All Forum Posts by: Jean Paul Rousseau

Brent,

I don't really see your point. the houses were bought for 80 k$ each and if I inject money it is to keep going when the houses are not rented. The 120 k$ are a possible investment for a third house. What do you mean by 10k per year ? Initially they were rented for 800 $ each.

Peter,

My PM told me that it may take time before the eviction is effective in dekalb county. It was not a turnkey purchase but quite similar, they proposed me the houses and a PM for the management but I was obliged to take another PM

In a previous forum « bad start in rental experience » I described the problems I encountered with the two properties I bought in Atlanta.

Today I have a new property manager that evicted the tenant in Riverdale; the cost of repairs will be around 2 k$. The house is proposed for rent but is not rented yet.

On the Stone mountain property the court decided an eviction of the tenant 1/15, but she is still there and I have no rent. I will have to pay a lot of charges : insurances, utilities, taxes and maybe some rehab. cost on this second house.

I am living in France and those houses were bought through a Georgia Corp. whose stockholders are my children. I lent money to the corp. to buy those houses and the corp. is supposed to reimburse me 5% of what I lended every year (to get my money back in 20 years if I am still alive...).The problem is that the corp. is of course unable to give me back money for now ; it’s not that much for me but it is for my children who carry that debt (declared to the french tax administration). Those house were bought for 80 k$ each.

Now I need some advice

I am able to inject 15 k$ now from my own money to keep things running and I may be able to get around 120 k$ in may for a new investment.

My strategy today is not to perform a new investment before I have new tenants in my two houses because I don’t want to add another problem. One may think, if a good opportunity arise in may, I should take it to reduce the burden, but I don’t presently favor this solution which seems to risky. Selling the two housing may also be an alternative if I can get my 80 k$ x 2 Back.

Has someone any suggestion ?

@Tom Yung  

@Joshua Dorkin 

@Cal C.  @Rick baggenstoss

@Mike Hartzog 

@Bill Gulley 

I will follow your advices and send an e-mail to the SOC after the holidays. According to the answer, I may contact CSC

Take care

Thank you for your answers. The main question is not for the registred agent, my property manager can do it, it is regarding the corp. address and the compliance with corporate rules. May I use the same address as the registered address and could I maintain myself the corporate book in France?

@Mike Hartzog 

 Is using CSC not too complicated and too costly for a corp. having only two single family houses at this time ?

Hi everybody,

I am a french investor living in France and I already described my story in "bad start in rental experience".

I buy houses through a Georgia C-corp to be completly independant from the french tax system. I am not familiar with the legal US rules. I know I need a registered agent living in the US (that could be my property manager). The corp. needs an address ; it is presently an attorney address. If I want to change does I have to find another attorney or may I use my property manager address? 

I need a corporate book ; the present attorney sent it to the property manager because he doesn't want to bother with that. Could I keep this book ( and make the updates) in France or does I need to give it to a US attorney ?

@Jay Lohn Thank you for your suggestion, but I already took a new property manager

@Rick Baggenstoss I just sent a mail to Ga Reia to introduce me. I hope this will be a good source of information.

@Tom Yung Thank you for the address of clayton county eviction address, but I saw nothing this year. Maybe, I don't have the right name.

@Rick Baggenstoss I didn't know I could join an Atlanta REIA by e-mail. I will follow your suggestion and see what I could find in Atlanta. Have you any suggestion ?

Last update:

The PM told me that she was sure that the tenants will pay me back and she insured me I had good quality tenants. In fact, now they even don't pay the regular rent. I took another PM a month ago and he initiated an eviction process. The problem is I don't know when I will be able to get rents on those houses and in what condition they will be.

The old propery manager was Keystone Morgan in Miami beach ; they manage some houses in Atlanta.  At least for the Atlanta part, I suggest you avoid them if you are looking for a PM.

Thank you everybody for all the good ideas. I feel I owe you some feedback

@Delon Hall. When I bought last year, I had no experience at all in the US, so I started investigating on internet and I found some french people who were supposed to take care of everything for me; so they proposed the houses which were supposed to be rehabilited and the property manager. Of course, I went to Atlanta to see everybody and look at the houses before buying. I had good impression and everything looked OK, so I didn’t perform any formal inspection.

A french speaking attorney (belgian guy) living in the States created a Georgia corp. for me in order to buy those houses: My five children are stockholders and I lent 160 K$ to the company to buy the houses. The corp. is supposed to reimburse me in 20 years (8k$ per year) starting october 2015, so I need to get an overall yield greater than 5%. The attorney put himself secretary of the corp. Several months later he charged me an unexpected amount of money. I fired him and replaced him. This scheme that may seem a little bit complicated is to minimize french taxes constraints on donations ...

On the Atlanta properties I am still at a loss but I still hope to recover a little bit (at this time I am waiting what happened in october). In any case I will take another PM before year end following @Tom Yung recommandations.

This year I use the same financial scheme to buy two houses in Jacksonville Fl. I created a different Florida inc. to put them in. For safety reason I used a turnkey company that looks good to me, but of course, it will cost more than going by myself.

Next year, I may be able to make another investment either in Atlanta or Jacksonville or most probably one house in each town. For Atlanta I need really to build a team in which I am confident before acting.

For the outyears, I may be able to make another investment in 2016 (not sure), but after, I will be obliged to borrow money on existing assets to move on (As a foreigner I have not ceredit number). All depend how things evolve. I hope to be able at this time to reinject part of my reimbursements.

That is my plan, as seen by a non resident citizen, not aware of a lot of things. I will be glad to hear some comments. Of course now I follow biggerpocket, but there are a lot of ideas I cannot apply like following REI associations...