All Forum Posts by: Patrick McGowen

Thanks all for the info. @Steve Babiak always appreciate your summary lists of previous discussions on topics, much appreciated.   

 @David C. of course there would be a record I should have thought of that, duh.  I found document at county clerk today certifying notification.  We were ready to go for auction Monday morning.    

Is moot point now, seller closed this afternoon with another buyer.  Last I talked to seller on Saturday, he had a buy sell, but since it is a problematic property, no conventional loan possible, we thought it might fall through and we would be ready for trustee auction Monday.  I have to feel good for seller, they had kind of had a rough ride and they will put a little in their pocket this way. Still I am sad.  Would have been a great learning experience.   

both are bank loans.  Title company says they disappear, but could come after winning bidder if they can show they were not correctly notified.  Trying to get confirmation that they were notified, but getting a solid answer out of a bank when you have no (current) legal right to property is difficult.  

Say there is a property up for trustee sale auction, being foreclosed on by the first mortgage company.  The minimum bid is for the total of this first mortgage.  The title search revealed two other liens.  The title company organizing the auction informed the first mortgage of the other liens.   The title company cannot give any title insurance or guarantee of clear title after sale (typical of trustee auctions), but says that the foreclosing mortgage company was informed of these secondary liens and should have informed the second lien holders of the auction.  If the secondary liens were properly informed and the winning bid does not cover them they go away and title is cleared of them (is this correct).  Basically we are relying on the bank to do the right paperwork, no problem (yikes).  

Also say, totally hypothetically, that the auction is coming up soon so there isn't much time and there is an investor that doesn't really know what he is doing, but might be just dumb enough to bid on it.  The second lien holders won't give this poor investor the time of day unless he has some documented ownership or role in the property.  

So what advice would you give this investor.  Is his understanding correct, that the second liens go away as long as they were informed of auction?  If they were informed, but the primary mortgage messed up some detail of the paperwork, how likely is the second lien holder to come after the money (say second is around $15 or 20k).  

Thanks guys, feedback appreciated.

Any suggestions on identity theft protection? Do you have it, any company suggestions, if you are at my level (like a few hundred a month passive cashflow) how much is worth spending on this? My employer misplaced some data and provided a year free from Experian for any employees who wanted to sign up. They will email me whenever any of my three credit reports get pinged, so I like it a lot. I didn't really look to closely at insurance, it does cover some, but looks like it may be a $10k limit per incident. My free year is about out and it is $80/yr to renew. I am probably going to do this, but thought I would put it out there for other options. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Pat

Factoring in moving costs, the home is essentially worthless if I move it. I might walk away with a couple thousand, but I would lose most of my equity if the park kicked me out. I met the park manager today and turns out we are old friends! We were in toastmasters together many many years ago. Always good to be honorable and friendly with everyone, you never know when you will see them again. According to him, the park has never kicked anyone out for purely age of trailer and no real intentions of doing so. The only possiblity is getting rid of the two 12' wides they have in the park, but there are a number of trailers this old and older. Sounds like should be good for 10 years or more, but you never know.

@Samantha Miller interesting, if I replaced the studs the only original thing is the metal trailer underneath that it sits on. I saw someone put an old mobile on a permanent foundation (city lot, not MH park), and completely frame around it. When you replaced the walls, did you need any building permit? I would assume since personal property, no problem as long as park is okay with it.

I am looking at a pre-1976 mobile home. I realize there are issues with the standards that were implemented in 1976; probably better to demo than move. But if the wiring, plumbing, siding, roof, windows, doors, flooring, appliances have been replaced, what makes a 1970 single wide any different in value from a 1980 or 1990 of same size in same park? Thanks

@Anthony Gayden absolute worst investment? Surely, there must be a worse investments than precious metals. Although I understand, weaknesses, just a suggestion.

@Bill

@Bill Gulley you are absolutely right. I have a degree in civil engineering which has treated me well career-wise. The various analysis courses and job experience I had along the way certainly helped in analyzing investments. And there are a lot of intangibles of how my time at college shaped me. I am just a little bitter that I had the wealth building mentality as a teenager and it took me 20 years to get back to it, I kind of blame college for distracting me as it kind of trained me to get a job and work hard at it and increase salary. It wasn't until I was pursuing my PhD (in order to be better at my job) that I read rich dad / poor dad and got back to my dream of building wealth.

My wife and I bought a home balloon business (decorating parties and delivering bouquets) many years ago. It was a lot of fun and easy to do while working full time. I bought a lot of blue sky with it and we sold the business for less than we bought it. We did make money, but after we sold it I estimated that our time into it earned us about 25 cents an hour. It was a great learning experience though.

My college education was a bad investment, I think. It is possible I would have worked some crummy min. wage job and blown all my money if I had not gone to college. But basically I busted my but for seven years to get back to zero. I was an 18 yr old with about 5k saved up, to a 22 yr old with a degree but 25k in debt, to a 25 yr old with debt paid off. If I would have worked as hard and lived as cheap as I did during those year, but worked (even a low paying job) I could have been a 25 yr old with 100k to invest.

@Anthony Gayden It kind of depends on how likely/often you are to access your emergency fund as to best option. I am a strong believer in an emergency reserve that is low risk and liquid. A broker account (assumed invested in stocks/bonds) is not low risk. Two options you might consider: First, precious metals. Local dealers will buy and sell gold/silver directly. You do have a transaction fees, but they can be pretty transparent, ask dealers what they will sell to you over the spot price, and what they will buy from you under spot price. Pay attention to gold/silver ration and if <45 buy gold, if >45 buy silver. You can always sell when you have an emergency and if we have hyper inflation, you will be in great position, you will likely be more able to buy things directly with silver/gold if dollar collapses. Just keep in mind if you plan to access this money a lot, the transaction fees will kill you. Option two, consider infinite banking concept. This uses cash value in a whole life policy This has some heavy up front cost, but if set up properly allows a contractually guaranteed return higher than savings acts with dividends that will likely increase as interest rates increase. You can access money any time with policy loan.

I was just scratching around at this last weekend as well. I don't know how to get there directly, but if you go to homepath.com, click on a specific property, then click on local characteristics it gives a lot of good summary data lick city-data site. There is a button to search other locations.

I have also found the us-census website useful, but not easy to navigate. Here you can average vacancy rates, breakdown of homeowners/renters, average income and unemployment. Probably biggest item is population growth.

There are some things I think you can only get from MLS; I have gotten some GRM, $/sf, avg days on market data for a market from RE agent.

you can get employment (sector and growth) data from bls.gov, but only for the bigger markets