All Forum Posts by: G. F.

Being a landlord in New York and New Jersey is no joke. Not for he faint of heart. Took me 7 1/2 months to get one out.

Having everything in on trust and having a LLC manage the trust is great from a organizational standpoint, but it still leaves you liable, personally liable.. You need to speak to an attorney to find a strategic way to manage this and also provides you with asset protection.

One way might be to set up three LLC's. Two for holding properties and one for management. Have checks written to the management LLC and make distributions to the holding LLC's once a quarter.

Transactions such as these are considered to be between sophisticated investors. The key to all this is disclosures. If your friend purchases the property and uses financing such as a hard money lender or a private money source, disclosing this to his/her lender will keep you out of trouble. Many who get in trouble don't follow this rule.

Quicken is more of a personal finance software where Quickbooks is geared toward small business accounting. A competing accounting software is Sage Peachtree. Many accountants prefer Peachtree but Quickbooks is used more widely, partly because is it a more intuitive software to learn.

Originally posted by Lafi S.:

I have been thinking about hiring a virtual assistant for a while now. But I do have one question that I can't seem to find the answer to.

If they are working offshore, or anywhere else for that matter,how are you going to be keeping track of them and how many hours they actually work? I don't want to hire someone for 20 hours a week but in reality they are only working for an hour.

There are many sites out there where you can find quality virtual assistants. elance, guru and odesk are the three most popular sites. Of the three, I like Odesk the best because they attempt to address the billable hours issue. When you hire a virtual assistant using Odesk, the virtual assistant has to download the Odesk Team application. This application takes a screenshot 6 times an hour of the virtual assistants' computer and provides a meter that tells you how active the assistant has been at working at your tasks. The screenshots are viewable so you will be able to verify that your virtual assistant is doing their work and not outsourcing it to someone else. The Odesk team application also allow a team of virtual assistants to communicate together. So when you hire the copywriter from New York, they are able to work with the web designer from India and the SEO/SEM marketer from Mountain View. Just another cool tool to help you manage your business.

Here's an example.

$100K House - Purchase Price
$80K 1st
$20K Second

Property value depreciated. Now worth $70K
Borrower has hardship.
Borrower defaults on loans.
Your note buying company buys 2nd for 1% - $200

YOU CAN

Offer borrower a discounted payoff of $1000 and get them in contact with the 1st to pursue a loan modification.

OR

Help borrower with short sale.
Your property purchasing company (disclosures to 1st probably required) or a friend or partners property purchasing company submits offer to purchase property
1st agrees to a discounted payoff of $50,000 with $1K to 2nd.

Your note buying company nets a 400% return on investment
Your property buying company or that of a friend or partner sells at fair market value and nets $20,000.

Many ways to structure this. 2nd's are not always junk. They can be very lucrative because no one wants them.

What state are you in and how far are the homeowners behind? Getting your own BPO will probably be a waste of money since the net they are asking for is within range of your FMV. Also pay close attention to the language that is used ("The investor"). Seems like the owner of the note has already been contacted.

You need to ask yourself this question.

How much am I willing to pay?

Submit a counter offer if the property is still in your range. A counter that is accompanied with supplemental information (comps, property condition, neighborhood information, etc...) can help.

"No money down real estate at auction" Don't give the guru's any idea's on what their next scam course will be about.

Originally posted by Nancy Dito:

If they were not listed can we still use them as comps?

Simply Answer: Yes.

As long as the transactions were arms-length.

I'll bet you a house that if that due date moves to the 15th, you won't get rent by the 15th. It's just in some people's nature not to pay on time. With rentals, you have to factor in that tenants don't always pay on time.