All Forum Posts by: Marvin McTaw

Hey @Nick Brubaker! Welcome back to Georgia from Tokyo. Bigger Pockets has been the best networking source for me and I love the site. There is the Atlanta REIA and its tons of subgroups as well as the Georgia REIA. There are also meetings you can find on meetup.com but many of those for real estate investors are just duplicates/syndications of the Atlanta REIA meetups. There is going to be a Bigger Pockets meetup sometime next month that I RSVP'd too and there is also a sub-forum specifically for Atlanta based real estate investing.

In terms of researching areas and finding deals you mentioned the big consumer facing ones already. I would also recommend you network with a few real estate agents in order to get them to send you deals as well. There are a couple of other websites that I use on a regular basis to try and find deals too. The first is MyHouseDeals.com and the second is oContract.com. Both of them have wholesale deals on them. The other thing I would tell you is to make sure you check out the Bigger Pockets Marketplace. There might be deals there that you can find too. 

Lastly, I'm a little upset that @Jason Hern didn't invite me out to a cup of coffee too! (Joke) :) 

Good luck with your real estate investing Nick!  

I have a house I am selling via Owner Financing / Seller Financing. One of the purchasers has a SSN and we've been able to run all the normal background and credit checks. She however will not really be the one making the payments. The other purchaser has a Tax ID but no Social Security number. The vendor I've been using (i.e. TransUnion) says they can't run all the reports I want to run because he doesn't have a valid SSN (just the Tax ID). 

I've collected several months worth of bank statements from both purchasers, a couple of bills (e.g. cable, phone, etc.) and am in the process of calling employers and previous landlords. I've done some research but want to make sure I'm complying with the new laws (since I'm essentially providing a loan). What can I do to make sure I'm complying with all the rules and regulations now required by Dodd-Frank? Should I just get rid of the Owner Financed part and go Lease Purchase instead? 

Hey @Brandon Davis there are pro's and con's to forming the LLC. Forming the LLC will definitely help from an overall standpoint but with the amount of money you are talking about, you're probably going to be better off using many of the low and no money down strategies available to you. As veterans you can probably use your VA benefits to buy a house but that's more on an individual basis as opposed to doing stuff collectively.

The one thing I would add is that just because you might all contribute the same amount of money does NOT mean you should have equal ownership. Who is going to be responsible for what? How will you manage everything? There is a lot of stuff to think about and consider and the process of forming an LLC will help you all to think through a lot of the different scenarios.

A side note, if you guys have IRA's you can convert them into Self Directed IRA's as another source of capital. You can also ask family and friends to lend you money as private lenders

If I were in your shoes, I would probably just do a deal together first without the LLC but write down a few of the bigger pictures points together in an agreement form and see how it goes. It might turn out you can't stand working with each other and/or you might find out one or more of you just aren't that serious about investing. They are more talkers than doers.

Good luck to you and your potential business partners in your real estate investing journey! 

Hi @Chukwudi Motanya. It's really pretty cut and dry. I have a house right now that we are selling via owner financing. Buying the house Subject To. Selling it via Owner Financing. Making profit on the down payment and spread on the difference between PITI and monthly payments on the financing. Haven't really come across any complications at this point. What exactly are you looking to find out?

Hi @Chantel Green websites are usually a horrible way to generate motivated seller leads. The main reason for this is due to competition. You get larger companies doing a lot of Search Engine Optimization in local markets and larger companies paying lots of money for Ads. A better source of motivated seller leads might be direct mail, bandit signs, contacting For Sale By Owners or a whole host of other marketing activities you can do. You can also try driving for dollars (e.g. looking for vacant houses) or cultivating some bird dogs to do that for you. All that being said, I highly recommend finding strong cash buyers first that you can sell the properties to first and find out exactly what they are looking for. 

Good luck generating your motivated seller leads and getting deals done! 

Hi @Kito Perry you should check out the Atlanta REIA and Georgia REIA. Word of caution though: you will get pitches to buy services at pretty much every meeting for the Atlanta REIA but it's useful from an education standpoint. Frankly, I've found BP to be a great place to network and meet people versus the Atlanta REIA but it's still a good place to go when you're starting out. If you need any help or have any questions about anything else, feel free to shoot me a message.  

Hi @Dave Hemrick it is probably better for you to go find buyers first and then go look for what they are looking for. I wrote about this before which you can check out here. Good luck and let me know if there's anything I can do to help you! 

Welcome to Bigger Pockets @Kito Perry! 

@Thao Le it ultimately boils down to what's most important for you. You can run all the numbers in the world to see what's financially best for you, but to me, it sounds like you have some other motivations in play. 

If you don't want to deal with being an absentee owner, get rid of it. You might want to consider selling it via owner financing or lease purchase to up your potential cash flow, get some money upfront and also get rid of the property management responsibilities. Good luck and please let us know what choose to do!

@Marcus Yates - follow the advice. Cash is king. Use as little of your cash as possible. A HML is not your only choice. You should look into getting private lenders (e.g. family, friends, etc) and only pay interest with no points. Another option is to ask the seller to carry a note for up to 6 months. If you don't sell the house by then you can refi to pay them out and also possibly take out some equity to get some of your capital out. Also, make sure you have a big contingency fund for this deal as you're very likely going to come across some bigger unknown unknown (yes twice) issues...especially since it's an older house. Good luck with the potential flip!