All Forum Posts by: Nathan Grabau

MEP (Mechanical, Electric, Plumbing) trade work. Most likely none of that is original any more, but if any of it is, I would be prepared financially for it to go out. I would personally not replace it(old drain lines for example) until it failed or was needing to be fixed consistently. That probably is another question of what does it cost to fix it. Do you have easy basement access to some of these things or if an issue happened are you tearing everything out to the studs. If you have the right Real Estate Agent they should have good perspective on this. 

I would also look at the age of other major items like the roof, HVAC's, and hot water heaters. When a hot water heater is over 10 years old or an HVAC is over 20 years old, the likelihood that it goes out increases dramatically. Roof's are a little more gray and some can last a really long time and others won't, depending on the design and quality of work. 

I would not run away from this though just because of the age. My "easiest" property so far has been an updated triplex house conversion that was originally built in the 1890s. 

If it is a 90 day note, it would be due in full. I don’t fully understand what you are trying to explain. 
It sounds like you are doing a lot of negotiating for a family deal tho, which isn’t a great sign about your trust level towards them. 

What is your question? 

It is normal to be concerned about taking on downside risk, but if your window of outcomes is netting 100-300k, then you really are not picking up any downside risk, if you trust the numbers. 

This is an advertisement not an article. It is trying to trigger you to buy a class or some other product after you sign up for the "free" one. 

I talked to a STR manager though the other day, and he was talking about all the rules in place and I was thinking about the idea of banning investors owning homes. When I thought about that I worked through a bunch of other questions like would we ban apartments then? How would people who are not qualified for debt be able to find housing, etc and it made me feel better about the idea of rentals being banned.

I would not think of the money as money that is not earning you anything, as much as money that prevents a future derail event. I have had multiple furnaces go out early in the purchase of property and had I not had reserves to cover this, I would have had to back out of deals I was working on to cover the cost. 

What you are doing here is you are being smart here, so you can be aggressive everywhere else and not have to worry. 

It seems like there is something else, besides paint, that she wants. I would just ask what that is. Then you can decide if it is reasonable or not. 

If you have a way to make sure you are not defrauding the bank, and make it your primary that seems advantageous. If you ask for an investment loan product though, and a lender gives you back a primary residence rate, run. They did not listen to you or intend to bait and switch you into a more expensive product.

I would also say in response to an earlier post you made if a 0.5-1% change in your rate is the difference between you thinking a deal is a good deal or a bad deal, the deal is a bad deal or you need to adjust your expectations to focus longer term. 

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but as I understand what you are saying, there was a contract that was a cash for keys deal, with a clerical error, and then they had a replacement contract, but that has not been signed and now they have not been paid? If I understand that correctly, I would assume the former tenants could take the new owners to small claims court, but the contract is likely not enforceable. 

This is probably good advice for everyone, but you probably want to have keys for cash deals exchanged simultaneously. You do not want to give a squatter cash before they leave and also should not surrender the premise until you have cash. 

I am a commercial roofing contractor. It is not ideal for roofing products to get wet, but it is very unlikely that a light rain will cause any long term issues for you. The amount of time fighting this will take you will be much more expensive even if you could get a replacement system along with removal of anything that got wet. 

To better explain this, it is incredibly rare that when we are doing leak repairs, even from substantial leaks, that we replace any roofing materials. We normally are just told to prevent the leak from occurring in the future by fixing the EPDM (rubber you are talking about most likely) on the surface of the roof. 

I am sorry this happened to you, and I know it is not ideal, but myself as a roofer, would not have the contractor redo this work if it was my own property. 

So in my management contract, I have to approve any expenses that are over a certain dollar amount. There may be an exemption here for emergency items, I do not remember. If you have such a clause, and you did not approve the work before it was done, you could push back on that. Them putting all of this stuff on the same invoice potentially gives you grounds to say the hot water heater was not an emergency and they could just shut the gas off to fix the emergency. Was there a tenant in place while they did this? That helps them make the emergency case. 

Either way, I think you are going to have a hard time getting out of it, and you probably would rather have a smooth transition than a get the 3k back and have them be a pain in the butt. I would move forward, but I can see that going either way.