All Forum Posts by: Mark Elliott

all great advice. as long as you are purchasing below market value, you can refinance and pull out at least your down payment back. then repeat the cycle again. some lenders seem to frown upon investors with multiple loans, yes, but a refi is easier to get than an initial loan and without the cash layout. my advice, refinance each deal to pull out as much money as you can from each deal. after all, the tenants are paying the payments for you, so does it really matter how much you owe???

i recently bought a property thru auction.com. no bad experiences at all. well, i can;t say that totally, there were a couple of hidden fees but nothing that put us into the red area. it is an absolute must to gain access to the house. in many of these houses, you can have your realtor get you inside, as log as they are unoccupied and they have a lock box on the door. spend as much time on looking the place over as you can. i am a professional home inspector and know what i am looking at, so doing a detailed look over is easy for me. i do not know about other home inspectors, but i will look over a property with a perspective buyer for a small fee, usually $100. its not a complete inspection with book and everything as a total inspection would be, but if i see an area of trouble, i will alert my client. maybe you can find an inspector in your area to do the same. as far as the bid increments on auction.com, yeah it kind of sucks, but they place the bigger increments on the houses that they expect a lot of action from. they always post the bid increments on the page with the auction right under the starting price, so pay attention to that. the higher the increment, the more likely the amount of buyers will drive up the price. the lower the increments, the more likely that house has been on their website a while and they are looking to get rid of it, which translates into a good deal for you. over all, auction.com is a good place to buy. AVOID ANY CONTACT WITH HUBZU.COM. I CAN TELL YOU SOME SERIOUSLY BAD STORIES WITH THEM. 

most of the replies here seem to say " show her the way". my answer is kind of a compromise. 15k is a decent amount to save and reinvest. however, you can find a deal that will allow you to get your start and maybe still appease the wife too. you have to get the wife on your side. no successful man in history did it without a good woman backing him up.  find out from the wife which of those " desires" is most important to her. probably the shoes. buy her those. find a house deal that fits into the remainder of your funds and will ultimately get you on the road to success. i personally have found and bought a couple of houses for less that $2000 and fixed them up, resold them for a decent profit. that profit is by no means an amount that made me rich, but it set me on the right path to continue on that path

hi stewart. welcome to BP and welcome to real estate investing. being a " newbee", i am sure you are overwelmed with the information here. some of it you will use regularly and others, you may use little or not at all. so don't let the amount get you down. that being said, i personal think the MLS is one of the last areas i would look for deals. keep in mind that the MLS is created and managed by agents, and they are out to get the largest commission tat they can. lets face it, if you were the agent, you would want the most bang for your buck you can get, right? because of this, i think the home prices there are a bit high for the average investor. as investors, we want the best house and the lowest price possible. i find it much easier to drive around and look for houses that are obviously vacant. find out who owns them and why it is vacant, and if it is listed anywhere. your best deals are the ones that are NOT listed. sometimes finding the owner is as simple as asking a neighbor. sometimes you have to visit the local municipality and ask. they keep records of owners and sometimes records of the vacant houses in their area. this can be a great source for finding vacant houses. i personally have found houses that the bank started a foreclosure on and stopped, and gave the house back to the owners, who have long since moved on. these are great deals for pennies on the dollar. auction sites such as auction.com are good sources too. one motto i live by is " where there is one, there is another". go look at these houses listed by the municipality, or on auction.com and you will find another, unlisted house in the same neighborhood. happy hunting

thanks. larry t. i checked with my attorney this last monday. he said i certainly could cancel the contract if i wanted to, but he seemed " pissed" that i would even mention it. within the contract it states that the buyer must bring to my attention any changes in his financing and such. he has never done this, i had to hear of it thru a friend of mine who is kind of wrapped up in this thru my agent. he is a broker and works with my agent. i have never heard anything from their attorney and my attorney never speaks to me unless i call him. i don;t mind selling the place to this guy, i just think he is stalling for some reason. i had other people who were interested in the place before this guy made an offer. i could sell it again in a heartbeat if i relisted it. i just want this thing closed on so i can move on

maybe i am just uninformed? it would seem to me that acting as an 
 agent" between a buyer and a seller is clearly a violation of operating as a real estate agent without a license. wholesaling is a different thing. if you buy a house, and resell it for a profit, thats wholesaling. if you market a house for a seller, sign a contract for a commission, and set up a buyer for the seller, you are then acting as an agent. there is a world of difference here, people. there are no laws that i know of that prevent someone from selling whatever they legally own for whatever price someone will give you for it. but if you are selling it for someone else and expect to be given compensation for your efforts, you are NOT wholesaling, you are an agent and you better have a license.

hello to everyone. i have a question regarding a closing that is taking far too long. i have a flip house here in western new york. i finished it and put it up for sale in late august 2014. signed a sales contract with the buyer on november 11th. since then, he, the buyer, has given me a long list of repairs he wanted done on the place, which i did, including replacing the roof, myself, in the middle of december. now, since the repairs have been completed, i thought the closing would take place, as scheduled, on january 5, 2015. that date is written right in the contract. since then, he has " waffled" around with his VA loan, switched to a different bank and type of loan, and, as you can imagine, postponed the closing multiple times. i have heard from my agent and attorney on rare occassions that they need " this" or " that" from me. the latest thing they wanted from me was a letter indicating when the roof was completed. they already know this. i re-read my contract. i have what i believe are numerous reasons to cancel the sale. every week i hear " it should happen next week." i have been hearing that since mid january and here it is late march. also, within the contract, i have found a clause that allows me to demand a closing within 7 days of any notice i give them. should i contact their attorney and envolk the 7 day closing or notify them of my intent to cancel the sale effective immediately if we do not get a closing soon? any advice would be greatly appreciated. thank you

all good posts. i am a home inspector here in the western new york area. i am a rather small man, 5 ft 8, 180 pounds, so, as you can imagine, i can fit into spots that even a mouse would fear to go. it gives me a distinct advantage in doing home inspections. i can agree with your concerns. if there were multiple areas of interest missed in the inspection, that is the fault of the inspector. if there areas that were covered with insulation, personal items, etc that items could have been safely moved, then the inspector should have moved them, especially in areas of major concerns such as plumbing or heating areas. personally, if i look under a sink and see personal items blocking what i want to look at, i am gonna move them. the personal items are not as important as what i may find, plain and simple. in a house i know is going to be rehabbed, i am going to pull back insulation that is blocking what i want to see. the owner is probably going to tear out that piece of insulation anyway. crawl spaces??? my small size and eagerness to " boldly go where no man has gone before" allows me to find a   way to get into that crawl space and see what i can find. lets face it, crawl spaces, attics, roofs and " hidden areas" tell you just about everything you need to know about a house. i personally have removed an attic panel that was screwed AND glued shut just to get into the attic.  what did i find???? an attic that had major fire damage that had been repaired but not well. and the owner had NOT disclosed this to the buyer or their agent. if i had ignored that and not gone in there, i would have not discovered that, and would not have been responsible for not knowing, but i am there to determine the condition of the house at the time of the inspection and this definately constitutes the condition of the house at that time. a good inspector will question anything that does not look right. the clamp covering the plumbing??? of course i would NOT have removed that, its there for a reason and that reason would be to cover a whole and/ or damage. i would have noted that in my report as " unknown damage behind clamp on main plumbing infeed". that notifies the buyer of an issue without directly saying there is a major problem where there may not be one. i would not have " passed" that part of the report. its simple to tell the buyer " i cannot see what is behind this, but it isn't there for decoration.

in short, be as absolutely complete in that inspection as you possibly can be.

so, basically you are looking to buy a house that is worth a potential $170,000 for $85,000. i think the seller would see that as insulting. i understand that if you quickly wholesale it, you stand to make a good amount of money with minimal effort, which is the name of the game, but you also have to look at it from the sellers stand point. they want to walk away from the table with money in their hand too. loosing 50% on the deal is not what they are looking to do. 

i would offer the $102,000. its a big drop in the amount the sellers would like to get, but lets face it, a " motivated" seller has to understand there is a price for a quick sale. offer the house to your buyer at a decent price to them as well as making a little cash yourself. if you offer it to your buyer for $122,000, you walk away with $20,000 and they still get a house at a $50,000 deduction. everyone walks away happy

don't be afraid to offer lower than asking price, but don't come across as greedy either

let me tell you about the arrangement i have here with a partner. we purchased a flip house. he ( his company) has put up the purchase price of the house, all closing costs, etc. our agreement is that i pay for all of the labor, whether i do it myself, or hire it done, all labor costs are mine. he pays for materials. i pay for permit fees, an any other " surprises" that come up. i keep track of my hours that i put in myself at a reasonable rate and anything i pay for labor whether i hire college kids or professionals. in the end, when we sell the house, everyones input, cash and labor, gets paid back to them out of the proceeds of the house. the profit that is left, we split 50/50. hope this helps you