All Forum Posts by: Michael Shadow

Who was paying for the electric to run the furnace? Unless there were three electric meters one of the tenants were paying for the electricity to run the furnace which heated both sides of the building. You can get in trouble for that in my area. I am making a laundry room common with a w/d hookup for both units and because it's between the units and I have to install two lights and put a switch in each unit so one tenant doesn't pay for the lights in the common area, they both have to operate their respective light form their unit.

I just had my painter look at my floors that I am going to repaint and he said oil based is a must on the floor, it'll last a lot longer.

Your best bet would be to call a couple of roofing contractors and ask them to give you estimates. You could get an idea of what the materials would cost yourself if you figured out exactly how many square feet of materials you would need. measure the length and width of your walls that have the roof on it and find out the exact pitch of your roof then search the web for roofing calculator and plug your numbers in there. It will then tell you how many square of material you need. Call your local hardware store and ask them how much a square of shingles are. You will also need the same amount of roofing felt. Don't forget nails, probably a roll of flashing, roofing caulk and possibly ice shield too, depending on where you are and your local code.

Yes they are required to give you a good faith estimate and they did, but our good faith estimates are only the closing cost they don't include the down-payment. The 3% isn't that much money but the shocker was the reality of seeing the number as a whole and that number on this sheet of paper was much more real looking than the same numbers on my spread sheets. On the settlement statement the psychology in my mind was seeing it as a bill.

I had calculated it and been looking at each number individually on my sheets as closing cost, $ from savings, and $ from HELOC. So the numbers were in my formula for my calcualtions just not added together.

Ok, so now I'm looking a wholesaling a double. From what I've read in the forums and heard on various podcast here is the information I need to gather and put together to give to potential buyers.

Sale Price
Pictures
Comp sales
Appraisal (ARV)
Repair estimate
APOD for a rental

Is there anything I'm missing or anything else you would like to see?

Thanks

As far as I know a PA sheriff's sale is supposed to clear all liens from the deed. Did you try calling your sheriff's office or the recorder of deeds? They should be able to answer your question.

What software package did you download to analyze this?

I can't answer your question because neither of them fit. The bank I normally uses places a bid out to all the local appraisers then they take the lowest bid. They do it that way to prevent mortgage fraud. I can however request not to have a certain appraiser do it so if that person comes in as the lowest bidder then they will pick the next one.

Well I'm one day from closing my first deal and I got a copy of the HUD settlement statement yesterday and I looked at the bottom line where it says "Cash from borrower" and all I could think was WOW!!! I was shocked by the number, I knew approximately what the number would be, I was only off by about 3%. What I was shocked by was that it was really happening, and the fact that it's a lot of money. It looks different on that sheet than it did on all my spread sheets and calculations. I started thinking about what am I doing this for and why am I doing this again and how much work I was going to have to do over the next two weeks.

So all this stuff was rolling around in my head and I'm driving home from work with nothing on the radio (I usually have a REI podcast or audio book in) just thinking about all that's going to happen and I start dwelling on the what-ifs then it dawns on me as I'm driving down the road that that number on the bottom of the statement is smaller than what most people spend on a car. After that I started feeling a lot better about everything by thinking that person in that car right there paid more for their car than I am for a duplex. That person in that SUV paid over twice what I'm paying for a duplex.

So for me the only fear (so far) was when I saw the settlement statement. I guess those numbers appeared more real to me than everything else I had run on the sheets and done. Even the checks I had written out before to get this deal to this point seemed minuscule.

I got a HELOC at my local bank for Prime - 1% for the first 6 months then it goes to Prime. I've thought about looking at other banks to see if I could get a better rate but I already spent $450 to get this one. I'm thinking that if I do shop and find a better rate it should be a lot less because I have the appraisal which was the most costliest part.