1st Flip and Easement Issues...

[Chinmay J.]

Staying true to my 2017 goals, I WILL FLIP 2 PROPERTIES IN 2017..  

So far, I am under contract for my first flip and have run into some issues, and wanted input from BP family. I have a nice rambler under contract for $135,000 with ARV of about $215,000 (based on the area comps). However, when the title company did preliminary title search, they uncovered an unrecorded easement that provides ingress and egress to the property. They notated it as "bad remarks" on the survey. Apparently, the 20 feet gravel road (which is what the said easement is) is owned by a landfill right behind the property, who have given the owner of the property the right of way. However, this was never recorded with the county or with the town. Everything else with the title is OK.

So, right now I am in process of getting this fixed by getting the proper documents from the landfill and seller and running it by the Title Company and underwriter. Without this, the deal will not go forward, as the Title Company will not provide me with Title Insurance. 

So given that background information, my question to  you is two fold. 

• Even if the easement issues are resolved would you or would you not proceed with the purchase of this property as an investor. My concern is that because of these issues, I do not want the market value of this property to diminish 
• In order to mitigate the aforementioned concern, would something like buying that piece of gravel road from the landfill company (or even attempting to do so) make sense?

If you were in my situation, how would you proceed?

[Chinmay J.]

Originally posted by @Ryan Murdock:

Possibly a dumb question here but in running your ARV comps did you consider the proximity of your purchase to this landfill? Seems that with your property being so close it may significantly impact the value as compared to other area homes just a few miles away.

Even if the value is there, how likely is it that your pool of potential buyers will be much smaller simply due to the fact that some folks may not want to live that close to a landfill regardless of the cost of the home? You may eventually get your price but it could take a lot longer to do it.

That question was definitely factored in. Right on that street in last 6 months there have been 3 sales. So yes, its not ideal but houses are getting sold there within 30 DOM