All Forum Posts by: Jake Kucheck

The bill goes into effect 1/1/13. However, the water cooler talk is that many lenders may start pre-emptively adhering to its guidelines to avoid the possibility of retroactive penalties, which from my understanding, is a "murky" topic of the bill.

Hope that helps, even if it isn't legal advice.

I would think that if you structured it such that your buyer paid the servicer, who paid you, who paid the servicer, who paid the original note, you could feasibly still take the deduction.

May want to bring Shawn Watkins in on this...

No tax/legal advice.

I, for one, look forward to the fire sale of city owned assets.

I don't think the idea is to pay off the property at par.

In an easy numbers example, let's go with a house that has a $200K loan, but is worth $100K. My understanding is that the private entity/eminent doman JV would buy the note for $75K, then refinance the borrower for $100K (thought being, if they can afford the payment on a $200K loan, they can also afford it on a $100K loan), and they make the $25K in spread. My understanding is that the borrower must be current, and their property must be at least 15% underwater, so there isn't too much worry about moral hazard.

Sure, the investor in the initial loan loses big time on paper, but not much more (and maybe even less) than they would eventually lose in FC.

[/url]http://www.examiner.com/article/san-bernardino-county-considers-eminent-domain-as-a-solution-to-foreclosures[url]

Anybody else hear of a city or county trying to implement a strategy like this?

In a somewhat related story... the city of San Bernadino also just filed for bankruptcy.

Typically I'll know enough about a particular (listed) property before I offer on it. That's the best way to make sure you don't need your contingency period. Of course, if you are writing lots of offers and can't have one of your GCs go to the property before writing all of your offers, make sure the HUD properties are the priority. If you are truly so swamped that you can't even get all of your HUD bids in quickly enough, you either need to create more GC relationships or manage your time better.

The contingency period should never be needed.

If you're buying 1.5% rule properties built in 2000 or later, I'd lean more towards running wild with the loans or whatever else from your reserves. I'd consider these to be pretty low risk rentals.

Now, if you were buying in an area where it was possible that gang violence could cause $10K worth of damage to one of your properties, I'd say you wouldn't want to have your reserves be anything but reserves.

Charles Perkins- to your point, what you describe is a calculated risk. Will you see a sufficient return on your capital before the market turns? If so, it is a market that you can invest in. If not, it isn't. I don't know that you can make a blanket statement about not investing in places where there is the possibility of a total collapse without also considering the component of time.

I didn't read everything but I can tell you that you should pretty much be able to sell anything under $500K with your eyes closed at the moment. Huge surplus of buyers, huge deficit of inventory. As long as you don't get the pricing wrong by 15% the wrong way, your DOM shouldn't matter at all. I would say it would make the most sense to re-list with a different flat fee broker, if you are so opposed to using a traditional agent.

Sounds like they might need the cash from this purchase to move to their next home. If that's the case, seller financing or an AITD wouldn't work. This is an important distinction.

Andre Green- do you happen to know if the seller needs the cash from the sale to move, or just need to have the payments on their place taken out of their DTI calculation for their new loan?

The OC Investors Club is on a pretty significant downturn. This used to be a club that 80 to 100 people attended, and attracted Bruce as a speaker last year. Last Friday's meeting had maybe 35 people, and lets just say the speaker was not as impressive as Bruce (nor were they given ample A/V setup and prep time). Also, the hosts of the club did not attend.

Would be interesting to see what some of the past regulars at the club thought... so what say you Mitch Kronowit and Chris Weiler?