All Forum Posts by: Mark Elliott

 am mark from buffalo new york. welcome to BP. you will find lots of help here in your mission to success. as you can see from my profile, i am an investor. i prefer the flip houses as opposed to rentals but i do have one rental. i am also a home inspector and recently a furnace technician too. i would be happy to meet up with you sometime and introduce you to the buffalo market is you are interested. just let me know.   

hi jalen. all good advice here. read all you can on real estate, especially any book by russ whitney and wade cook. watch all of the BP podcasts here too. there will be times when you feel like giving up, feel like things just aren't going to work out for you. NEVER NEVER give up. no one ever got anywhere by giving up. you can do it. my only regret is that i did not start out as young as you are. you got the " world by the ***" starting out at that young age. we all will give you the helping hand along the way. michigan is not a bad market, i know, i lived there for 37 years, and i still have family there and one of them is in the fliping business. let me know ow i can help

i like the contractor grade cabinets at home depot. i just bought 13 cabinets for a flip  am doing and spent only $1300 total. they are good quality and not a bad price. i prefer the glenwood cabinets

all good advice, conway. the experts will tell you not to quit your job until you have reached financial security. thats true enough. however, there are exceptions to every rule. first of all, $30k is going to get you no where in nyc. i am sure you know that. however, $30k might get you a great start somewhere else. here in buffalo, prices are pretty good. the market is good, and $30k would get you far. usually starting out is hard and you would need a back up plan like having a job. but whose to say that you couldn't quit your job now, move elsewhere and get another job. you lasted 11 years as a temp so you have staying power. no one says you can't get another job, in another location, start investing and do both for a while. i say it is time for you to pull up your roots in nyc, go somewhere else, and replant yourself in a manner that YOU approve of. good luck to you

hi chaim. i have not bought any houses at a tax sale. i have however, bought a few after the tax sale. here in erie county new york, if you buy from a tax sale, it can be a great deal. however, whatever was left on the past due taxes, you now owe. hence, you just bought yourself a liability. i don;t know about anyone else here, but i can manage to create my own bills myself without buying anyone else's tax liability. so, watch out for that issue. it may just be a new york thing, but maybe not. one of our local municipalities here has their own tax sale auctions aside from the county. that one, if you buy from them, you get a clean slate, no past due taxes left. however, they like to start the bidding out at what was owed to them, so, there would be no " leftover" anyway. by the way, they sell very few of them. lol. i usually go back to them after the sale and offer to buy some of the " left over" properties, usually for pennies on the dollar and i get them. you think they would figure out to start the bidding low if they are gonna sell them cheap later on anyway. but, regardless, even after i buy them dirt cheap, i still get them with no left over taxes owed. also, you need to know if your state is a " redemption" state. i. e., can the owner come back later and redeem their house by paying the taxes? most states are!!! but, they do not owe the tax to the county anymore, they owe it to you, and you can and should charge them intrest on the money. usually they have a year to redeem the house, after that, its yours. the issue there is that you can't do a damn thing to it for a year. these issues are what we mean when we say, " do your homework". tax sales can be a great source, but you still have to know what you are getting into before you get into it. 

hi frank. there is, of course, that old saying " it takes money to make money". thats true enough, but a revised edition should read " it helps to have money to make money". lots of people start out with little to nothing in their pockets. you can too, you just have to find the right deal, and believe me, thats gonna be hard. borrowing money is a decent start, but remember, you are also increasing your debt load. you have to do it while also increasing your net worth, or at least, without decreasing your net worth. you will have to find a property that is worth at least what you are paying for it now. there are deals out there for nothing down, but most of them are shams. properties that no one wants also have a reason no one wants them. my brother, and investor in western michigan, has actually bought houses at tax sale auctions for as little as $20. there is a reason he got them that cheap....... no body else wants them. you have to ask yourself why. is the local government that hard to work with on the rehab??? is the house so bad that no one could realistically fix it or fix it and still leave enough profit in the end? my point is, yes, you can start with nothing to work with, but you will have to accept the issues that come with that too. borrow if you must to get started, but make sure you get the right deal or you will find yourself with nothing to show but a larger liability side to your portfolio. good luck to you

hi broderick. sundai is correct. tax sales can be a great place to buy real estate, but the federal leins would still be in place. do your due dilegence. also, this list could be used in a different manner. you have names and addresses. go check out each and every one of these places. find the owners. buy right from the owner before the tax sale. some municipalities actually will let you make a payment arrangement on the back taxes. you find the owner, offer to buy the property for a little cash to them, and assume the back taxes. they do not have to know that you will then be paying those back taxes in a payment agreement with the local tax authority. all you are doing is assuming their obligation which gets them off the hook. you make the payments to your tax authority just like a house payment, and you own a house. you can do whatever you want with it along the way. he again, do your homework. make sure you are not buying someone elses heartache. there may be other leins on the property and you do not want those. i have personally bought 2 houses in this manner. good luck to you

well, ben, congrats on starting so young. i am over 50 now and i wish i would have started at your age. that being said, there is a lot to be said about experience also. keeping you DTI ratio down while financing real estate is going to be hard. after all, as your debt goes up, you need to increase your income an equal amount. obviously, you will have to take on some real estate on a contract basis, i. e., no bank loans. that way, you can claim the income without public knowledge of the debt. or you would need to find properties that increase your income without a huge increase in the debt amount. thats hard to do. crunch the numbers on every deal. if it does not fit your financial need, don't buy it. its pretty much that simple.

hi bobby. let me tell you a little story on how i got started. i had about $2000 to start with. i found a HUD house in a near by neighborhood and went to look at it. the listing price was $8500, but i thought i would look anyway. when i went to look at it, i noticed the house next to it was boarded up. i contacted the local municipality and they said that they owned it and had aquirred it thru tax repossession. i ended up looking at 3 houses that they owned like this, i bought 2 of them. the one i just mentioned, i bought for $1700. the other, i bought, later, for $500. both needed major work, and i did that using credit cards. fixed both houses, rented them both for a period of time, sold the one for a profit and the other i still own. you can get started on as little money as you have now, but you have to find the right deal. don't let the fact that you are starting off with little money stop you from getting into the business, you can do it

yes, HUD is notoriusly slow, just like anything else with the government, and they do prefer owner/ occupant sales over investors. there are many other creative ways to find and buy real estate. i use HUD for one resource only...... to find other houses. vacant houses are like deer at night, where there is one, there is another. i look up a HUD house, go to see it and then take a tour of the neighborhood. i would almost guarantee you that there will be another vacant house in that same neighborhood. i have personally bought a couple of houses simply by going to look at a HUD house