All Forum Posts by: Dan NA

I had never heard of the term "green" either but my fiance pointed out that she heard it a few times while taking real estate courses. I guess the scale is red, yellow and green for housing here in jersey. I am sure red means there is basically no certificate of occupancy. Either the city deemed the place uninhabitable or the banks inspectors did?

Not really sure who has flagged this place as uninhabitable yet. I have to do so more research with the city I guess.

Hard money is an option I may have to explore. But all this will of course depend on whether I can get a mortgage on this property in the first place. I have the cash funds for a down payment and for the repairs but I would prefer to not use my money on the repairs considering I will be carrying the place for a few months while I fix it.

Hey Jon thanks for the reply. I think I actually saw a "winterized" sticker on the water heater units now that I think about it.

Reason I asked originally was that I was looking at a home a few months ago and had an inspection done. The inspection guy said there was no way to turn on the power if the owners didn't have power and/or the heating units turned on. So he did at that time a visual inspection but without a running working scenario there is no way to make a real inspection.

In this case the bank owns the house and doesn't have power running at all either.

As an investor, not being able to test the mechanicals is a real number changer no?

Hi everyone,

I am going to preface this by saying I have never done a rehab before. Currently looking at a multi-family REO that needs a fair amount of work. The house has no electricity and/or heat turned on. I found that somewhat odd that the bank would do a cash for keys (from the original owners) and just kept the heat off (temps here in NJ get below freezing). I would think the pipes freezing would be a major issue. But then again maybe they had someone come in and empty all the pipes out? I don't know if that is even possible. But in the basement I did notice that a section of pipe was missing. It somewhat looked like some sort of water connection device to the city could have been in place.

So how does one know if the mechanical's (the heat, boilers etc) are functioning if there is no electricity in the house? Currently no one is living in the house and it does not have a certificate of occupancy.

This week I plan to head into the town hall to see if the city has some sort of list of violations the house has that is had been deemed uninhabitable.

Thanks for the feed guys. The bank just changed agents this past week. I asked him how many days the property had been on the market and he said he didn't know. This agent just had one of those faces that he didn't want to be working in this attitude.

The agent asked how we would be paying for the repairs. Said that banks are not willing to finance properties that include fix up costs, especially since this property wasn't green yet. I guess that makes sense and I would actually use cash on hand to fix up the place (I am estimating materials at 25k) Labor costs I will be eating since I along with my father in law would be handling the fixes.

Hi all, I am currently looking a property that is REO. The property needs rehab and no tenants currently live there. I know prices vary all over the board, but I was wondering how much flex do bank REO's have price wise typically?

The property I am looking at in NJ was being listed for 85k and just recently I noticed that the bank dropped the listing price to 80k. I took a look at the property this week and it definitely needs work. I am going to see this week if I can head into town and talk to someone at maybe to construction department to find out exactly why its uninhabitable aside from the kitchen and bathrooms needing work. I am assuming that the city should have this information considering the bank says the house isn't green.

Mitch thanks for the reply.

Let me see if I am understanding this correctly. So we submitted our offer and the sellers lawyer approved the offer which was then turned over to the bank. So what you are saying is even though the house in under contract that it is still not considered pending? By pending do you mean that the house is still available on the market? I know on the MLS site the house shows under contract but I was unaware someone else could come along and put in an offer.

Just wanted to follow up on one of my own questions. Our lawyer has just told me that the bank doesn't have to give anything in writing if they reject. All they have to do is tell the listing agent and or send an email.

Hi all, well I have been looking into another short sale recently. I put in a bid along with 3 other people (2 months ago). I was the highest bidder and the bid went to the lawyer and the bank. A month and half later the bank comes back and says the bid is too low.

Originally the property was bank approved (by chase) at 240k. We offered 220 plus closing costs (Probably around 8k). We have our own agent the bank as its own btw. So there agent comes back to us and says that the bank now appraises the property for something like 260k but he thinks he can get them down to 240k if we counter it.

So for a week our mortgage guy has been working the numbers. But I asked if the bank would give us that in writing (that they rejected our offer) and I was told that the bank doesn't do that. So then I am thinking suppose the real estate guy is lying? How do we know and can we trust the other agent when he stands to make more money if we upbid ourselves.

Today he also came back and told our agent that he has another buyer that is willing to offer above asking price. I noticed online that his company is still listing the property as for sale even though it is under contract.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I feel as if someone maybe be lying but again I am not sure.

Hi all, I recently attended an event thrown by a financial club I belong to and was presented with an interesting financial opportunity. The company making the presentation basically buys a bulk amount of houses for about 20k (these are not the best houses in the world) a piece then turns around and sells them to investors.

The investors buy the house (clear title) and then a property management company finds a buyer occupant for the home in "as is" condition. Basically the investor is the bank and sits on the house and seasons the note anywhere from 6 months to a year and half when the property management company turns around and tries to sell the note at about 65 cents on the dollar.

The concept is interesting and of course there are risks. Right off the bat carrying costs (taxes etc while they find a buyer) and the possibility of eviction if the prospective buyers flake out etc.

I wanted to see what people on here thought about this sort of investment opportunity.

Well I just wanted to update everyone. 1 of the owners decided to NOT sign the final contract. Basically the deal is dead. Now we are going to have to sue them for all the money we wasted on inspections and lawyer etc. Some people are just complete morons. I mean why ask the bank for a short sale then after jumping that huge hurtle blank out.