All Forum Posts by: Zachery Buffin

 Are you getting charged any additional fees/taxes for having the land unimproved? That is kind of what I am trying to figure out. A second question would be how you went about getting the tower put up, did they seek you or did you seek them? What (vaguely) did the contract look like?

Hey, I would love to talk options with you. I have only recently gotten into the stock market and I find it very interesting. That all being said my real question is about land. I have never held open, unimproved land and have heard people talk about fees, extra taxes and other things that are associated with holding land that you don't improve. 

I was curious if that was true or not. As I said I haven't ever done raw land before but have recently come across so great deals on land that I would love to pick them up to improve later. It just may take me a year or more to get around to a new build project and I kind of have a vision on one or two of the properties to have unorthodox improvements (cell towers, windmill generators, etc.) so it will take time to get that under contract and figured out. I don't want to buy a cheap plot of land that ends up being three or four times the price over time because I get slapped with fees, extra tax, etc. 

If you could provide any insight I would appreciate it, Tennessee and Kentucky can't be too different in that regard! Have a great day!

@James Boyd

Like I said before, it would be long enough that they have rented from someone else in that time. If they made one mistake but then got into another apartment/tenant agreement where they paid on time and in full I would say that was a one time life even and they are potentially good renters. 

It isn't the same thing, you're right, but it still shows that they have paid late and it got to the point where someone filed on them. It isn't something you would do on a first offense if you catch my meaning. 

This shows that at some point it was a chronic enough problem from that person that the previous landlord filed to leverage the courts against them to get them to do what they should have already done from the get go which is pay their rent. 

An option for you if you really do believe that every other landlord does file on every tenant after three days late, give them a call and explain that you are a landlord who would like to rent to a former tenant of theirs and ask if they would share with you if they were a trouble tenant or not. You can and should check their story from them.

Ivan Barratt

This isn't bad advice at all and you're not wrong but this was more a throw away post. No one here could actually have a million dollars liquid and not have some kind of plan for it. 

Scenario One - someone has, through hard work and dealmaking, MADE the million dollars in which case they are very well aware of how to analyze a deal to see if it is something they should lend on or not. 

Scenario Two - Someone has inherited a million dollars and has no experience at all in which case they DO NOT need to be seeking internet advice from strangers, haha, they need to speak to an accountant to square them away. 

Anything in-between these two extremes has probably got enough experience to be able to analyze deals and the tone of the original post was more one of joking experience (at least that is how it read to me) on a hypothetical. If you're here and you know enough to ask the questions posed in the original post then my "minimal" effort comment was comparable to fixing and flipping, wholesaling, land-lording, or the other methods of wealth generation from real estate. 

It sounds like you have quiet a bit of experience with these upper echelon deals, if this was a serious inquiry from the original poster i would definitely talk to Ivan!

@Manuel Angeles

I missed the bit about the maxing out of credit cards, what you might do instead of that is go to a bank, more than one, to compare them. When you are there explain what it is you want to do, explain that you do this as a profession and that you want to build a banking relationship that could result in a lot of assets being represented by a bank. 

This may open you up to a line of credit, a home repair loan, or some other option that has much lower interest rates than credit cards and is secured debt which shows up as different than unsecured (credit cards) debt on a credit inquiry. 

If there is no other option credit cards can work but that is a steep price to pay if you don't have to. 

The appraisal value will be lower on the refi before the rehab, the idea of a BRRRR is that you are going to get more money out than you put in. Every dollar of the rehab should earn at least $1.01 ( obviously this is a logical minimum to get the value)

If you appraise it before the rehab for the refi you are leaving money on the table and tied up in the property that can only be pulled out with another refi is a waste of time and effort. 

 That may be the case, I don't know your market well so I would take that with the grain of salt I intend it to have. I would still like to see that the tenant has "cut their teeth" on getting their affairs in order on someone else's trust but if that just isn't possible you are the one who ultimately knows your situation the best. 

I am sorry if my advice isn't what you want to hear, trust me I don't want any of my fellow investors to fail or struggle, it is just the weight of a lot of people's experiences that let me know that trust can be risky with tenants. I would love to hear about how the situation works out if you don't mind keeping us updated!

Absolutely lend it, either as a Hard Money/Private money lender and make 10% or more on the loans you have out backed by property. The other thing to look into would be notes, becoming the bank is the absolute best. You get monthly cashflow with little to no expenses and again you are backed entirely by assets. 

The option to lend on some sort of syndication or larger multifamily project is also not a bad way to get 10% or better on your money. Basically if you have a million dollars you can't easily lose it if you're half aware of real estate. You will have your liquid money backed by real estate as an asset, likely with cashflow every month with minimal effort.

I know it seems counterintuitive to raise the rents to get more tenants but a lot of time psychology is at play here. If I am a renter with a previous filing against me, there is no way I don't know about it, so if I go to the next place I am going to look cheap so that doesn't happen again. 

If you raise the rents the tenants are prescreening themselves by not looking in your rent range. It is also a problem if they want to be long term tenant and they (according to you) just meet the the standard then how will you raise rents with the market if you need to?

If you absolutely are dead set on trying to get one of these people in I would want to see another rental in-between the filing and you and get good contact with their previous landlord. If they say the person was a model tenant than you are better off (though I still would recommend against it)