All Forum Posts by: Josh Caldwell

Most urban areas are reluctant to allow for a zoning change that adds population to the area. It nearly impossible in most urban areas in the north east. It would be a lot easier to down zone.  If changing the zoning is the only way for your investment to work then you might have to walk away. You only real option is to go and have a face to face with your local zoning officials and see what they want you to do to get a zoning change. The process can take months, even when it goes in your favor. sorry, but that is the way it works. 

You will need to track down someone who has a copy of that lease. One of the two parties. I am guessing that your seller doenst have it, so you have to deal with the big energy company.  They were smart enough to record only the memorandum. that means that you have to go to them to get it released.  They may try to hit your for a free to release it. 

What if you offered him a long term income stream?  Do an amortization table at his asking price. Tack on a low interest rate, and see how much money he will get over the entire loan period.  That might get him excited about the idea of owner financing it to you, and if you screw up, he can always take the property back from you. In the mean time, he gets 100% passive income (since you are now responsible for all maintenance and upkeep).  So he gets all of the benefits of being a landlord (monthly income) and none of that hassles.   This is one of my favorite ways to buy from landlords. 

One of my students just bought one on the campus of WVU.  The big question here is how locked down is your state and how open is the campus. Some campus neighborhoods are full of students and others are ghost towns, with all of the students going to school remotely.  In either case, you might be able to catch a bargain. In the towns with no students, there will be landlords who are hurting. If you can afford to go negative cash flow for a while, you might be able to steal a deal. In the areas, where you students are back, there will be landlords who lost all of their spring and summer rent, who can't afford to hold onto their properties, or who are just too scared to stay in the student rental space. I have never been good at predicting the future, but I suspect that student rental will make a comeback in the next year or so. 

You are going to want to check with a lawyer on this one but i am pretty sure that the IRS only collects on people who owe them money. My belief is that you can buy this property for a dollar, and no IRS liens will be attached to it. I once bought a property that had a 100k IRS lien and my lawyer go the IRS to release the lien when I bought it because they had no beef with me. You might get the current owner or executor of the will to sell it for next to nothing because the family will get nothing from the sale.  I would reach out to the owner/executor and see what sort of deal he is willing to make on this one. 

I like to use rentometer.com but you have to look at where they pulled the data from. Sometimes they will pull data from a different neighborhood, and then you have to recalculate the averages to get a number that you can use. It works everywhere in the US where there are enough rental units to have a decent data set 

There are two ways that you can learn about wholesaling. You can spend your time reading about it right here on BP.

I really like house hacking but it is one deal. Granted, that deal will pay for you to have a place to live, but then what?  I usually advise new investors to learn how to wholesale. At it's simplest core, wholesaling is getting paid for real estate that you don't want to buy. Imagine if the dating world worked like that, imagine getting paid for the contract info of people you weren't interested it, how wonderful would that be? 

Wholesaling gives you the foundation to get into both flipping and rental property.  You have to learn how to find, evaluate, negotiate, and market properties. The most important part is that you get good at hunting for bargains. That will serve you well for the rest of your life. 

Hey David

focus on finding the deal first, then, during your due diligence period, you can have a herd of potential contractors walk through the house and give you real estimates. unless you are a contractor, you dont want to risk your money on your own guess of a rehab estimate. Reach out to other investors in your area and ask them who they use. No matter what you do, you will hit a snag somewhere in the rehab process, everyone does. Plan a 10% surprise factor into your rehab numbers just incase. 

to your success

Josh 

Hi @Yuriy Grytsulyak

"is there a good way to do a title search?"

In most counties that information can be gathered from your county website, but as a newer investor, you should have someone else walk you through the process a few times. You really dont want to screw up a title search, that can be a very expensive mistake.  Even now, I occasionally tag in a title abstractor or a lawyer when I see something odd on a title search.  I learned by going down to the courthouse and asking the nice people who work there for assistance. You can use your own title search to get an idea of the encumbrances against a property, but have a professional do the research if you think you are serious about a property. 

"the first step would be to find the owner and get him to agree to sell the property to me, right? So i guess i'd need to offer a few thousands more of what's owed so the owner has an reason to sell it to me? Does the owner gets anything once the property is sold on the auction for more than owed?"

In some states the owner can get some of all of the overage on a foreclosure sale. This doesnt happen too often.  In that situation, the owners credit is destroyed and their neighbors all know that their house was sold because they couldnt pay their debts.  That is a tough thing to have to go through, on top of every other thing that happens when someone loses a house.  

Most people facing foreclosure will take one of two paths. The first group will ignore the problem and do absolutely nothing to help themselves.  The other group is looking for a way out, and that is what you are offering. You are giving them a chance to get back into a house once their temporary financial problem has been cured. You are offering them a chance at saving their dignity. You are also offering to risk your money to help them.