All Forum Posts by: Daniel Rojas

I've used Pilar To Post and they were very detailed and professional. Sent over 3 guys and they took over 3 hours to inspect my home before I purchased it. Very happy with their inspection. You can probably Google and find their contact info. 

I completely agree. Just wondering why it is $117k here and $107k in an email I received a couple of days ago.  That is all. Since it is in probate, how long do you think it would take for an offer to be approved by a judge?

@Elio L. 

I've seen this place circulating through wholesalers and MLS for a while now. I saw it originally posted for $130k about a month ago and then just 3 days ago I saw it in a wholesaler's email I receive for $107k. Now I see you posting it for $117k. What's the deal with this property? Why so many different prices and why hasn't it sold yet? I'm actually looking to buy a duplex but this one just seems phishy to me now.

Hello & Welcome @Jonathan Loynaz. I recently went to a Dade Real Estate Investment Association Meeting and I thought it was great for beginners. I would check them out and try to attend one of their meetings.

www.dreia.org

@Henry M. That's exactly what we said, why not 33.33% all around? We are both new to REI but have done a lot of research and are ready to begin. We were thinking of doing everything ourselves before being approached by our other friend. My property manager friend has some experience in renovations because he does this for a lot of the associations he manages. However, he is also looking to diversify his property management business and start flipping with other peoples's money for now. Yes, he does have a realtor's license and commission will be added to net profit. We will be very involved as we want to learn as well and will have final say on everything. All terms will definitely be written down and agreed to prior to commencement. I totally agree with your final statement and losing a friendship is the last thing we want to do. We were thinking of counter offering and asking for 1/3 split but wanted to post this question on bigger pockets before we do. Thank you so much for your input.

My best friend and I have enough cash to start investing in real estate and buying properties with no financing. However, another one of our best friends owns a property management company and also wants to be involved. He has offered to do all the legwork of finding the property, renovating it and selling it etc. We would therefore be acting as hard money lenders and his proposition is to split the net profit 50/50. We wanted to know if this split is normal for this type of set up? 50% sounds like a lot since we will be putting up 100% of the cash. However, this might be normal in the industry and we would like to have some idea before jumping in. I know it will be a lot of time and work just finding and bidding on properties. If anyone else has any better ideas please chime in. Thank you. 

@Sergio Fogel

West Miami Suburbs like Westchester, Kendall and Hialeah have high rents and lower home prices compared to other parts of Miami.

@Sergio Fogel

I'm a native Miamian and I agree with you that prices have skyrocketed here in the last 2 years. The downtown/Brickell area is where you see most of the foreign investors buying up property with cash. However by 2015 there will be about 18 new condo towers finished and about 15,000 more units coming into the market. That might be a good time to buy in that area as these new condos are all coming up at the same time. I've been looking for deals for a while now and they are harder and harder to find. My mother is from Uruguay and our family lives in Maldonado. I was just in Montevideo about a year ago. How is the real estate over there? I'm planning to buy a house in Solis and retire but I have a long way to go before that.

Hi Stephan, I'm a commercial insurance agent in Miami and half of my book of business is real estate property insurance. I've been doing it for 10 years and work for a large firm that has been in business for over 43 years. The first thing I can tell you is that Florida is a different animal. Especially South Florida. We have the highest insurance rates in the country, whether it be property insurance, auto insurance or general liability. I read all of the above posts and there seems to be a little misunderstanding of what an umbrella policy is. It has nothing to do with property insurance, wind, flood etc. However, since you are stuck with Citizens you have your liability together with your property insurance on one policy. You also have one policy for every location. If you have enough locations I would suggest buying one general liability policy with a $1,000,000 limit from a private carrier for all your properties and one property policy for all your locations (if possible and affordable). The property policy affordability will depend on location, construction, etc. You would be spreading the risk since you have multiple locations and you would be getting the hell out of Citizens. I would even go as far as to pay more money to get out of Citizens. By FL law their premiums are set to increase 10% every year in order to depopulate. If we have a big storm and you have all your policies with Citizens, good luck. You might get paid a year later, might. Then you can buy an umbrella policy from another company to go over your general liability policy that already insures all your properties. There are programs called "Risk Purchasing Groups" that work really well for real estate. These are made of a couple of insurance companies that take a percentage of the risk. Therefore the premiums are very low. You can buy a $5,000,000 umbrella policy for all your properties for the same premium you were just quoted. That is the way I would creatively write the insurance. This works great with the more properties you have. I work with clients that have larger portfolios but this concept also works on smaller ones. I hope this information helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Hi Michael, I'm a commercial insurance agent from Miami and half of my book of business is real estate property insurance. I would suggest that you look into what "co-insurance" your policy/quote has. You just need to be careful you are not underinsured and the best way to do that is by paying for a "replacement cost" or "cost approach" appraisal. This will not only give you the most accurate figure but you can also use that appraisal to waive any co-insurance penalty your policy may have. The insurance company will add an "agreed amount" endorsement. I feel that this process will allow you to sleep at night. Those replacement cost estimators are not 100% accurate and I usually use that for a benchmark. However, there is so much individual property information that can sway those values greatly. You can have the insurance cost approach appraisal easily added on to your regular market appraisal while buying a new property and it would probably save you some money. Won't have to hire another company to do a replacement cost appraisal. Hope this helps.