All Forum Posts by: Seth Borman

 If the street is wider than the city needs they will sometimes sell the land to you. But you have to ask.

Find out if the city has excess right of way...

You are talking about heat pumps for water heating and space conditioning?

I would build a line in my multiyear pro forma and run the analysis both ways.

I would sell and then hold the money until the market corrects. It seems to be softening a bit, so now would be a good time to exit.

 Rent control is never a make or break issue. You ability to negotiate tenant buy outs is.

If you can get the vacancies you can get the cash flow.

Just looking at the math it seems to me that there are plenty of cases where the rent won't go up but the value will, so you can pay more to free up your own cash through refinancing. That increases your CoC performance because you are getting the same rent with less equity.

 Never. We typically buy from owners that leave the neighborhood. We have never renovated with a tenant in place, although we have asked people to leave so we could renovate.

The houses will appraise higher than that, closer to $180,000. If we wanted to push we could probably get 80% LTV loans and have no cash in the deal. We have a preferred lender though, for other reasons.

Maybe. We've had a luck of success with buying at $125,000, putting $25,000 in (electrical panel, paint, kitchen remodel, full bath remodel, refinished floors, etc), and financing back out at 80% LTC. We are making about 16% CoC. The SFRs are the low headache way to hold land.

ETA: These are West Coast prices, within commuting distance of Seattle. If we were in the Midwest we might make different choices.

You need to make sure you know what you are getting. Is everything included? All the permits and fees? All the horizontal development? What will be your closing costs when you sell?