All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Christian Drake

I have a home improvement contractor's "license" for PA (we have a registration and insurance requirement, no license) and it's been extremely useful. When you do any work within the City of Pittsburgh on pretty much any property that you are not the owner and occupant of, you need to be registered and insured. Now, if you want a building permit within the City proper, you need to be further licensed with the City, which might sound impressive but just means you've got to have six times the minimum insurance a PA contractor needs and pay the City $100 a year and that's it. No one will sell you a general liability policy for less than 10 times the insurance a PA contractor needs, so...

As you can see, pretty much the whole Pennsylvania GC registration licensing system is all smoke and mirrors designed to give the public a cheap illusion of confidence in an army of bumbling handymen and to keep a second army of insurance industry lobbyists fat and happy.

It's a bit different if you want an electrician's license for the city, and plumbing licenses, yeah, they're the real deal.

There is absolutely no conflict between being a PA-registered or Pittsburgh-licensed GC and having a real estate license. Getting a Pennsylvania RE license is a different private joke here, but that's another matter.

So I think this is something you're going to have to investigate locally on a state and municipality level. The entire country can't possibly be as silly about this as western Pennsylvania.

@Michael Hayworth

@Todd Fithian

Exactly the same issues ourselves.

@Elian Stuff

You just love telling people they have no clue, don't you? Like it's a shame to ask for help. Or it's a shame to admit not knowing everything.

You wouldn't believe what a long line of personal cleanliness accessories with nozzles just  like you I have in my rearview mirror. You really wouldn't believe it.

I was going to use part of my profits to pay organized crime figures to beat up the jerk that first got me into this business here in the States. About ten years ago, before I was ready to start investing, I paid a contractor to put a tile floor in my house. He royally screwed up the job and insulted both me and my wife as well. It was the impetus I needed to get in gear.

So I figured now was the time to put paid to him, especially now that I have the money to do it quietly. The cops couldn't possibly link us to him after so many years. Maybe fifteen grand to the right guy with the right connection, and he'd be in a wheelchair with ruined kidneys for the rest of his miserable life. Straighforward business transaction, guaranteed results.

So I asked around a bit and found how how the contractor's doing. When I knew him, the guy was wearing an ankle monitor courtesy of the county because he got drunk and beat up his daughter after he found out she was prostituting herself. His son was working with him and also wearing a matching ankle monitor because he got drunk and got behind the wheel of a car one too many times.

It turns out that three years ago they both gut drunk together and started fighting and the contractor punched his son in the throat. The kid fell and snapped his neck. Drowned in his own vomit. The old man lost his mind and is permanently confined to the looney bin right now, waiting out the rest of his days doped to the gills in a near-vegetative state.

All's well that ends well.

Never seen it here in Pittsburgh. I have seen a bank bidding against a buyer on a mortgage foreclosure, seen the buyer go over the bank's max bid, and then seen the bank acting as the plaintiff stop the sale and request to postpone the sale to another date, voiding the bidding up to that point and returning the property to its opening bid the next time it's exposed for sale, with the bank as plaintiff paying the postponement and advertising fees.

This happens when a bank owns first and second mortgages on a property, and it's the first mortgage that has forced the foreclosure sale, and the judgment for the first mortgage was a pittance while the second mortgage is for serious money. If the bank lets the bidding buyer have the house, the second lien is wiped off the books.

--------------

This will be clearer with an example. Let's say Joseph and his blushing bride Tina get a mortgage for $300,000 and buy a very nice house in a nice part of town in 1997. By 2007, they only owe $141,000 on the original mortgage. But the house has appreciated significantly and now appraises at $620,000. Tina and Joseph go back to the same bank and get a home equity loan for $360,000 to buy a turnkey rental property in Jacksonville run by an extremely reputable management company that provides a steady $200 in cashflow a month, great passive investment with excellent appreciation potential, just like the BP community told her.

For the next five years they continue to pay off the original mortgage and the home equity loan, and by 2013 they owe $70,000 on the original mortgage and $305,000 on the home equity loan. Joseph loses his "good" job and ends up in the slam in 2014 because he went that stupid, stupid house with wine coolers and condoms to meet an underage boy he found online. There was no boy, but all these guys with cameras ran out of the bushes...

Tina hangs on, hoping against hope that the story Joseph told her about just being curious and wanting to "counsel the boy at a difficult time in his life" isn't the biggest self-loathing cockamamie lie she's ever heard in her life. But alack, alas, Tina was never particularly good with money and "forgot" to pay the original mortgage while consistently paying off the (higher) payment for the home equity loan. When Joseph finds out about this, distraught, she shrugs and snaps, "Well, isn't it all going to the same bank anyway? If you didn't want us in this situation, why did you buy those condoms, Joseph? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOUR KIDS, JOSEPH?"

The house goes to auction.

--------------

Rather than overbid well above the amount of the judgment that led to this foreclosure, the lawyers will just start the process over again and hope that the bidder will find another property to spend their money on in the interim and won't be in the auction room next month to try to get a cheap deal on a $730,000 house, allowing the bank to acquire Joseph and Tina's house for minimal additional cost to their exposure from both the mortgage and the home equity loan.

@Christen G.

Possible raccoon or squirrel. I've found both in vacant homes.

@Shiloh Lundahl

A'right, Shiloh. And yes, I am still in the game. I live in western Pennsylvania. You know, that place of which Barack Obama once said: ""They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

One of my crew members and I were going through the foreclosure lists for the month for my county and we found this tax foreclosure place that was obviously abandoned and going up as a free-and-clear sale next month. The front and back yards had been used as a junkyard, with things like concrete masonry units (cinder blocks) stacked in pyramids, 2x4s throw haphazardly around, pieces of OSB and plywood stacked against trees, and piles on piles of old siding. I was thinking to myself of how much it was going to cost to clear all this crap out as we started poking around.

So we check out the front, then we check out of the back, and then I go around the side, the right front corner of the house, and turn on an external tap I find. Hmm. Water's on. That's unusual for an abandoned tax foreclosure up for sheriff's sale, I think to myself.  My crew member goes up to the front door and really starts pulling on the knob to make sure the door is locked and not just stuck shut. It makes a lot of noise. He abandons the effort, and comes around the side to join me by the gushing external hose tap.

I turn the water off, and I say. "Huh. Well, the water's on. I wonder who's paying for it?" And that's when I heard it.

Click.

We hear the front door swings open, look up, nd there's this white guy standing over the side of the porch and looking at us. Young. Real young. Stupid-and-nothing-to-lose age. Red-faced and obviously furious at these people trying to get into his house. That the evil government is taking away from him. The world is against him. He's obviously staring at total financial ruin.

I start backing away. Thankfully, my crew member follows my lead immediately. "I'm sorry, we were sure the property was abandoned. We're very sorry. We made a mistake."

We were almost at the car when the kid finally spoke up. "Good way to get shot."

As if I didn't know it the second that door opened. When you're looking at abandoned properties, no matter how abandoned they look, KNOCK ON THE FRONT DOOR FIRST.

@Jamie Brayton

When you pull up all the carpeting, can you take a few pics and post them here?

@Robert T.

I would sell the car immediately and buy a used vehicle cheap for what you get out of it. That $700 is just going right down a black hole. I would immediately decrease the 401(k) contributions to their minimum point. I think you'll agree after studying the matter more carefully that your 401(k) is just a Wall Street device to steal money out of your pocket.

I would actually stick with the rent. $500/month is very nice for the area. You're not going to do significantly better on rent here.

Then I'd give myself a few months to learn about real estate investing and wait for the job and location change to sort itself out. What kind of investor do you want to be? What kind of strategy do you want to use? Why are 401(k) investments bad? Buy books on personal finance. But books on real estate investing. Thing your way through this. Then make your first moves with confidence.

@Yuriy Skripnichenko

Don't have the same problem yet but was curious. Thanks, Yuriy.