All Forum Posts by: Karl Hadley

@Tchaka Owen - I hadn’t, would that be a complaint against the lender or the title company?

@Tchaka Owen - so I’ve had mixed experiences with both Lending One & SIL, If the need came up again, i’d probably look for a new option... in addition to Lending one.

Experience 1: Lending one, was preapproved for a loan on a new purchase & got all the way to scheduling the appraisal when a mysterious cap was put in place requiring a 60k per unit valuation (was never disclosed prior or even mentioned as a risk), they pulled out. The rep had been great to that point but left me high and dry.

Experience 2: same property above, went to SIL and had a great experience, they were able to close quickly, and saved the deal.. servicing was relatively easy, I mailed in payments & it worked well even when one got lost in the mail. Most of my payments were early, and there were a few times this caused them to reconcile incorrectly and send late payment notices but the errors were quickly corrected. My only complaint with them was when the loan was repaid, the title company overpaid the interest due in settlement and 8 months later they still haven’t refunded or provided an explanation- the only response I get back is “that loan sounds familiar and is on my desk but the closing hasn’t been approved”. 8 months later I don’t buy it...

Experience 3: Lending one - refi on the house for a long term rental. Pretty good, everyone throughout the process was responsive, even with getting the appraisal done around the thanksgiving holiday, I’m cautiously optimistic about using them again given what occurred in the first experience.

@Jill F. - mind if I ask what service you use to do the prequalification?

@Leslie Mangrum

+1 for cozy

For move in & security deposit, bank check or money order are required. For regular rent, I started just taking checks by mail, then offered quickbooks payments (ACH only) and earlier this year I switched to Cozy/checks by mail.

I’m in a c class neighborhood & all but 2 of my tenants are happy to have online payments. Since switching to Cozy which gives the tenants the ability to schedule payments & setup reoccurring payments, there has been a positive uptick in ontime payments, I think the automated reminders in the platform really help.

I had one recently that could qualify - Applicant had been at the same job for the past 3 years (supposedly) so I asked for the most recent 2 months of pay stubs, he came back with one from May & one from August of last year.. When I looked at the Year to date totals from last year it showed he only had been paid for the past 4 weeks, and the one this year had totals that were off.  Either HR really was sloppy or they were trying to pull a fast one... I reiterated the ask for the past 4 pay stubs and they disappeared.

@Lee Perry - I would find someone local that has experience to ask, it depends on your courts rules- some locations require attorneys, others do not... is the property in KY?

@Brady Boyer - where are you investing? I know that can be common here in NYC but in other parts of the country, it’s usually an easier process...

I typically look for 2 months of the most recent pay stubs in addition to the photo ID from the majority of applicants, only in cases where pay stubs are insufficient to verify the reported income (self employment, variable income (tips or overtime for example) do I go down the path of looking at the recent taxes/bank statements.

@John Daly - I buy most of mine from Home Depot & Lowe’s as others have mentioned but I’ve also found some pretty good deals on open box at Best Buy - picked up a few gas stoves there for under 350 and they were not the baseline models. One tip, ask the Best Buy employees if they ship out their open box inventory, I found out in my market one store tends to get all of it because they have more floor space than the others.

@Marian Henares

What are your longer term goals with the investments and where in Ohio? I’ve got a few properties in the NE Ohio market that I purchased for cash flow and have been happy with the performance so far. If I was investing for appreciation I would have a different view, but that wasn’t part of my investment strategy.

@Caleb Sundell - What your describing is a repeat of the experience I had with the Zillow Rental Application about a year ago, it took support 2 days to respond via email & multiple back and forth to find out the tenant had missed something on the application.  Needless to say, I no longer use the product, I just put my listings up there & now use Cozy for the Applications, background & Credit checks.   It's a great idea, but poorly executed.  Cozy's support has been pretty good, I tend to get responses back the same day which is incredibly helpful.