All Forum Posts by: Bill Hamilton

You don't need an attorney to negotiate a short sale. If they won't use a real estate agent to negotiate then walk away.

As @Chris Mason said, depending on your entire credit profile, Freddie Mac products will allow one year of tax returns sometimes. I will tell you that until you file your taxes you won't have any luck getting a loan. Keep in mind though, if you are self employed, there are a number of companies out there that do what are called non-QM loans that could well work for your situation. These will sometimes allow for using bank statements for income etc. etc. But rates will be considerably higher and the down payment will generally be larger so if you can go conforming that would be best.

I would recommend more caution with threatening the borrower or pulling the plug. How do you know that the next buyer with the lower offer will have a "better" lender in place? You might simply end up starting from scratch and having no buyer that can close anywhere close to the timeframe you need. But you might want to communicate with the borrower and see if you can talk with the bank to figure out what is holding things up. It could be a problem with a loan committee , the property or the borrower. Or it could be that the loan department is really backed up, slow or incompetent.

While I mostly agree with @Jay Hinrichs and @Dell Schlabach, in looking at the FHA and Fannie loan limits for Fairfield county in Connecticut (assuming the property is where the poster is located), those loan limits of approx $601k might indicate that this property is not

necessarily a big time luxury priced home. Given that LA and San Jose are only at $625k, I would wonder if this house is not really a luxury or upper end home for the area. I certainly don't know the area well enough to make that determination but it might be worth researching further. 

Egads. There are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start. First, fire your agent. There is either at least a decent ballpark ARV (I think there always is, which means the agent is incompetent) or, if that is actually true then they should be telling you this deal sucks. Otherwise you are looking at buying for $85k, spending $25k for a total for $110k with a profit margin of $3k. That doesn't include the expense of selling the property, title work, things you didn't expect to go wrong etc., etc.

Also, HML's don't lend at 5%. End of discussion. They just don't. Also, you don't pay $11k per month for the loan. It is amortized over a certain period i.e. 15-30 years so your payment would be considerably less per month.

Uhhh, confirming they paid the taxes is not your problem. If the note doesn't require you to escrow taxes and insurance then you are abiding by the terms of the note. Tell them to go jump in a lake. If they mistakenly chose to pay taxes and insurance, then you should thank them for the contribution to your retirement fund and move on. And you are right; selling your note does not EVER change the terms of the note. If they don't watch their actions they could end up with you not owing them a cent.

Keep in mind I am not an attorney and what I say should not be construed as legal advice.

Well, no legal advice given here but it's possible the person on the deed needed cosigners for debt to income issues or lack of credit. Usually those people would also be on the deed but they don't have to be. They are still liable for the mortgage but..... As long as you are not doing a wrap or subject to you should be fine. Just make sure you use a title company/attorney and get title insurance. As long as the mortgage is being paid off and title company gives you clean title, who is on a mortgage that is being paid off during the transaction is inconsequential.

A pre 1976 manufactured home has a negative value. Have it hauled off and do any financing based off the value of the land. If that doesn't work, then the deal is not worthwhile. Treat the "home" same way you would a house that needed to be scraped due to structural failure.

Bill, are you saying that in general there is no margin in fixing a property up? I would think that would make it almost impossible to do profitable flips but maybe I am missing something here.

I would have your RE agent show up. I would see about having the inspector show up also, then go through the list of things you have found wrong so far and see what can be worked out.

@Lynn McGeeinwe don't really have closing attorneys out here. Although I think all title companies are owned by an attorney but the title company wouldn't really be involved in this. Their responsibility is make sure that title is clean and insured. Nothing else really, plus Elena works for a title company already so...... Your only other recourse would be to go after the seller for "failure to disclose". Hopefully the flipper comes through and things turn out well. Involving an attorney can get very contentious and very expensive in a hurry.