All Forum Posts by: Christian Malesic

You would be surprised what a couple of hundred bucks can buy you at a good real estate lawyer's office.

I was in a similar, yet different, situation when I bought my boyhood home from my parents. We agreed on the basic terms and then went to an attorney to write it up for us. He even filed it with the county.

They are holding the deed and I am paying a mortgage with an agreed upon interest rate. That way we keep the money in the family. As such, we even agreed upon terms as to what happens by way of inheritence if they both die. My brother was involved as half of the remaining balance of the house would be his according to our parents wishes.

There are also companies that will provide the equipment, maintenance, and labor (empty the coins) for no charge. In fact, they pay you. You may want to look into this in your area.

Wheatie makes a great point: A Rose by any other Name is Still a Rose.

You are speculating that the property will be desirable, causing value to go up, ie. appreciate. I am not disagreeing. You may very well be right. It is still speculating, though.

If you can make it cash flow appropriately and save the speculation as a fall back plan, you are on to something.

You can surely use the same company each time. As to which state, check with your lawyer & accountant. Unless there are serious and distinct advantages, I would lean toward setting up in my home state to keep fees down.

Great idea!

This is one of those businesses that are hard to get off the ground, but have huge potential.

You mention the 2 biggest concerns: new owners and new tenants. The seconds begs the advertising question.

Getting the owners is a matter of being honest with the first two or three and giving them an offer they can not refuse... such as no fee to you unless you rent it out, ie. a percentage fee of rents.

Once you get the places (owners) you can go after the tenants. Find out if they are coming from a particular area of the country. You may be surprised. If they are from a small town or towns, advertising may be much cheaper than you would imagine for a newspaper or church bulletin, not to mention direct mail.

The best part of your idea is the residuals. We vacation at the same beach and same beach apartment complex every year. The most advertising they need is a letter saying “you better call me quick and send your deposit before your favorite apartment and week is gone”

Glad you joined us. It sounds like you have a good, reasonable plan and are in position to carry it out. You have come to the right place to learn.

See you around the forums.

Convential wisdom is 5% of gross. If you do business like us where you do a lot of these major repairs when taking over a building, then you can reduce that to 2.5% or so.

We found E*trade savings account to be the best interest. As long as you are comfortable with doing everything by computer, you can do all of your transfers to and from the account as needed making the money very liquid.

Which tri-state area? (everybody's 3 states are different)

And, what part of PA?

It happens to us all the time.... with the exception of the call. I will explain.

They fill out the app and pay the fee. As do others. We go through the pile, pick the best, and screen. One eventially passes. We call to offer the place and they say no - not enough money.

Now that would make sense if the process took a few days, but it usually is a day or less.

We had an open house this Sunday (for rentals) for a building with 3 units that we just finished rehabbing. Many, many people walkedthru. We got about 6 completed apps with fees with another dozen or so who took them home with them. Yesterday morning (less that 24 hours later) we called one of the top applicants for one of the units who qualified by our calculations. And, "she could not afford it."

We have never purposely bought to flip, but did 'flip' 3 properties. 1 immediately and 2 at about the 1 year point (not technically a flip)