All Forum Posts by: Karah Collins

@Brian Ellis if it’s been 5 years since you last contributed and you’re under 59 1/2, you are allowed to withdraw investment plus up to 10,000 worth of the gains for a first time home purchase. Fortunately they’re pretty loose with “first time home purchase”, as I believe it’s a mandatory two years since you last bought a property.

I don’t know that I would withdraw from my Roth for the particular deal that you’ve found, but I do think that withdrawals have their place when the deal is good. Especially since it’s looking like Wall Street may soon be reflecting the realities of Main Street.

I would personally leave the 401k loan unless it was a small amount 10k or under. Not worth the early withdrawal penalty if a larger amount cannot be paid back in the allotted time due to the plethora of circumstances out of our control these days.

I am actually shocked that what stared as a solutions-oriented discussion about accountability and ethical entrepreneurship has devolved into a few severely ignorant ilk using eugenicist pseudoscience to back up claims as to why some people are inherently less worthy of fundamental Maslowian needs. While operating from a both privileged and entitled position. Applause to all of you who made it out of early-life hardship. But realize you are the exception, not the rule. And that your road to success has a ton more potholes for African Americans.

If any of you all enjoy nonfiction reading of the non-real estate variety, I highly recommend Whiteness of a Different Color. It's a chronology on how the great migration of European immigrants in the 20th century led to varying labels about who was white, and who was not. It goes on to discuss how later current events (world wars) and economics led to these same "undesirable"  non Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigrants being allowed to eventually assimilate into whiteness.

I understand that some of you all had it rough growing up. I'm sure that you also worked hard to overcome certain challenges. But you also benefitted from privilege and admitting that will do you a world of good. Hubris is truly an awful trait ;)

@Maimouna Sow, completely agree with everything you are saying! Not surprising, but still disheartening to see people deny documented histories of discriminatory renting practices, the inequitable distribution of tax revenue by neighborhood, and the legal ramifications of discriminatory economic practice and how they have created cycles of generational poverty in communities of color.

So sad to see so many people on this forum be so callous, though not surprising I guess. For those of you hijacking a constructive discussion about accountability and possible solutions on how to become a more conscientious person, shame on you. Ask yourself "what am I doing", and realize that not only are you being willfully ignorant, but you are expending your energy trying to detract from what is supposed to be an productive and solutions-oriented discussion.

Denying the existence of discriminatory economic policy based off of mere conjecture or your own personal experience of struggle is a fool's errand. Taking ten minutes off from ignorant "I walked to school with no shoes ten miles through the snow" rants on a thread that so many of you have no intention of contributing anything of value would do us all a world of good.

Sincerely wonder how many dissenters about easily Google-able historic and economic fact (both taking place in this thread and the REI community as a whole) are the same people who are first in line to make a quick buck off of the AA and other POC renters in working class communities. Shame.

As for what am I doing. Currently spreading as much education on personal finance to communities of color as I can, which runs the gamut from REI to broad-market index fund investing. I am currently closing on my first property, and though I have some work to go, down the road I would like to own MFHs. I want to offer financial literacy classes to my tenants with separate courses targeted towards parents, and teens. Would eventually like to have part of my portfolio as Section 8 housing and offer a safe home to the people who need it. Hopefully I don't fall on my face with investing, and in the long term (10+ yrs) I can do a lot more by offering more tangible opportunities to younger aspiring RE investors.

Thank you for your input @Steve Morris. I only use Realtor/Zillow/Redfin as a sort of double check to make sure the property has not sold based off the research I've done in the assessor databases. I'm still super new at this so don't quite trust myself at doing the detective work of assessing parcel info.

I have been putting on offers on homes for around a month or, but have been striking out. As this is my first property, I have an attorney who I will use once I get my first offer accepted, but don't have a working relationship with anyone from title.

However the county assessor site does keep the record deed and page numbers for each property. Could I take these deed numbers and do the lookup on my own?

That tip was super helpful @Will Fraser. I got the tax ID and used the county parcel search. Turns out that it is owned by the county. Does this mean that the property was foreclosed upon for county tax delinquency? I also was able to pull up a sale date of March 2020. From my interpretation, this means that the county took possession of the property at this time and this is a matter of confirming the auction date with the assessor?

I was able to find some public records online dated October 2019 from the county courthouse announcing foreclosure on a number of properties. The verbiage used was "The names given being those of owners or occupants as the same appear on the assessment rolls for the levy year 2017". For what it's worth, the final date of redemption was listed as Feb. 2020.

However, after getting the looking up each home on Realtor/Zillow/Redfin, it appears none of them have been sold. Additionally, I cross checked these homes with the upcoming properties to be auctioned at the courthouse (auction was 6/5 but has been postponed indefinitely due to pandemic),and they were not being auctioned.

What should I assume is happening with these properties? Will they eventually be auctioned, and are delays COVID related, or am I misinterpreting info? 

Would love to hear the perspective of someone with more experience on these issues!

Hi @Kathy Henley. Thanks for your input. I definitely have steel toes and a hard hat from my day-job.

As I've further looked into the home, it appears that it is being auctioned until 6/19. Gave the listing agent a call to see if I could do a walkthrough, but he is out of office without access to email according to his automated message.

How would you all deal with such a tight time frame of less than a week to view the property being auctioned? Opening bids in the auction starting at 28k, so I think there is a lot of room to make a lot of money on it someday. From my estimations, it seems that even with structural damage/beams needing to be replaced, and new sheet rockwork, construction costs would not go above 20k to reinforce/repair.

I know that some people do buy site unseen, but this would be my first rental property. I wonder if it would be too much to buy an auction home that is selling as-is. Any horror stories about buying properties at auction and discovering liens on the property after the fact?

Just trying to suss this situation out with some more experienced opinions.

Hi all,

Was browsing new listings this morning and saw a home on the market that looked really great....aside from the giant hole in the ceiling over the kitchen! Apparently the home is now lender-owned and has been deemed to dangerous to enter.

Have any of you ever dealt with a property like this? How did you assess the damage? Did you take a calculated risk based off of estimated ARV, comps, and past experience with damaged property?

Its very compact (3b/1 ba, 1054 sf), so even with some structural repair to be done, I cannot imagine a gut rehab to be extremely costly. FYI, this seems more attractive as a flip deal rather than a buy and hold.

Thanks!

Haha is anyone studying for their PE? I’m trying to get mine in mech. Thermo this year but surprisingly being locked at home hasn’t been great for my study game. Hard to work and study from the same tiny apartment!

Hi all,

It has been such a fun couple of days browsing this forum. Thank you for such an enthusiastic welcome.  Hopefully I will accumulate enough knowledge in the next couple of months that I can pay it forward to another newbie sometime soon.

S