would never discourage anyone from going for those deals. The caveat though is that you're reaching out to people who may or may not have a property (for sure). Those who do have RE to sell may be eager and happy to hear from you. Others may keep your number for later and then there are those too that will call you an ambulance chaser or scream and yell at your through the phone. All of these are just scenarios you grow accustomed to in this business but your best chance of coming out of these instances with a new contract in hand is to familiarize yourself with solutions for the various other problems these sellers may have. Some are as simple as needing help organizing an estate sale and others have complicated third generation title problems that have only just been made worse by a poor attempt to settle an estate without an attorney. You can read a lot about how to work with leads and buy/ sell/ wholesale great probate leads and it's true. But learn everything you can about what sort of scenarios you're likely to encounter when the person you're looking for actually answers the phone. Even basic info like "what is an affidavit of heriship" and "does my state recognize a guardianship that was filed in a different state" will give you so much credibility with sellers. You can never go wrong by becoming an expert on probate issues when you're out there buying houses. Remember people don't just sell because of price - they sell because they believe in the person their selling to.

Paige - 

If you are trying to estimate the ARV I think you're looking for the after repaired value. The best way to determine the ARV is to work with a licensed agent (or become one) so you can access the sales records in your local listing service. Learning to pull comps this way is the most accurate way to determine value. You can use Zillow or other similar sites but they are often quite wrong and can hurt the chance of landing a deal if you depend on their numbers.

For repairs the best thing to do would be to go to a local REIA group (real estate investor association) and connect with contractors and investors. Investor-friendly contractors often offer services as vendors (or even just through networking) at a good REIA. Ask them to give you repair estimates and tell them you will pass those estimates along to an end buyer when you wholesale the deal. The right person in that environment can teach you a lot about determining ARV and repair costs.

Best of luck!

Brian Spitz

In Houston we try to offer cash for keys a lot but some people are just stubborn and want to punish you by making you go to every effort to get them out. Worse yet are the people who know hot to manipulate the system and can get more and more time in your house for free by dragging you all the way to trial. It's really important to have good legal representation though because I've seen the tenants win sometimes when they really don't deserve it. We have a woman now who moved into her exhusband's house, then claimed she was now his common law wife, that she was entitled to the house and half his 401K and we have been working since november of 2014 to get her out. The court is now hearing a case to determine if they need to get a second legal divorce or not. All of this after we made it through he eviction proceedings and won - still no victory until the occupant is gone. Best of luck with it! All you can do sometimes is screen tenants to the best of your ability and hope they turn out to be good people.