All Forum Posts by: Helen Zhang

I would love to have auction experts' opinion. I am currently looking at an auction property, and I noticed the ownership information stated two documents:

1. Texas General Warranty Deed with Vendor's Lien (Original Petition for Divorce dated 09/10/2015 recorded in Instrument)

2. Warranty Deed with Vendor's Lien

I only see one mortgage on the account, and there is a Judgement and Lien Information with a few thousand dollars. 

Question:

1. If I purchase this house, am I purchasing as the buyer of the warranty deed? or am I purchasing this as the new "Vendor" (as I am buying out the loan)

2. The lien with a few thousand dollars on the property: am I paying for it after I purchase the property? or will the seller be paying for the lien? 

@Jessica H. To be honest I am not convinced that you are pricing it right. With low enough pricing on rent, 90% of them are rentable. Go ahead and use https://www.rentometer.com and tell me if your pricing is truly low enough to fall under the green area. If your pricing is not in the green area, reduce your price to green. 

Unlike most people on the forum stated, I am not very convinced that your PM is good or bad at this point. However, you should not pay PM any money until your unit is rented. This should encourage the PM to rent out your unit asap. 

As this is my first manufactured purchase, I'm curious whether purchasing manufactured home requires HUD settlement for closing?

Previously all houses that I have purchased in the past requires HUD settlement to be shown to buyers. Now the realtor has only provided a "buyer's estimate" for closing and expects a cashier's check. This sounds shady to me.

Can someone who purchased manufactured home previously share your thoughts? 

@Randy Rogers , thank you for your input. I wonder how things goes with the foreclosure? Ideally Peerstreet would sell the property and the sell revenue should deduct broker commissions, legal fees, repair costs before distributed to you. I wonder if you get full amount of loan (without interest) back. If not, I would love to know what percentage did you get back? 

@Matt R. NYC actually does not have a whole lot of software engineering connections. Both NYC and Chitown is for finance/business. 

@Will Barnard would you be able to recommend any good reads on the following topics:

1. How to file LLC when we have properties in multiple different state?

2. How taxation is affected/different with LLC vs personal rental income?

3. How to move properties from personal to LLC?

I'm surprised that this was not being discussed in BiggerPockets. There is a bill proposed to get rid of property tax deduction (probably also mortgage interest deductions as well). 

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/chairman...

I would hate to see this bill passes, and I would like to know whether property tax can still be considered as business expense for LLC or C-corp.

@Joe Scaparra Absolutely agree with you and exact to the point. I would never expect Austin to be the next Bay Area, nor expect Cleveland to be the next Austin. I am interested in Cleveland for "better" cash flow.  Btw, cash flow with small units can also be positive in bay area (if you actually paid attention to the person that you can I previously talked to. Bay area just like anywhere else, it has not so great neighborhood where you can great cash flow like the Austin duplex that you just bought). 

Let's put it this way (and it might be offensive since you sounds like you are local Austinites), Austin demand is simply not even near Bay Area's demand. So if I am a Californian, I have been wondering about the same thing as you have been wondering about Cleveland: "What if the house that I bought cannot be rented".  In a local Californian's eyes, Texas is some wild land that has no demand and value will not increase. I invested in Dallas before I moved to Austin. I would agree with you remote landlord is at disadvantage, and it is a great strength to be local. But I disagree with the point remote landlord give you enough disadvantage that you should never invest. 

@Jordan Moorhead Not sure what made you believe that you the rest of us have not lived more than just California, but ok. 

@Joe Scaparra I think the word good is relative. The same way you believe that Cleveland is not going to become the next Austin, I believe Austin is not going to become the next Bay Area. But I chose to invest in Austin because of numbers, it is exactly the same way I am interested in Cleveland. Now numbers are not just rois, it is job unemployment rate, it is rent occupancy rate, it is homeownership percentage, it is untility policies, eviction policies, rental culture, crime rate, and more... including this population decline.

@Joe Scaparra do you find this conversation similar to what we had before when we were trying to inform the person who only invest in bay area? He doesnt know what texas is like and the awesome profit margins that we have here, and thats his loss. 

Now we are having the exact same conversations as you on texas and I am on Ohio except that neither one of us knows what awesome profit margins in Cleveland. 

I disagree that it is not important to know the reason for population decline. What if the reason is because old people are dying fast? Or becauce less suburbs are being claimed as part of Cleveland? Imo, there is no good reason to not know more. 

I strongly believe that there are reasons why investors are still investing there. I am glad that I beat most of the californians to invest in texas, and now if Cleveland is a great place for investment, I want to get there before everyone else gets there. I get it that u r use to ur area, and indeed local knowledge is powerful, but I do not really want to be the person that you and I both talked to previously on forum who makes Ok profit and stops there because he doesnt know there are places that are better than what he knows.