All Forum Posts by: Rob K.

Great thread, Rich!

I have been concerned about the debt for quite some time. I have attached an article that compares the government's revenue and spending and breaks it down as if it were a household budget. We are headed for financial disaster and cuts will have to be made everywhere. We can't pick and choose what gets cut. Everything will have to be cut - medicare, social security, military, welfare, etc.

The article sums it up like this. (Keep in mind this is from last year when the debt was "only" 14.2 trillion.) Now it is over 16 trillion.

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent [April] budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Budget cuts: $385

They removed eight zeros to use the same numbers. Imagine if someone that you knew made $21,700 per year and spent almost twice that much and had $142,710 on credit cards and then you told them to spend less and they cut $385 from the budget. It's ridiculous!

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/277873/bringing-budget-numbers-down-size-carrie-lukas

We're talking about less than $10 worth of drywall here. I would cut that section out and see if it's wet behind it. If so, you need to fix that first. I agree with the above posters that bleach will not solve the problem. I would treat the wood behind the drywall with a mold spray. Home Depot sells it in the paint department. I would then paint all of that wood with Killz. The oil based Killz, not Kills 2. Then you can re-drywall. Whole thing willl cost under $50 if you do it yourself.

Good luck.

Have you discreetly offered the listing agent some cash to tell you how much the other offer is? He's not supposed to tell you, but if it's done on the DL, who would know? If your offer is higher, you should get the house. Sometimes you need to play dirty to get what you want.

J Scott Thanks for the good advice! I will probably rent the house out for a year and then redo the counters and appliances and sell it. That way I will get the years rent, (hopefully) some appreciation, and the lower capital gains rate.

Mold only grows if water is present. Is there a leak? $2,500 sounds like a lot of money to fix a small mold area. (I'm assuming it's small since it wasn't visable before).

I would say that if the seller didn't know about it, it would be your sister's problem.

In the past, anytime I've tried buying a short sale, I waited about two months oply to have the bank say they want more money and kill the deal. For this reason, I have avoided short sales up until now.

I'm in the process of buying one that looks promissing. In the mountain of paperwork that the bank (Wells Fargo) wanted signed is a sentence that states, "Any buyer of the property must agree to not sell the home within 90 calendar days of the closing date."

Do they enforce this? Is it on the deed? Fannie Mae has a 90 day deed restriction that states you cannot sell the house for more than 10% of what you paid within 90 days. In the past, they would waive this if you asked them, but in the last couple years I haven't been able to get it waived.

The house I'm buying doesn't need any work other than paint. It has hardwood floors that are nice. I could rent it out with no problem. I was thinking of replacing the counters with granite and adding stainless appliances and selling for top dollar. I just don't want to have to wait 90 days.

That price that you got is absurd. We use GAF timberline shingles here. For 1900 square feet, tearing off two layers of shingles and adding new, it would be about $4,000.

Make sure the roofer has workers comp and get a copy of it. There are a lot of roofers that say they have it, but when you ask for a copy, it turns out that they don't. It's very expensive and a lot roofers go without it. Even some of the larger companies that advertise in the yellow pages claim to have it, but don't.

Some of the cities around here require a permit and some don't. I have a deal with my guy that we never get a permit unless we get caught. In that case, we add the permit fee to the price. One city will catch you every time, so we always get one. Outside of there, we've only been caught once and it was the same $100 as if we had gotten it before. I believe a permit is nothing more than a tax. My roofer agrees.

Won't HUD stop accepting offers from you if you keep doing this? I've found that if I look at 10 HUD houses, I might want to buy one. Most are overpriced junk. How many times have you had an offer accepted and then blown them off?

I have purchased dozens of HUD houses. Their rules clearly state that investor purchases are "as-is". You do not have an opportunity after HUD's acceptance to perform any type of inspection. You are supposed to do this beforehand. I disagree with HUD on this rule. I think it's ridiculous that you should go over every house with a fine toothed comb when your odds of actually purchasing it are small.

There are a couple things that I'm confused about:

1. Did you look at this property? It sounds like you're one of those guys that throws offers out and if one gets accepted, you then do your inspection and decide if you want the house. If that's the case, that is the wrong way to go, IMO. Whenever I get offers from investors, I make sure that they have physically looked at the house. If not, I don't waste my time with them. A lot of times I will have a house listed for $79,900 and an investor sends over an offer for $50,000 and they haven't even seen the house. I always counter these offers to $3,000,000.

2. When was it decided that your deposit would be $5,000? There is no place on an online offer for deposit. When you make the offer online, it asks for purchase price, closing costs, commission, and your personal information. Deposit is no where on there. Once you sign the purchase agreement, it states that the deposit is $500 if under $50,000 sales price and $1,000 if above. This $5,000 is a huge mistake. HUD would have never even seen your deposit when looking at your offer.

3. You claim that you are "discriminated" against as an investor. So what? Investors are not a protected class. HUD offers their properties to homeowners first. Investors get the sloppy seconds. HUD could legally say they will not sell to investors.

It really sucks that you lost the $5,000, but it sounds like you will have an uphill battle trying to deal with the government.

I'm confused as to why their physical appearance would have anything to do with why you would or wouldn't vote for somebody?

Were you torn in 2008 since John McCain is an ogre and Sarah Palin is a gilf?