All Forum Posts by: Stan Butler

We buy a couple of HUD deals every year in cash and I always get title insurance. I just consider it a cost of doing business. Its no different than making sure the house is properly insured during the rehab period. Could I take the chance and not insure the property for the 3 months that I will own it?? Sure, but why take the chance....

BTW, we just closed on a HUD home that had a title issue in between the time the bank foreclosed, HUD took ownership, and then sold it to us. It took 3 months to resolve the issue, but we finally closed. We also learned that HUD will not pay bonuses even if they cannot deliver clear title.

So I had a tenant recently go through a similar payroll change and talked about the impact with them. I basically changed my lease to split the rent payment and half was due on the 7th and half was due on the 21st, with late fees accruing at each date. I don't like being paid every two weeks because then I constantly have to remember when payroll is being run, I want static dates. Even on a bi-weekly schedule, the tenant is guaranteed to get a paycheck in the last 7 days of a month or first 7 days of the next month. Another change that I made was that due to having a split payment, rent now had be paid in certified funds. You dont want them to write a bad check on the 7th and not find out about it until almost mid-month.

For attorneys, we pretty much use Hartman-Imbriale every chance we get. They already have their HUD Title ID # for the Buyers Select Closing Agent process that is now in place.

I have yet to find an umbrella (blanket) insurance policy that is anywhere near as affordable as keeping individual policies on each property. I have looked at numerous different offerings and they are always at least 15-20% more expensive. Im not sure why that is....

Good contractors are like good baby sitters and people don't like to readily give them out. When you need them, you don't want to have to compete with a ton of investors for their time and services.

I do exactly what @Wayne Brooks says. I download my bank statement in PDF format and then redact all of the account information. This is what I use for all REO, Short Sale and HUD offers. Never had any problems...

I manage the books for dozens of properties and I do pretty much what @Chris Martin and @Mike H suggested by creating a spreadsheet with Categories matching the IRS Schedule. I track transactions by the major type (Income, Expense, Asset, Liability). From this I am able to use Pivot Tables to roll up my own Income Statements and Balance Sheets. As long as you stay with cash-based accounting, I wouldn't bother doing anything more...

@Mark Ferguson is the guru in this area, but I will shed some light.

HUD bids are placed online and evaluated and accepted by the Asset Manager, so you do not need to email the Listing Agent. Once the contract is accepted, you have 2 business days to get the EMD check and paperwork submitted.

Well, if you decide you want to wholesale in Paulding, Cobb, Fulton, Cherokee or Fulton then hit me up as we buy in those areas. This place is a great resource, so make sure you take the time to read articles and listen to Podcasts and you will learn a ton!

In my case the answer is no, we do not have any loans with the bank where our corporate accounts reside. There was a time many years ago during capital crunch mode where the lenders wanted us to have a depository account at their bank in order to borrow money, but we resisted. I am not sure if they are still pushing that requirement anymore.

We have many properties, all titled in LLC entities. If you want to close the loan with the title in the LLC name, you are going to have to get a portfolio loan. Your best bet is to find Community Banks in your area and go in to talk with their lenders. You will have to personally guarantee the loan and you can expect the rate to be 2% higher than conforming rates. You will also not find anything longer than 20-year amortizations with 3, 5, or 7 year balloons in my experience.

There are others that might advocate closing in your own name, getting a conforming loan, and then changing the title, but that seems like playing with fire to me. There are also some song and dance options using trusts, but thats way more involved...

We have a Home Telos property under contract right now. The EM check was made out to the Buyer Selected Closing Attorney and delivered with all of the paperwork to the Listing Broker. I highly encourage selecting an attorney that already has a Title ID assigned by HUD. They should be able to provide you a pre-filled Buyer Select Closing Agent form with all of their information and signature. With the tight 2-day window, the last thing you want is to run around getting signatures from even more parties.....