All Forum Posts by: Ilya Z.

I apologize in advance for this post being somewhat off-topic, since it's only tangentially related to RE investments. Our friend died suddenly leaving behind wife and two children. Their financial situation was a not that great when he was alive but now things got worse. One additional complication is that the widow has not been able to get a death certificate for close to a month. Without it she can't take possession of his various property including a rental condo. She lives in Baltimore County and apparently things are stuck at the county medical examiner's office. They cannot decide what to put as the cause of death, and he was buried 3 weeks ago without an autopsy (the cause of death was 100% natural, although he was not in the best of health). Every time she calls, she gets "you'll get it in a few days, don't worry". Is there a way to force them to produce the death certificate ASAP? Should she threaten legal action? Say certain "key phrases" that will force them to do their job? Any advice will be much appreciated!

So most of the agents I've talked to have sent me MLS listings. I got the sense, though, that for our specific situation, looking at whatever is on MLS or otherwise is "open to the world to see" does not make much sense. We're looking to do our first flip and it seems that anything visible to the public brings too much competition that we will always lose to (e.g. investors with lots of cash). Can those agents instead use the knowledge of their particular area or network to find properties that are not on the market that we could buy directly? That's how many years ago we bought our own house: the agent knew a guy whose house stood empty for a couple for years because he was waiting for his grown-up daughter to move in and she never did. So the agent convinced the guy to sell the house to us and worked as a dual agent. I've got a couple of leads like this from the other agents but not from the one we signed with.

So I will definitely talk to her. Maybe I'll tell her that I want out of this agreement but if she finds a good property we'll sign with her whatever is needed to proceed and for her to benefit from that transaction?

Question is: what's her incentive to cancel the agreement? I am not sure how constraining it is for us. What would she be losing (at least potentially) by not canceling? For example, does it cover the whole state or just certain areas? If just areas, I can tell her that I will just focus my search on other parts of the state. But if it's for the whole state, then this agreement seems like a showstopper for dealing with anyone else in MD

Hello Everyone,

We've been looking for investment properties in Maryland for a couple of months and have talked to several RE agents and brokers. One of them (she's also a broker) showed us a few properties in Baltimore County and at some point asked us to sign an Exclusive Buyer/Tenant Brokerage Agreement with her, which we did. It might have been a mistake, a small one or a big one, but what's done is done, and I need to figure out the best course of action at this point.

The document does not have a termination date on it, as far as I can tell. The agent hand-wrote "Baltimore County" at the top, but does it mean legally that I am stuck with her just for that region, or for the whole of Maryland or something else? 

The issue is that a couple of other agents I've contacted found properties that might be good investments. One is in the county, the other is elsewhere in Maryland. These properties might require fast action on my part, so the question is: do I need to terminate the agreement with the other agent before proceeding? If so, what's the right way to do it? And what's a wrong way to do it that should be avoided? (I realize that I can't just take my ball and go home because I don't want to play anymore.)

Just to clarify: it's not that I am terribly unhappy with that agent. It's just I want to have the freedom to deal with whichever agent finds me the best deal.

Thank you

Thank you both! Yeah, lots to explore!

Thank you, "req to join" sent!

Hello Everyone!

Ilya from Rockville here. Have lived in the area since mid-90s. My wife and I had invested in a couple of rental condos in the county about 10 years ago. I would say it was a good move overall: the properties have not appreciated as much over the years as in other parts of the county, but at least have been cash-flow-positive.

Now we're trying to see if we can do it again. If nothing else, it should help us pay for 2 kids who'll in college at the same time in a couple of years. :-)

Even with the past experience, we would consider ourselves relative newbies. Especially because this time around we're considering both rentals and flips and the latter is definitely a very different beast altogether. So looking to learn from this forum and make connections.

Cheers!

Thanks Russell. I am generally avoiding Baltimore City, but why is Dundalk a bad area to invest in? I noticed that the prices there have been going up quite a bit so the area might be too expensive already to get a property that would give me a positive cash flow (at least with the way I am planning to finance it). Are there other reasons?

Thanks Michael. So maybe just close proximity to water is not a good reason to discard a whole area. And I agree with you that you don't need to live near large bodies of water to get flooded. In fact, my basement got flooded a couple of months ago because my sump pump failed. I guess what I am concerned about is this (from the article):

That is, there might be parts of Dundalk that have bad drainage systems. In which case you might get something like what happened in Ellicott City: the downtown got flooded twice in a just a few years. I don't think you can protect your house from something like this with a sump pump. :-)

Good Day Everyone,

We're exploring investment possibilities in Dundalk, focusing on buy-and-holds to rent out. Just this morning I came across this article:

https://www.dundalkeagle.com/when-it-rains-it-floods-why-now/article_436b8ee8-3144-5125-9f0b-58ed0a7f4406.html

If the entire Dundalk area is prone to flooding, even if serious floods only happen once every few years, it seems be a good reason to stay away from that area. If only some areas get flooded and others don't, then one has to be choose carefully. But then the whole area is essentially on the water, plus all that climate change stuff with extreme weather and all...

What do others think about danger of serious flooding in the area?

Thanks,

Ilya

Maybe do 50/50 or some other split: put some money toward mortgage and invest the rest? One additional pro of paying off your mortgage early is once you do it, the place you call home is yours and the bank can't take it away. Of course, if you feel very optimistic about your future, and/or you are years away from paying off and might want to buy a bigger house etc etc then maybe this is not so important. Also, you cannot get back the extra $ you have put toward extra principal in case something bad happens (such as loss of job) and you need extra cash.