All Forum Posts by: Leon D.

@John Hauser Are you in Fairfax Fairfax? I'm a McLean native, transplanted to Chicago 13 years ago.

My first and most important criteria in investing is whether I'd spend the night in the neighborhood. There are a million good-looking deals out there, but if I have to wonder whether me or someone working on my behalf may get hurt while at the property, I don't want any part of it.

Beyond that, areas that are either proven stable (low B or C) or are turning around (as proven to me by actual renovation of homes or new construction).

The lesson here is to have the terms in writing and agreed-to before anyone actually does anything.

Vladimir Valter Putting all the Crimea/Ukraine issues aside to keep things easy, it comes down to this: As a foreign national with no presence in the US such as an immigration visa of some kind, or significant financial footprint (cash or property), no American bank or traditional lender will loan you money. Simply put, the bank has no way of verifying anything on your loan application, and should you default, they have no recourse other than seizing the property, which they don't want (it's a bank, not a real estate holding company). Since banks aren't in the business of giving money away, and loaning money to someone you can't collect from is like giving money away, you are out of luck. As said before though, there is the possibility of getting a loan from a private lender (an individual or syndicate that has ties here and in Russia), but I'd expect the terms to be onerous... low LTV, high interest rate, etc.

That's true, but perhaps a FedEx letter or similar would work. In the meantime, the attorney should be able to piece together why you're in this predicament to begin with.

Nat Chan Actually, there is a link in the upper left of the landing page that gives you contact info at http://vestaholdings.com/vesta/contactus.asp Before contacting these guys, it's probably worth finding out exactly what happened 1) at your closing in 2013, and 2) anything since. Tax liens don't just get processed and sold overnight; I'd think several months or years passed between the last property tax payment and the sale of the house to you. You may very well have bought a property that didn't have a clean title. I'd suggest getting the attorney you used (you *did* use an attorney, right?) to go through everything with a fine toothed comb. Alternately, some sort of clerical error by someone, somewhere, has caused this to happen to your house when it should be the neighbor's.

David Friedman Here's a map that should help narrow things down for you: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Chicago_violent_crime_map_2006.png The map isn't totally accurate (it's 8 years old, after all) but it's still correct at a 10,000-foot level. And without knowing your budget or goals, it'd be hard to direct you more specifically. Condo, SFR, MFR? Under $100k? Over $1m?

Blake Cannon May I ask, why you prefer 15 year mortgages? That is to say, I understand the preference people may have towards growing their equity faster that way, but if cash flow is the name of the game, you'd want a 30-yr to keep your payments as low as possible. If you recalculate everything using a 30-yr, I'd guess you'd be seeing much higher returns. And after all, residential mortgages don't have prepayment penalties, so you can always pay in extra principal if circumstances suite.

Derrick Rosenbarger I did it several years ago... used the brokerage account as security against a three-month bridge loan. Didn't present any problems, but I imagine whether or not it does depends entirely on the portfolio, the market, and the terms of the loan.

Brandon Rindlisbacher This is commercial real estate you're talking about. Nothing is free, let alone cheap.

Tyler Smiarowski Parking stickers and towing won't get rid of an undocumented tenant... they'll just park around the corner or across the street. Get rid of the person first, then issue stickers or tags to the residents and their cars. Call a towing company in the area, they may have a sign that you can put up in the lot. They'll drive by every so often and enforce parking for you.