All Forum Posts by: James H.

Hello,

Is there a way online to tell what kind of mortgages and/or liens are on a property?  For Collin County, the CAD website seems to provide very little information besides the owner's name and address.  Even the amount of property tax paid last year seems to be missing.  Dallas County provides a bit more.  But, neither of them have lien information.

Thanks!

Jim

We need this too! We had an appraisal done as part of a loan refinance in March.  Collin County appraised the property at 10% above this appraisal.  We used their online appeal website and they rejected the appraisal!  But, they did offer to come down 3% on the value...

The county is obviously playing hardball and trying to raise taxes.

Sue Kelly - The company I work for uses the same Work Number place and I am 100% sure that my company would not talk to a perspective landlord directly.  

Yes, everything else matches up tax-wise on the pay stub.  For example, social security and medicare deductions are 7.65% of the pay.  YTD is as expected.  Address is definitely correct (for corporate HQ - which is where most F500 checks come from).  Current address (family or friends) matches credit report.  Everything matches.  

Tax status is definitely single with 0 exemptions.  So, I believe that you are right that the only way to do that is to file as "exempt" on the withholding form.

In a way, we are newbies here. But, our family has been in the SFH/duplex business (A-) in a medium size city for 45 years. Our condo is also A- in a very sought after area. So, we figured that the tenant pool would be similar. It is not. Past experience elsewhere has yielded one of these kind of people for every 10 applications. But, this person is the best applicant out of 3 over the course of 6 weeks. Supposedly, there is a 90-95% occupancy rate here. And our price is within 5% of slightly less updated units at surrounding complexes. We are a bit baffled to say the least.

Some of the details have been changed.  So, no worries...  This can be viewed as a more general situation of claimed domestic violence followed by identify theft.  Both are very common and its not unusual for both to happen simultaneously. 

Rental history... The story is that she moved out a year ago on a boyfriend due to domestic violence. Told the landlord and filed the proper paperwork with the landlord.  The boyfriend stopped paying the rent and "they" were evicted.  She found out about the eviction 5 days after the judgement was passed.  She has an email trail trying to work things out with the complex manager who admitted remembering that she filled out the papers.  However, the complex manager said in the emails that they couldn't find the documents.  A few days later, the complex manager wrote stating that the 60 day statue of limitations expired and there was nothing her corporate bosses could do.  Perspective tenant claims to have a lawyer now to get eviction struck from her record.

Then, the former boyfriend (6 months after she moved out on him) started using her credit cards.  She had almost 10 years of perfect credit.  But, he charged everything to the hilt.  Everything is in dispute now.  Credit score is 469.  She claims to have cash to pay all credit cards in full but has been advised by her lawyer not to.

Supposed income is 5 times the rent.  She's willing to pay 2 months' rent as deposit.

Everything makes sense and checks out (including supporting posts to social media going back a year).  But... there are reasons (drugs) that someone would ruin their credit like that.  So, it would be nice to check out the paycheck as the final due diligence.

The thing is that the social security and medicare withholding on the pay stubs is consistent with the claimed income.  HOWEVER...  $0 has been withheld for FICA.   $0!  

The pay stub shows that the applicant is single with zero exemptions.  So, unless I am completely off base, there will be a $6000 or so tax bill this time next year.

Chris, are you saying that you call the HR department at corporate headquarters and hope for the best?

My big question on this applicant is tax withholding.  It appears to me that the taxes withheld are significantly less than they should be.  Single person, no dependents, $50K/yr income.  But, federal tax withheld is only $120 or so bi-weekly.  

Many big companies will not agree to that at all.  The company I work for full-time uses The Work Number and would not give any information out directly - even with a release.  

This perspective tenant also works for a Fortune 500 company with a similar policy.  I have a release from her and copies of her pay stubs.  Her story checks out 100%.  But, it would be nice to verify that the pay stubs were not created with Photo Shop.

Has anyone had good/bad experiences using "The Work Number" for employee verification? We usually ask for pay stubs and do not formally verify employment. But, we have a perspective tenant whose income we would like to verify (due to apparent identify theft issues, etc.) Her company uses The Work Number for verification. Every time we call, we get a different story about what they require to verify that WE are a legitimate landlord. Some of their requirements are not possible to meet. For example, they asked for a copy of connection paperwork for a landline registered in the name of our LLC. We do not have such a thing since we use our cell phones for personal and landlord purposes.

The last time we spoke to them, on Thursday evening, they told us that they would waive that requirement and would set up an account for us within 48 hours.  Nothing yet...

I cannot imagine having to put every tenant off for 5+ days to get employment verification.  How does everyone else handle this?  

Jim

We had pretty good luck with Legacy in Plano.  One of the homes we bought had a slab leak.  The seller agreed to pay for fixing it.  But, the seller was getting divorced and desperately needed to close before the nature of problem could be determined.  Legacy worked with us to escrow $10K of the seller's funds for up to 60 days after closing.

So, after closing, we got the slab leak fixed for $1200.  Legacy paid us back out of the escrow and the seller got their last $8800.

I think that's above and beyond the norm...