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Updated over 5 years ago, 04/16/2019
The Occupants from Hell!
I am currently dealing with some occupants (who are no more than squatters) and getting them out so I can get in and start the rehab has been a daunting process. Typically, I get them out with cash for keys and it is never easy, but usually effective.
In this case, I purchased the property (practically stole it on price and terms)Feb 28th of this year and am still working on getting these morons out. I offered them $6k! for keys and they did not take it. I started eviction and they have used every tactic in the book to cause delays and extend the process. On the final hour before the summary judgement hearing, one of the two occupants filed for BK causing another 45 day or so delay. Unfortunately in CA, the laws, for some stupid reason, reside with occupants and not the legal owners. (I wont even get started on politics here!)
The good news is that I was able to have summary judgement against one of the occupants and already filed for the Sherriff to remove her from the premises. Should be within the next week or so for that. The kicker is that once it happens, her boyfriend still has rights to be there (until he is finally evicted) so I am quite sure she will just come right back. When that happens, I will make damn sure I make their lives as miserable as possible for the problems they have caused me. How can I do that legally you might ask? I will have periodic visits to the property and when I see she is there, I will call the Sherriff and inform them that she is illegally trespassing on my property and I want her removed/arrested. I will do this as many times as it takes until they get the point or until summary judgement against him occurs. Either way, screw them both!!! :roll:
What comes around goes around and theirs is coming.
***Update as of today 1-31-16: 5 years and 32 thread pages later, this is still ongoing. The following link was created by a BP Member in support of my situation found on page 32 of this thread. https://www.gofundme.com/OccupantsfromHell
This was approved by the heads of BP to be live in this thread. ***
@Bill Buzzell Did you Notice that Will Did not ask for the go fund me page to be set up. It was a reader of the thread. Maybe you should read before commenting.
Warm Regards,
Originally posted by @Bill Buzzell:
Originally posted by @Roy N.:
Perhaps Mr. Buzzell is the squatter?
Then you might be messin' with Sasquatch though. Hahaha
Clearly, being new here and attacking a longtime investor, without having paid attention to the actual situation, is not a smart move in terms of anyone wanting to deal with you in the future. Your name is distinctive enough that a number of us just won't pay attention to any questions you may have or any responses you might give.
Just saying.......
Hmmm... I was trying to lighten things up with a little humor, Michaela. How is that attacking a longtime investor?
When you don't know what's going on, it's generally a good idea to keep your mouth shut. Once the shoe leather hits the tongue, an apology is in order.
Originally posted by @Bill Buzzell:
Hmmm... I was trying to lighten things up with a little humor, Michaela. How is that attacking a longtime investor?
Sort of like Trump, when called on his b.s. - I was only kidding.....
No time for trolls. I am using the ignore function and moving on.
wow, just wow
I spent 5+ hours reading every post in this thread and re-reading some.
Found this thread after finding similar squater ocupied house in Los Angeles that the elderly owner wants to sell.
Thank you so much Will, now I know what it might entail, and would plan accordingly.
Unlike Game of Thrones Will had somewhat happy ending, and nobody got killed because he is so nice =)
I just finished the entire thread/novel and I'm speechless.
@Will Barnard congratulations on persevering! I honestly have no idea how I would have handled the situation but you did it the right way.
I'm glad you were able to realize some gains in the end (on paper at least) part of that due to timing of the market, right? (at least something was on your side when the entire legal system wasn't). What if you had bought in a less appreciating and/or depreciating market (could have gone through both types of markets over a 5 year period!)? I imagine if the purchase happened today that we won't see the same appreciation 5 years from now as you have seen in the past 5 years (if only I had that crystal ball). But for the sake of discussion, what might you have done then?
@Tim Kunz In such a case of a depreciating market, I would have either had to sell with no profit, a loss, or hold as a rental. In any scenario, the most important thing to me is that my investors in the deal are paid no matter what.
I have not been able to find the time to make the most recent update to this very long saga until now. Approximately 2 weeks ago, I finally was successful in closing on the sale transaction and this property is no longer my responsibility! Nothing was even close to easy or simple on this deal as evidenced by almost 6 years of drama and the escrow with the buyers was no different. The 30 day escrow turned into 42 days due to several delays caused by the buyer's lender.
None the less, it finally closed and I was able to turn a nice profit on the deal (excluding the factor of 5+ years of stress, disappointment, loss to opportunities, etc.).
So what did I learn from all of this? Buying subject to an existing mortgage from a seller who has an ex-relationship with an existing occupant is super dangerous and under no circumstances would I ever engage in such a transaction again. The purchase sub2 the existing mortgage was NOT the cause of any danger or added risk in this transaction, rather the purchase with occupants who had a personal relationship with the seller was the factor which caused this long drawn drama. I also learned first hand how very important it is to have capital reserves for what could go wrong. While I had already known this factor, it was never more evident than in this transaction and investor's here should take this example as a warning to be sure to have reserves to avoid going under. Had this been my very first deal into real estate investing, it likely would have sent me under into bankruptcy. Lastly, I reaffirmed the importance of adding on and changing thevlayout/flow of the interior to increase value. This can not be done on all homes, but when the opportunity fits, take advantage. I spent approximately $25k extra on the rehab on the addition and It brought over $50k of value to the ARV. That is an excellent return on investment and how I turned such a strong profit on this deal.
What an incredible saga, I am truly glad it worked out. I think this story will educate many of us now and into the future!
I'm originally from Santa Clarita too @Will Barnard (Valencia area), I'm just curious, did this home happen to be in Canyon Country by any chance? I use to live there as well at a significantly younger age and it's become quite the shady city these days. The very few times I've been back there I was none too impressed with how things started to look rundown in many of what use to be the nicer parts of town. (We initially moved out that way in '89 when Valencia still was part winery lol).
Best of luck in your future dealings!
It's really annoying that BP seems to have changed their format.
It used to be, when you're following a thread and you get a notification that a new post had been made, that there was a link to the last post in the notification email.
No longer. I have to click on the thread and start on page 1. While I'd really like to read the most current post, I'm not going to click through to page 33 with 33 clicks to see the last post. And since I didn't come from the main forum, there's no way to jump to the last post.
It does still work. Go to your list of followed discussions and hover your mouse over the 'Last Activity' column and it will give you the option of jumping to the last post.
Yes, but there is no longer a link in the notification email. Like as of just now, as far as I can tell.
When Dominic replied earlier, I got an email and was able to click the link directly from there to get to the last post.
yep. Change happened from this morning to this afternoon
We should probably take this to a new thread, but I am seeing about 1/2 and 1/2 on the notifications. I finally got one on this thread that enabled me to go to the last post. No way I was clicking to page 34 !
Originally posted by @Michaela G.:
It's really annoying that BP seems to have changed their format.
It used to be, when you're following a thread and you get a notification that a new post had been made, that there was a link to the last post in the notification email.
No longer. I have to click on the thread and start on page 1. While I'd really like to read the most current post, I'm not going to click through to page 33 with 33 clicks to see the last post. And since I didn't come from the main forum, there's no way to jump to the last post.
I agree, and this started last week sometime. When I first noticed the annoyance of this, I sent email to BP support regarding this issue; reply came back that you can get a link to the last page from the first, which I have not been able to do using the BP mobile website via my iPhone, and the reply also had a comment about "moving the cheese". The thing is, this change isn't an all around win, there is the loss of being able to resume following a topic from where you left off following; instead, we now have to do additional navigation. Cheesy if you ask me ...
maybe @Joshua Dorkin should see the recent comments
Interestingly, I just had emails from the 3 recent posts. One of them had the link to the latest post, the other 2 did not.
Wow! I just spent more than 3 hours reading this saga from start to finish. The emotional roller coaster experienced was surreal. Will, your determination is admirable. It's hard to believe someone would squat for so long without a care in the world. It's just as hard to believe there are people taking the time to comment on this thread who are actually on the side of the squatters and making it seem as though you were in the wrong.
Thank you for sharing your story with us as it unfolded and great job on staying the course and coming out on top. Good luck with your continued success.
I am reading this and I want to find it easy. So I am posting. I hope you have had this resolved.
Thanks everybody, yes this saga was finally resolved last year and the end result turned out to show a net profit but when you consider the time value of money and all the stress and sleepless nights, it was in deed a loss. That said, I also took away a very solid education as well, though an expensive one.
As for the recent BP changes, hopefully that has been resolved.
Spent hours reading through this... This is insane. Didn't even think that was legally possible. Congrats for sticking to it