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Hi, my mother and I are taking to trip to the Napa Valley and SF in late June. I'm looking for dining recommendations. We'd like to do one special, money-is-no-object kind of dinner (within reason though, we can't afford the French Laundry or anything like that) somewhere in the Napa area. I love Asian food and I'd like to find a good sushi place in SF. Any thoughts? This year is my mother's 60th birthday and I'm taking her on an all-expense paid trip so I want to make it memorable!

I am hearing in my market that rents are actually going down. I actually went to look at a property yesterday and spoke to a couple of the tenants. They said they had only been living there for two weeks and that their landlord let them take the place for a downpayment of less than a third of the monthly rent. The guy also revealed that he was having money problems and had just done a stint in jail for having unpaid fines.

My thought was either these people are really lousy landlords, or they were desperate for tenants and took the first people who came along. I am definitely keeping an eye on the market and seeing how things play out before I buy. I am a newbie so I'm being extra cautious anyhow.

Well there is not much you can do about rich relatives getting a shot ahead of you. That's just bad luck!

I know this goes against the conventional wisdom of these forums, but you might want to consider making slightly offers that are going to be more appealing to your seller, but still leave plenty of profit for you. On the offer you mentioned, it sounds like you had plenty of room to offer higher. Your seller might have accepted right on the spot if you had. I don't think it necessarily has to be a zero-sum game, where somebody is either the winner or the loser.

I think it's good to get a feel for talking to people. That's what I did this past weekend, just calling up brokers and asking questions, and making a couple of offers. In hindsight, those offers were not good ones and I don't think I presented them well. So I guess I learned something there.

My question to you is, why do you think your offers are being rejected?

No way. Most likely what I'm going to do is save my money for a while and watch the market, maybe go and look at a few properties just to keep tabs on what's out there.

Hell no! That's why I said I'm not comfortable with it. It's one thing to risk normal savings, but risking qualified plan assets isn't worth it (to me). I would sooner wait a year and save money than put my 401(k) on the line.

Hi friends,

Well it seems I have run into a wall with my financing! I have been talking to my loan advisor, the very helpful Scott Miller who you may see posting on these forums, and he (in addition to others) has informed me that in order to get NOO 100% financing, I need 3-6 months of cash reserves. I don't have that kind of cash in the bank but I do have money in my 401(k). Scott told me that I would have to pledge the 401(k) as collateral and that the bank could reach it in the event of a default. I am not entirely comfortable with that scenario.

I see these as my options--

1. Pledge my 401(k) and take the chance that I won't run into a problem with the bank, or if I did, it could be smoothed out without affecting my 401(k).

2. Save some money and look at buying a year from now.

3. Go for owner-occupied financing. I get the impression this would be more feasible, and I'm in a position where I could do that as I don't own my own home and am currently renting anyway. However, I have personal, non-financial reasons for not wanting to leave my current situation, so that is not an attractive option right now.

4. Try to get hard money for a rehab and use that as my way to break into the business. I'm skeptical about this because I have no expertise with rehabbing properties, and, as Scott pointed out to me, the numbers are even more complicated and entail more risk than pledging my 401(k).

So I am very uncertain as to how to proceed. I had scheduled another showing for a property tomorrow but I think I'm going to cancel it until I think this all through.

So today I ended up canceling the showing I was going to do. My broker sent me the disclosures, and there were a few things on there I had concerns about. I also had a concern about the deed. It had no legal description and no tie-up. Plus, my broker said the seller only wanted to give a quit claim deed and I'm definitely not comfortable with that. So I bagged the showing.

Instead I drove by a few other properties I'm interested in. There are like 5 properties for sale all on the same street, which makes me a little suspicious but I wanted to check them out. There was only one that I particularly liked, so I got the disclosures on it and am going to arrange a showing for Wednesday.

It was funny because I was walking down the street with my notepad, in my suit since I was coming from work, and these kids walked by and said, are you the street inspector? I took the opportunity to ask them some questions about the neighborhood, then I asked another group of kids I saw, then I asked the lady at the gas station at the end of the street. I got pretty positive reports from everyone.

Thanks! I'm actually feeling great right now! I just had lunch with a financial advisor I've been working with for a few months on some investments. I told him I was getting into real estate, and wanted to know his opinion. Turns out, this guy was a former partner in one of the largest commerical real estate firms in New England. At one time, his firm (he and two other guys) had $100M in properties and he was doing million dollar deals all the time. He worked with all the heavy hitters in the industry. He gave me a lot of caveats but overall he was completely supportive of my endeavors. He even offered to help me evaluate properties and come up with deals. It really shows how you get places just with networking and talking to people.

I'm also trying to connect with some mortgage people to see what type of a loan I can get. That will tell me what price point I can be looking at in terms of properties. Then I'm going to start evaluating what's out there and setting up appointments to go and view the properties.

I've been reading a book I picked up over the weekend called Investing in Duplexes, Triplexes and Quads by Larry B. Loftis, Esq., and I recommend it.

To all the newbies out there, let me know how it's going and what you're up to!

It is the norm that landlords supply heat and hot water in Maine, from what I've seen. It is possible to find buildings where the tenants pay their own heat though. Also, the law makes it very difficult to evict tenants in winter if they have kids. Bearing in mind that "winter" in Maine can mean Oct-April depending on what sort of year we have, the heating issue becomes pretty important.

Just so you know, the buildings I'm looking at are all in the $130K-$260K range. They are 2-4 units, with monthly rents ranging from $15K-$35K. You tend to have a choice of either what I call tenement style buildings, or big old Victorian houses that people have converted into multiunits. The house style buildings are more expensive but tend to be in better, more residential neighborhoods. The tenements are cheap, not always though, and they are not exactly in the sort of place that you or I would want to live in.

The building I'm supposed to be looking at tomorrow is a 3-unit tenement, listed at $139,900 with monthly gross rents of $2,085.