All Forum Posts by: Bob Floss II

If they are serious, they need to set up an entity in the US and transfer their funds to a US bank account. 

When discussing wholesaling, please reference the State where you will be operating. The rules are different depending upon your State.

@Christina Venegas What do you need help with?

@Ken Frank Sounds like you already reached out to a couple good attorneys, but my office also handles evictions.

I've had a horrible time getting sheriff service on any tenants. I used to try two attempts with sheriff service, but now I try once and immediately request special process server from the judge at the first hearing to avoid wasting time. I typically go with FireFly, their team is good about getting service executed. 

@Jared Potok Depends on the area. Some properties are in counties or municipalities with extensive local rules and you need counsel that knows about potential issues. Some properties are in areas where locality isn't important. I would not hire an out of state attorney to help you in Chicago. I recently did a closing for a property in a remote area of central Illinois and there were no issues. 

@Gary Jones IDFPR went after a handful of attorneys several years ago for advertising $100 closings. I'm surprised to hear this still goes on, but I guess people have short term memory loss. Title policies pay out a premium to the party who underwrites the policy. In northern Illinois, it's typically the seller's attorney, however it can be any person licensed to produce title, including a Realtor, buyer's attorney, or the title company itself. The title check tends to be large and has resulted in fighting over who should receive it. It's important to note, someone will receive that check. If the sellers attorney doesn't get it, someone else does and they hope you don't notice.

As for the $100 attorney, they are doing it to get new business. IDFPR went after attorneys because it is a violation of the Title Insurance Act to induce someone to use you for title insurance by offering a reduction of other fees or services. As far as I know, the cases were never completed. It created too many questions of the government telling us to price fix by forcing us to charge more for our services. I personally avoid offering discounts as an advertising ploy. If a client repeatedly uses me or a closing was particularly easy, I'll drop my fees. If your transaction ends up being difficult and problems arise, you don't want an attorney locked in at $100 and hoping you just get frustrated and go away. 

Three main things annoy the crap out of me:

1. They ALWAYS knock down a wall and put a giant header beam on the first floor. The contractor will casually come in and say it'll add maybe $500 to the budget. Now everyone thinks putting in a header beam is easy and cheap.

2. They either don't show closing costs or the closing costs are a joke.

3. When the house makes money, they are quick to show it at the end. If you start to notice, every show has a handful of episodes where they only show the list price or somehow run out of time and end the episode quickly. My theory is they never show the houses that lost money.

FYI, I've also seen some interesting articles from people that bought these HGTV show houses. Many have complained the houses needed work to fix all the issues left behind by contractors rushing to finish. 

Why on earth would you spend your life accumulating assets and not spend the money to go sit with a good estate planning attorney?? All of these issues can be easily addressed. If you die without having a Will and Trust in place, you are just going to make a Probate attorney very wealthy after you are gone.

@Nirav Shah Some key facts are missing here:

1. The seller's resident manager was present during inspection and told not to disclose. Who from your team was present during the inspection? Why didn't your inspector notify you?

2. Did you do due diligence and review leases and rent history for the property? What did they have on the OM for that unit?

3. Did you receive assignments of lease and attornment letters at closing?