All Forum Posts by: Jackson Pontsler

Welcome to BP its always nice to meet another investor in Utah.  You'll be quickly bombarded with welcome messages and group invites from some of the Utah crowd.  As a word of advice regarding multi families in Utah.  Get a good realtor or start marketing for properties.  The market is very hot right now and find those deals aren't easy (good luck with the 1% rule) but you will probably be able to find closer to that.  Use the BP calculators to see if its a good deal.

I'm looking for something other than yellow letters to Market to individuals.  Do you use Youtube or Instagram videos to advertise that you are looking for houses to buy?  If so have you found it as successful or less successful than mailing yellow letters?

More than likely if you want to start real estate investing you have to do the non-lending options.  There are 2 primary options here (but probably many more): Wholesaling and Seller financing.  One is you find the property and sell the contract to someone else, the second is Seller financing where the seller is willing to carry the note (this would require you to be very knowledgeable and a great negociator)  Hope this helps good luck and sorry for your rocky start.

Yes so Salt lake has a list of court filing started and completed.  You  look for the case number then go to the court house and look up the court cases on their computer.  At the Salt Lake Courthouse there is a table with 5 computers on it that you are free to use that are connected to the court database.

Remember that each case will be at different stages.  Some won't have a personal represenative choosen yet.  Look for the ones with personal represenatives and see if you can determine if they owned any property.  Don't just blanketly market because some people sadly had their children pass away and for one reason or another still went through the probate process (I'm talking about I once found out it was a 7 year old girl). 

Personally I approach from all angels mailing them is my last catch all effort.  We get way more credibility if a lawyer or funeral director refers them to us.

I hope this was helpful

Depends on the exent of the fire damage if it its too much it might be along the lines of complete tear down.  If its light and to one room it can replacing a wall or sealing up the damage.  Sorry but your description is vague.

I went to the court house in Salt Lake.  Looked up probate cases and copied down the information from there.  You can't print off a list where I went but you can get a list of court cases and then look into each one.  I then was allowed to write down the information that I found.  Done this for both Utah and Salt Lake County areas.

If your not interested in moving to a B or C neighborhood don't!  Easy as that.  If you are looking for something that makes sense as an investment property right now that would probably only be found in B or C neighborhoods has the prime A to A+ areas of Harvard and Yale abosolutely make no sense in investing in.  

I understand you want to be nice to your tenants and give them the property at a bit of a discount, you want to upgrade your rentals, and would like to make some money.  If you can't do those 3 things which seem to be important to you then don't do it.

Hope this helps the post a little convoluted but I hope it helped.

I'm always a fan of using a HELOC to get money for a down payment of another property that way you keep as many cash flowing properties as possible. However it sounds like you would need to refinance your house to access the money and maintain a cash flow of $200. If that is truly the case then it might be best to sell the property and do a 1031 exchange for another property. Do your research, find a neighborhood or area you want the multi unit to be and where it makes sense.

In the book "Long Distance Real Estate Investing" you need to get your core 4: Lender, Realtor, Contractor, Property Manager; and use them to check eachother but your property manager is critical.  Realtor provides the property, property manager will verify if its a good area and what the rent is.  Property manager and realtor can determine what needs to be fixed up and then property manager can oversee the repairs from the contractor.  First thing you should do is determine your market and then start building the core 4.

I wish buy and hold would make sense in my local market.  You're lucky to get .75% with an up front cost of at least 150K for a single family house in Utah.