All Forum Posts by: Derek Montes

From an asset managers point of view, we want proof of funds, if unable to furnish then the buyer is not serious and not worth the time. And we never allow for assigning from one buyer to someone they want to assign, we don't like surprises.

In the case of an asset manager, there are two reasons why we do this: lower the list price so we can accept a low ball offer and/or decrease price to create a bidding war. Good luck.

@Lisa Fraser pm is project manager 

Do your diligence and do an inspection. Some surprises can be costly.. not worth saving $500 for an inspection if it will end up costing more later down the road. Don't cut corners until you know what you're doing.

I live here in Houston and was taking a quick look for duplexes a couple weeks ago. It seems like the trend I saw was homes were appraised at lower ends in 2014 and jumped up in price as of current. One home I saw: 2014 prices might have been around $75k for a duplex and was up sale with initial list price of $299k and reduced to $249k. What might be more lucrative is buying a SFR and converting to a multi family.. just a thought. Good luck!

EMD as in earnest money deposit. It sounds like you have a lot of research to do before you take the plunge. Do more diligence.

I am an REO Asset Manager and Jay is right. Even if you do reach me or, any asset manager, to make an offer for a property I have to act within my (bank directed) delegations and entertain all offers after marketing/listing a property.

The bank will never (in my short experience) sell/negotiate a property with an outside buyer- this would not only be a conflict of interests against other parties, but it could also give more profit loss. Those are a couple reasons why. 

The only time I have entertained an offer before listing a property on the MLS is if the current tenant of the property wants to purchase the property. However I have never seen a successful sale through this route.

I second what @Louis Alvarez says. The most important thing about an entity is planning for the end, trust me- I know this first hand. I wrote the operating agreement, created the entity, set up taxes (partnership designation) when establishing the EIN, dba, and more. A CPA did tell me to consider going S corp, but I decided to go partnership for our group. I didn't like the complexity of S corp and felt that partnership would have been easier for everyone (mainly me, because I didn't trust my partners) in the entity. Although it was a priceless experience, I should have heeded my gut feeling and never gotten into business with them because it could have gone way uglier.

One thing I would highly suggest to everyone is to do your diligence and research what is required for creating an entity, it's actually very easy and the knowledge is valuable. In Texas it costs about $300 to create an LLC with the Secretary of the State, and just as easy to designate how you want to be taxed with the federal government when creating your EIN (federal tax ID). The hardest part is actually when you want to dissolve the entity. I know LegalZoom charges almost double to create an entity..

From my understanding, in Texas, if you have an LLC and you can specify only one DBA/fictitious name. Any work you do under your DBA will be associated with the LLC and there is no layer of legal protection. The intent of a fictitious name/DBA is only to name the company different than the LLC name when you created the entity with the state.

If you want to separate each build then you can create a new entity for each one you want to separate, but this can become extremely cumbersome as you would need to file paperwork/taxes/etc. for each one to be in compliance.

It might be more trouble than it is worth unless you are doing MAJOR jobs.. I wouldn't do it unless you are building subdivisions/developments and the like...

Hard work is always rewarded. Thanks for the tips and good luck!