All Forum Posts by: David Begley

@Jay Hinrichs  I was fairly pleased up until several days before closing.  I would not recommend to anyone that may have a hard deadline, like purchasing from a Wholesaler where a double close might be required.  

@Craig Wilcox @Darrell Shepherd @Josh Stech

Darrell, your comments mirror my recent experience with LendingHome.  Very nonchalant regarding closing schedules and less than ideal communication along the way.  I had to postpone a family vacation because they kept dragging the closing out due only to their internal operations and nonchalance toward established deadlines and closing schedules.  What makes this doubly maddening is that, in 20+ years in the financial sector working with national and international financial institutions, I've never had to deal with one not in sync with New York EST markets and Fed schedules.  When one is scheduled for a 10:00 a.m. closing and the Lender doesn't wake until noon, problems arise that could've easily been avoided.  If you're looking for a competitive rate and don't care about when you close, they could be great.  Otherwise, the experience may be less than ideal.  

Yes, I have. 

@Vonetta Booker Very nice job! Congratulations! 

 I would say the HVAC contractor is a lot more honest than you in this situation.  You allowed him to diagnose the problem (apparently on his dime) and then turned around and used that knowledge to save a few dollars by doing it yourself.  If that's not bad enough, you gave him a bad review to negatively impact his livelihood?  After accepting his original estimate without even comparative shopping?  Shameful actually - but I bet if you had screwed up the install by doing it yourself, this "dishonest" HVAC guy would've been the first you would've called to bail you out.  You may want to re-think your approach to business in my humble opinion.  

The last thing you want to do is accuse one of your employees, without a shred of evidence, as a couple of posters suggest.  Ready-Fire-Aim is not a good management practice, regardless of the situation.  In this case, I will bet you the MO turns up eventually and, besides, what happens if you falsely accuse or terminate an otherwise good employee?  I promise you the labor law attorney you will be forced to hire will ask for more than $1,000 for his/her retainer just to hear your sad, but indefensible, story.  If an employee (or anyone else) had stolen the MO they would've cashed it immediately before it was discovered missing and a stop-pay issued.  If MoneyGram or whomever are showing that it hasn't been cashed yet, it won't be.  The amount is too small to launch into accusatory mode.  Your dual control & procedures are sound - file a lost MO claim, get reimbursed, and install cameras.  

 Perhaps the three of us can grab a coffee soon - except the coffee I've owed Rick now for over a year has compounded to at least a lunch by now, maybe more....  

@James Paisley Welcome Jim!  You've come to a great place to meet like minded investors.   You will find a good number of very astute Atlanta real estate investors on this site and all I've met are very helpful for those of us starting out. Good luck! 

If you are going Conventional,  "financing without Fannie Mae" is like saying I'm going swimming but I don't plan on getting wet.  It's pretty much unavoidable.   Even if Fannie isn't the eventual end-buyer of the loan (technically they purchase loans, not finance them), the lending institution will most likely use Fannie Mae guidelines and write the loan on Fannie Mae documents.  The obvious exception are the smaller banks/credit unions that portfolio their loans and don't sell on the secondary market.  The trade off will be higher interest rates, shorter terms, and overall less attractive terms.  (Comments are generalizations, not absolutes)

@Eric Stoltz, but if you do, do it, you might want to wait after 12 months pay history, and then never be late for a payment by even a day as long as you pay on the note. You really don't want to QC before the mortgage is actually sold to Fannie/Freddie and/or the servicing rights are sold. (That is an on-going risk too that the paper or servicing will subsequently be sold and a new Title search ran.)

Also, you might want to think twice about changing the loss payee on your Hazard Insurance Policy to the LLC, which could cause a trigger/red flag, but then the Catch-22 is if you have a fire, water damage, or other major disaster, the Insurance company could try to weasel out of the claim since the Insured is different than the recorded Owner.

I know a lot of folks on here QC to their LLC and roll the dice with the Due on Sale clause. I have four LLCs myself for asset protection, but I've never borrowed under my personal name and quit claimed to the LLC. The risk in doing so is much greater than the reward/protection, IMHO; however, I also have a $2.0MM Umbrella policy that probably affords me more protection than an LLC would or could in a situation similar to yours.