All Forum Posts by: George Dixon

Damn. In that case I will try to obtain adverse possession. The worst case scenario is the owner contacts me directly and I can make an offer I guess.

On paper, as far as I can tell, it belongs to some bank who doesn't even know it's on their books. 

I'm a complete noob to property investing.

There is a local derelict property in my area (Ireland). I've identified the original owner to be a man who went bankrupt, leaving ownership to his lender. But, the property was never foreclosed as the lender was also dissolved due to their loans being non-performing. 

Based on news articles, I know these notes have been sold to Goldman Sachs and a few other banks. 

I figure, that since the original owner is bankrupt, if I bought the note myself I could foreclose and take possession immediately as an individual. Is this right? (In general)

Secondly, is it possible to track down a specific mortgage note like this? It's somewhere among a massive portfolio of NPNs. The original owner is also dead so I've no way to figure out who owns the note. At least that I can think of.

This place is completely forgotten about and an eye sore, but I think I can do something with it. 

Does anyone have advice here?

In Ireland, we've had a severe lack of construction finance since the crash of 2008. As such, only large REIT's and pension funds can afford to finance construction. There is massive housing demand that is driving up residential rents to the point where individuals can't afford them, and house prices so high it is impossible to cashflow unless you are building to rent or paying cash (income tax laws also make this tricky).

But, there is lots of opportunity in land that already has planning permission (houses approved to be built). Due to the requirement to have 20% down as cash, very few developers can afford to get financing, resulting in a significant slowdown of houses being built compared to demand. (Larger developers who could afford the development are instead chasing larger deals)

I thought of an idea to help increase supply and share the opportunities with smaller investors everywhere. If I created a crowdfunding website, that allows investors to commit funds to a project, in exchange for a share of the development profits, would that be of interest to anyone here?

My idea would be that every project would technically be a limited partnership, where cash investors/funders would supply the entire cash required for construction, and developers would be under contract to finish within a certain time frame. The later they are based on the timeframe agreed, the smaller cut of the profit they would receive. 

The idea would be something similar to kickstarter, where the terms of the deal would be laid out plain as day for anyone interested. You could also incorporate leverage into the deal, but that kind of defeats the purpose. In my mind, if the deal were all cash, and investors only signed up if they knew what they were getting into, its quite hard for anything bad to happen, other than a significant underestimation of costs (completely preventable with duedil before appearing on the platform), or supply outgrows demand (which is a long way off for Ireland). The returns would also be so significant that leverage wouldn't really be required.  

I'm a software engineer by trade, but work a lot with a property developer. Would there be interest for this? (I don't want to waste time building something if it doesn't at least make sense to some)

Note: this isn't an advertisement, and I don't plan to advertise without consent. Merely gauging interest in an idea.