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Updated over 11 years ago on . Most recent reply
Finding plexes not on the market
Hey everyone, I'm looking into purchasing a 2/3/4 unit complex and living in one unit for a while. This is kind of my way of getting my foot in the real estate door. I have a couple questions:
1. I am not finding very many of these buildings in my area for sale, but I know there are plenty around not on the market. As I'm sure a good majority of them are investor owned, I have a feeling they would entertain an offer if contacted. I have read a lot about "going to the courthouse" to find out about things like out of state owners, owners late on taxes etc. etc. for wholesaling purposes. I would like to find a list of plexes in my area so I can contact the owner, but I just don't really know what to actually do when I get to the courthouse. Where do I go? Who do I ask for this information? Are there computer kiosks I look up the records in, or are there actual files I have to sort through? How do I know where to start? Any guidance on this would help tremendously!
2. Say all the units are currently rented, but one or more of them are on month to month leases. What would be the feasibility of getting into it with owner-occupied financing? I know the tenants are usually owed a 30 day notice and with the seller technically being the landlord until we close, they would probably have to agree to this stipulation from the get-go, which may be unappealing to them in case the contract doesn't go through. Does anyone have any experience or insight into this type of thing?
Thanks everyone so much for their time and/or help with this matter!
Mike
Google for the county tax office, it should be available online. Look up an address for a property you know is a 4-plex - you should be able to find a use code that corresponds to that type of property and then you can usually do a search by that use code to give you a list of owners and mailing addresses
VA normally requires you to occupy within 60 days but the lender can be a bit flexible if there is a good reason
Awesome, thanks @scottseaman !! Is there a way to find all the 4-plex buildings in the area/county instead of just searching one address?
@Mike Heth Once you do that initial search off of one address that you know is a 4 plex to get the code, then you can usually do a search for all the same code. Every county is different, in some markets that overlap several counties they can be totally different and you just have to learn what the software will do in the county you are looking. Bigger places tend to do a bit better at making the information easy to get but that's not guaranteed. If you get lost, message me the county site info and I'll see if I can help you find what you're looking for.
If you aren't already familiar with VA loans, you should be talking to a lender now to get pre-qualified. If you can, find what they call a 'direct endorsement' lender. That means that they will be the one making the final decision on the loan. If you are going to be using the income from the other rental units to qualify, be prepared to show the bank you have some experience managing rental property or that you have 6 months PITI in the bank to fall back on.
They'll usually count 75% of income after backing out some standard expense numbers like taxes and insurance. 41% DTI ratio but can go as high as 46% if the lender can document that other circumstances justify it. Don't forget that they also include a monthly figure for "family support" based on the size of your family. It would be a good idea to have your pre-qualification letter in hand before talking to individual sellers. It'll show them that you are serious and a number of sellers don't want to mess with VA financing because the appraisers may add conditions that have to be fixed on the property (in all reality no worse than FHA). This shouldn't be as big an issue since they aren't taking the property off the active market and potentially losing buyers only to find out that they can't close do to a bad roof or something.
From Wiki, Scott Air Force Base is a base of the United States Air Force in St. Clair County, Illinois, near Belleville. The county has an online presence, at http://www.co.st-clair.il.us/Pages/parcel.aspx
Many counties allow mortgage servicers to have direct access to parcel information. These 'property cards' are full of information including what you are looking for (Type&Use = 4 plex). But, unfortunately, it looks like the county doesn't provide the data for escrow and servicing companies, so it may be difficult to get the search granularity that you are looking for. http://www.co.st-clair.il.us/departments/treasurer/Pages/escrow.aspx
If you were in Wake county NC I could tell you using simple linux commands from normalized county data that there are only 639 quads in the county, almost all (599) in Raleigh.