All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

 OK, I was watching baseball while typing my last reply and missed your explanation.  I thought the worst, that this was some deal you had going with an agent to buy private owner's properties.

 OK.  I misunderstood who was getting the discount.  You are getting the discount on the resell?  I thought the agent was giving it to the seller to help seal the deal.  

Still, as the seller, I'd want to know that my agent and the buyer had a "gentleman's agreement" in place.  Because unless I just want out of the house no questions asked, I'd expect my agent to suggest that spending "X" amount of dollars to fix a few things will raise my value "X" amount.

Does the seller know their agent has reduced their commission in anticipation of a deal with you? Does the seller need to know? It seems like they should in the interest of full disclosure.

Again, I'm a newbie and mean no offense.  My knee-jerk reaction is to think this unethical, but that's not a fair judgement without fully understanding the situation.

And I apologize if I am steering this away from the original intent of your post.  I guess the little philosopher in me is trying to understand the ethical implications (if any).

I'm a newbie.  So maybe I'm missing something here, or maybe I am just naive.  But this seems a little shady to me.  Isn't an agent's #1 priority supposed to be his/her clients and not swinging a deal to make money on a house twice?

Thanks Jeff.  I lean towards agreeing with you...my wife is more worried about it.  I look forward to other opinions.

In regards to living right next door to our rental; yes it is another discussion.  But let's just say "offense is the best defense". If we don't buy it (we have first dibs) it is going to go up for sale at such a low price that we feel we need to buy it in order to have at least some control over who our future neighbors will be.

I have a philosophical question regarding my upcoming rental purchase:  I would like to rent it as pet and smoke free for obvious reasons.  But, my wife smokes and we have two large dogs. To complicate things, the property is right next door to me.  So future tenants will know within days of moving in, if not at their first viewing, that I am saying they can't do things that we do.

Is that hypocritical?  If so, does it matter?

First, some background info; I am working on buying my first rental property. I am planning on financing it with a home equity loan on my residence which I own outright.  This all hinges on the pending appraisal of my home.  If things work out like I think they should, I will be purchasing the property for $25K or less, and putting $5-10K into it.  The rent will be around $500-600.

I have a two part question:

1. Do I go through the hassle of setting up and maintaining an LLC for this when we are talking relatively small dollar amounts?

2. If so, how does the fact that I am paying for it with a home equity loan on my residence come into play? I mean, do I just take that money and transfer it into my LLC and the rental is now owned by my LLC? Is it as simple as it sounds?

I guess the main underlying issue is I don't completely understand LLC's as well as I should. I have been looking for more info on the subject...if anyone can point me to a good LLC specific source, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

Mike

I just bought some at Target last week.  They had GE and also Up&Up (Target's store brand).  The GE's were about $7 for single bulbs and about $13 for two packs.  They had 40, 60 and 100w. Interestingly, the store brand bulbs were a little more $.

Target Up&Up 60watt

I see they are temp price cut down to $6.00 each now...dang.

@Paul Timmins

Thanks for the great list of info!  I've done, or am doing, all your BP related suggestions.  And I will look into your book suggestions.

@everyone else

Thanks for the welcome!

• Home Equity Loans/Line of Credits?

I am currently in the process of getting a home equity loan to raise enough money to buy and make a few improvements to the house next door to me. I am awaiting the upcoming appraisal of my house, keeping my fingers crossed that it is high enough to result in a big enough loan to make it work.