All Forum Posts by: Mark Elliott

hi charline. i know of a very good property management company here in the buffalo area. please let me know if i can help. 

oh god, matt, do not watch the movie animal house before you decide on this. you will never rent to a college group again.......lol. i would at least meet with this guy and discuss it. its worth a shot to see what he has to offer. if you do decide to go with it, i would have a very well detailed contract drawn up with many clauses that give you an out should things not go as planned

hi dan. i am mark, also from the buffalo, ny area. welcome to BP. if you are looking for a mentor, i am here. i have been doing this in this area for about 11 years now. mostly flips, i do have one rental house though. my specialty is finding deals. basically, they seem to find me. we should get together and discuss where you want to go. 

ok, here it goes. i am not a lawyer, but basically, my opinion of lawyers is about the same as anyone else. they are basically lowlife scum that have a use every once in a while. they are merely legalized criminals. that being said, they can have a use once  in a while. the previous responder here is right, they are held to a higher standard in court. there will be a record with the court of his loosing his license also, which should be frowned upon by the court. i have my suspicions about a few things. first, why would he attempt to move the jurisdiction of the jury trial to downtown? is there a corrupt judge that he knows down there? if so, find out who that judge is and if he does successfully move it downtown, ask for a change of venue, i. e., a change of judge based on passed records of this judge handling all the mans cases. maybe this judge is related to him, which gives him and unfair advantage and therefore should recuse him or herself from this case. you can check county records to see just what cases this lawyer has been involved in and what judge would have been used in all or many of these cases. second, check the records on this guy, he lost his license for something. find out what and show in court how his testimony should be discredited. when he makes his attempt to change the jurisdiction, interrupt him and show the judge how he has done this very thing several times before. show the judge where this guy is trying to take this case. if you want to beat an enemy at attacking you, you have to know which way he is going to attack you. find out every little thing you can about this guy and use it any way you can. you wanna beat a crook????? you have to be a bigger crook. dig up the dirt on this guy and use it anyway you can. as far as the dogs, call the cops, tell them that you believe he may be dealing drugs in the house because you smelled pot when you last talked to him and you need to access the house to verify. get in there anyway you can. 

hi brandon. here is what you do. you need to build your credit as much as you can. first thing you want to do is take $1000 of that money you have and go to a bank near you, any bank. put it in an account. a week or so later, go back to that bank and ask to take out a secured loan for $1000. secure it with that account. they are NOT going to deny you. then, take that $1000 that you just borrowed and head to another bank and make an account with that $1000. a week or so later, go back to bank #2 and take out another secured loan for $1000, securing it with the $1000 account you just opened. repeat the process again and again until you have to pay back the original $1000. when you consistantly pay back all of those $1000 loans, you will have established your credit, using only $1000 of your own money, and you will have multiple banks that would be willing to loan you money in the future because you now have credit with them . in the mean time, look around for real estate deals with the rest of your money, they are out there and you can find them with the money that you have. good luck to you

hi katelyn. boy, i wish i had an answer for you on this one. i have the same issue here in buffalo, ny. there is a house on the next street from me that has been vacant since 2010, and still no foreclosure on it. the bank, as you said, will not even talk to you. why does it take so long to foreclose on a house in new york???? i'll tell you why.......... lawyers. they need to get ever last detail correct or the previous owners can come back on them for the smallest of details. my opinion, if you stopped paying on your house, you loose it. is that so damn hard to understand????? the only advice i can give you is to keep checking with the county clerks office. anytime the bank takes the next step in foreclosure, there has to be a hearing and paperwork to go with it. this paperwork has to be filed with the clerks office and is free to the public to look at. sometimes, and this is a little known secret, banks just give up on a house. they weigh the cost of maintaining it for an extended period of time and legal fees along with it, verses the price they may get out of it in the end. the government puts a limit on how many foreclosures the bank can put back on the market in a year, so the banks are more likely to put the high dollar ones out there as opposed to the cheaper houses. who wouldn't? if you were the banker, you would do the same thing. so, the lesser houses, the banks sometimes just drop the whole deal. they file a release of lien or release of mortgage with the county clerk and they throw out any claim they have to that house. they send a letter to the last known owner that virtually says " here, have your house back". all you have to do then is find that owner. i have personally bought 2 houses that way and i am waiting on a couple more houses that i think that will happen to. do some research on these houses. you might find one hell of a deal. good luck to you

andrew. NO, i would not make this deal. did you get into RE to break even? think about the HOA fees. are you willing to hand over 2-1/2 units rents for each month just to have someone guarantee to fix the roof or siding? these are things that you can do yourself and probably would not need much attention most of the year anyway. so, you are throwing money away for nothing every month. have one of those units go vacant for a month and you loose all of your profit, if there even is one anyway. if there is not profit with it fully occupied, you are going to be shelling out money from your own pocket if one goes vacant. i wouldn't walk away from this deal......... i would run. there are better deals out there.

hi michael. well, lets see. if you were to install hot water tanks, you would need to install 4, one for each unit. using a tankless system is nice, but the costs outweigh the benefits because each unit costs considerably more than a tank system does. sure, tankless systems offer on demand hot water, but they also use 150,000 btu's of heat to do so, vs. 36,000 btu's for a tank system. considerable cost increase per unit. not to mention, you can get a water tank for around 4-$500, vs, $1000 for a tankless system. on average, a tank will last about 15 years, vs. 20 years for a tankless system. i would go with the tank simply because overall, it makes more sense dollar wise

hi tawanna. yes, you do suffer from educational paralysis. get over it......lol. first of all, if you have ever played monopoly, you know you are gonna get the " go to jail card, do not pass go, do not collect $200". same thing happens in life and in RE. get out there and just do it. you cannot learn everything from a book. most of what i have learned has been from just doing it. have i hit the " go to jail card"? of course, but i learned from that too. no one has ever set out to do anything and learned how to do it with out first learning how not to do it. the greatest story i ever heard was about the assistant to thomas edison. when edison finally invented a working light bulb, ( which by the way took him 10,000 tries), he gave the bulb to his assistant to carry upstairs to the testing lab. the poor kid tripped on the stairs and broke the bulb. edison simply made another one and gave it to the same kid again to take upstairs. when someone asked him why he gave it to this kid since he broke the first one, edison simply said " i bet he won't do that again". he was right. learn how to do something wrong the first time to learn how to do it right the next time. get out there and just get going...... good luck to you

well, sean, if the sellers are individuals, i would say they are trying to hide something or avoid further damage to what they already know is an issue. ask what that issue is. the seller could be a bank. it is very typical for a bank to state this. this in no way indicates a water issue, but you would have to assume that it does. in either case, treat it as if there is no plumbing in the house what so ever. after all, you can't really test it without going to a great deal of difficulty yourself, so, its a safe assumption that the is " no plumbing in the house".