All Forum Posts by: Ben Bakhshi

Zillow is extremely useful and very accurate when looking at long term trends in a market. I know if I'm buying in an up market, or in a trough. Has been very valuable to me!

1. Freddie Mac houses come with clear title and no back taxes.

2. They use local escrow companies for closing.

3. It is a mixed bag, some are move-in, some are full rehab, you must conduct due diligence to see what repairs are necessary. Sometimes they have inspection reports that are available to buyers, if you ask nicely.

We are increasing our portfolio of rentals via REOs, and wanted to know if there is a service out there that we can contract to attempt to lower the property taxes.

I know not every county will stick the new tax rate at the REO sale price.

Any input would be appreciated.

Looking to consolidate our insurance plans for about 25+ properties to a single insurance company. 

Please contact me direct or send referrals.

Thanks all!

We are looking to consolidate our properties under a single insurance policy.

Would appreciate any referrals.

Zillow is good for trends in my experience. Take a look at recent solds around you. I've also noticed that List/Asking prices can affect the Zestimate, maybe some neighbor is asking 30% higher for his house...

If you can get 0% interest loans for investing in real estate, then you should consider yourself lucky. But don't forget, it's a loan, not a grant, and you don't want to screw up your personal relationships because you forgot to pay back loans.

I have an idea I wanted to share.

Requestor submits an address, with pictures of a property you need a valuation for. 

The cost would be $10 per appraisal, you set the limit on how many you want, say 5

Users see your request, and submit their appraisal which would include:

Price (range)

Comps to justify the price

100+ word description justifying the appraisal

Market trending UP or DOWN

Etc undecided

Other Considerations:

The requestor can like, or rank the valuations out of 5 stars.

For quality control, users begin earning a % of the appraisal cost ($5-$8), once they submit 10 "quality" appraisals. (10 appraisals with Likes, or 3+ stars)

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Background.

I analyze 60+ properties per month for my own business needs. All online "AI" estimates are functionally useless (though the Zestimate they can help with trend tracking). 

Appraisals that I do myself are as good, or better, than an appraisal I could pay $200 for. This is proven by my own flipping track record without using an appraiser.

The wisdom of 5 different appraisers should be better than a single appraiser.

For now its just an idea, if you want to steal it I want 1/2 of 1% of gross revenues.

Thoughts BP Nation? 

Azeezeh man, you should be buying much more than 1 deal a year around Atlanta!

For now I am buying properties at auctions, since I don't know what price they will sell for, I need to come up with a max bid for each one that I am interested in. 

My method has begun improving and I'm trying to automate parts of my decision making.

Every month I get a new list.

I find comps, run ARVs, and repair estimate for each property. 

If your rent covers your expenses, it doesn't matter what the market value of the property is.

If your rent covers your expenses AND cost of leverage, it doesn't matter what the market value of the property is.

This is true for leverage UNLESS your loan terms comes to an end, and you are underwater, then you face default since a neither a refi nor sales may pay off your balance.

You can mitigate the risks of going under water by not over leveraging. One great way to do this is to buy properties below market value. If you get a 70% loan on a $100,000 house, whose market value is $130,000 the day you bought it, your LTV is actually 53%.

Another big risk is buying in a dying local economy, where population is declining, no new jobs, etc. There are cyclical changes like unemployment in California, but there are also non-cyclical changes, like what happened in Detroit or Ohio.

Also, you might want to have assets other than real estate. Cash, bonds, cds, stocks. In a down market, cash will either save you from default, or will enable you to buy when others are in default.