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All Forum Posts by: Kwame Searcy

Kwame Searcy has started 12 posts and replied 34 times.

Post: Looking for a Real Estate Agent that Specializes in Forclosures

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

I wasn't aware that I could do that. Just contact the listing agent and tell them I'm interested? Isn't that a conflict of interest? I want to offer for lower than listing price.

Post: Looking for a Real Estate Agent that Specializes in Forclosures

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

Yes SFH, in the Ypsilanti area.

Post: Looking for a Real Estate Agent that Specializes in Forclosures

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

Hello,

I am looking for an Agent that specializes in Foreclosures in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Michigan area. I'm looking at a couple of the foreclosed properties out there but I don't have an agent, however I don't need any agent but one with foreclosure experience.

Thanks,

Kwame

Post: Bought our first Rental Property

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6
Originally posted by @Wilson Pierre-Louis:

Hi Kwame,

Yes, that is the reality of not doing your due diligence. Make sure you get an Attorney early in the process to look over your best interests, always.  The best thing is you stuck with it and it is now yours and you are on to next big thing.  GONGRATULATION and lots of LUCK to you. 

 Wilson you ate right. Attorneys are expensive but not as expensive as the $2000 worth of appliances I lost out on.

Post: Bought our first Rental Property

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

Hey Everyone,

I haven't posted on the forum in a while because we were busy buying our first income property. It took a lot of prayer and a lot of planning. I spent hours on BP looking up various things in order to answer my questions. 

Our plan was to buy and hold on the West side of Detroit. My wife is from there, and we still have family in that area. We currently live in Virginia but as many know in Northern Virginia housing prices are extremely high. We had been looking for a property since July. We found an agent (family friend, which was a bad idea) and had our agent and some family member go look at properties for us, they would glide us videos of the properties so we could see them. We found a house that we liked in our price range and put an offer in. The owner accepted and we moved on to the inspection. The inspection revealed that the property needed a new roof and the basement walls had bowed in due to runoff from the neighbors driveway. We requested that the issues be fixed or that the price be reduced. The owner didn't agree and we were back to square one.

Around late August we found another place and out an offer in. The owner accepted and we were set to go. This process would soon cause more headaches than we thought. We decided to get a 30yr fixed for the property to purchase the property. This caused problems because during the prequalifying process the lender said our loan amount should be fine, but 2 weeks before closing she informed us that it was a high cost loan and they could not write it for 20% down. Eventually we decided to go with 25% down and that seemed to fix that issue. The week of closing we had already planned to be back in Michigan for other engagements and were all set. Unfortunately two days before the lender said they would not give a clear to close because they wanted to get an HVAC inspection. We had to set that up the following week but that also meant we would have to go back to Michigan for closing. I didn't have enough sick days to pull this off so we went with a remote closing with a title company in Virginia.

We finally closed on the house in Mid October. After closing we had our contact go visit the house ytoo see what condition it was in. To our surprise all the appliances were gone. We called our agent to find out what happened and he told us he would get back to us. When he called back he told us that the owner took them as they did not convey. Now during negotiations we had agreed to convey all appliances verbally. Turns out after not reading the fine print, the housing conditions form we signed didn't show any conveyed appliances. It felt like a punch to the gut, I was upset with myself for not doing my due diligence before we signed. To make matters worse when we found out we had a tenant moving in the next week. Again with the help of prayer and awesome family members back home we were able to find some appliances before our tenants occupied the place.

Now we are on to our next great adventure of buying a house in NOVA (closing next Monday) and house hacking. Its a 4 bedroom townhouse with three rooms upstairs and a room in the basement. We will rent our room out through Airbnb to help pay the mortgage.

Well that's our story for our first income property. Full of twists and turns.

Post: Interesting closing process

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6
Originally posted by @Richard Dunlop:

If you want to avoid the hold up I would close on the properly titled property with the title insurance and buy the separate lot in a different transaction. There are benefits and negatives to both ways of doing it. The orphaned lot is 10 times easier to get the assessed value lowered on for property tax purposes than if it becomes part of your more valuable property. Then combine them at a later date into one parcel if you choose to do so.

 The path forward is to just close on one property and pay a dollar for the deed to the other lot separately. I was thinking about combining them at a later date once I own both plots.

Post: Interesting closing process

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

As many veteran real estate investors already know (and many new investors like myself will soon find out), things don't always go as planned in real estate investing. We are in the process of buying our 1st (technically 2nd because we did Airbnb with our first home) investment property. We are buying a SFH in Detroit to rent out and become landlords. We have gone through the whole deal of finding a property, running the numbers, getting financing, ect. and were set to close tomorrow (target date for all parties).

Turns out, the house we are trying to buy is 2 properties (one with house and the other with land) which is why the yard is so big. And the title of the 2nd property doesn't have the owners name on it. They bought it and have the deed but they didn't get their name on the title.

So the title company is saying they need to combine the properties and put them under one address (one parcel #) and one name on the title before they can sell it to me. They are saying it will take 30 days to complete this. 

Anyone have any experience with something similar is welcome to share, or just any thoughts in general are welcome.

Excuse the gramer, I am writing this on my phone.

Post: Real estate attorney in Wayne County MI

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

looking to find a real estate attorney to review a lease for me. Does anyone know any real estate attorneys in Wayne County, MI?

Post: Turnkey Properties

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

Ok so I just have to make sure I dot my I's and cross my T's if I find a good deal with a tenant currently in place. 

Thank you for the help gentleman.

Post: Turnkey Properties

Kwame SearcyPosted
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Titusville, FL
  • Posts 35
  • Votes 6

Thank you for the response Colin. Is it acceptable to get history on the tenant before you submit an offer?

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