All Forum Posts by: Steve Santacroce

definitely go with Pheterson. He's a great lawyer and gives back to the real estate investment community!!

Um those taxes numbers look really really low... I'm pretty sure you should triple those, if you buy it for 85+

As long as you invest in the right areas, Rochester is a really good market. Just realize you buy a 60k duplex, it probably has about10-20k of deferred maintenance. 

@Account Closed  There are a few issues with this train of thought:

1. Most banks will only allow X% for sellers concessions. They do this on purpose so that:
2. Lenders in general do not like loaning money to people with no skin in the game. With no money down, what ties you to the property? You have nothing to lose if you just walk away from the property, and then the bank is stuck being a landlord which they are not good at being.

I would try one of these:

1. As @Tom Mole stated, see if the current owner would hold paper. Or
2. Get enough private funding to purchase the property in cash.

By doing one of the above, you now have the time to fix the place up, increase the rents, and increase the cap rate of the property, which then you can goto a bank, and get a mortgage on the property, paying off whomever you borrowed the money from. We've just got one issue left....

You need skin in the game! Or you need to find private money that doesn't require that (family, friends.)

Good luck!

I would try to get a retainer contract with the old PM. Kind of help with the transition, smooth over any rough patches with owners. Learn how they ran their business, and modify from there.

Of course, if they were horrible PMs, then maybe you wouldn't! 

Ask around for owners that use them (don't ask the PM company, they'll just cherry pick their owners) Ask other PM companies in the area. We would never bad mouth respectable PM companies, but there are a few in our neck of the woods we try to steer owners away from. Goto a local REIA meeting and ask members who they use, and who to stay away from.

I'm in total agreement with @Stephen Haynes, you will definitely get what you pay for with PMs. The 1-3% difference in management fees means nothing when you have an unresponsive PM!

Playing devil's advocate, at least in NY if you have your license wholesaling is a very large gray area. Your responsibility as an agent is to make your client as much money as possible, and if you wholesale a property that could have gone for more on the open market you could be opening yourself up to lawsuits. 

Yep you're now on the right track. This is why a lot of investors self manage... That 18% is hard to give up!

 Craigslist, other property managers. It's really a crapshoot. Some investors have had luck going to home depot in the morning and poaching the contractors as they show up to buy materials for the jobs that day. In the end, you're going to swing and miss on 19 out of 20. The more you keep up on them, the quicker you can weed them out. And when you find a good contractor, pay them more than you should! In the long run you'll be better off. Good luck!

Blood and tears. Finding good handymen is the hardest part of the job. We have 2 that we pretty much take up all their time, and 3-5 that we use as needed. We've been in the biz for about 8 years, and we've gone through well over 50 guys easily. We pay the good ones offer market value because they save is time, which honestly is more valuable. And we want them to pretty much stop what they are doing and help us when needed :)