All Forum Posts by: Andrea Townsley

Perhaps consider assuming the note and renovating slowly through a HELOC. If you have other investments, you can use that toward renovations also. Depends on what your goals are outside of this house (flipping? Rentals?) and the time frame in which you want to do this. Doesn't sound like you're in a rush since the family doesn't want to sell it, so you wouldn't necessarily want to take on that huge loan anyway.

I should add that if you purchase for $100k and then put $600k into it for an ARV of $800k, that's not a great return. I don't know what the state of the market is in ATL right now but in a lot of places, prices are hitting a peak so even though you project ARV at $800k right now, you might not see that by the time you're done. But again, if you don't want to sell, and you'll just hold it for the long term, or maybe will it to your own child(ren), you don't totally have to concern yourself with that.

I wouldn’t keep it. It says the lease must be executed within 10 days and you didn’t even send it to her. I personally would have followed up if I was the tenant and started asking for my money back if it wasn’t send.

I strongly dislike move-in fees or similar, unless they are applied to first month’s rent. The cost of turning a unit should be embedded in the rent amount.

I have sort of been in this spot where I applied and was approved and paid a $100 fee to hold the unit which would have come off the first month’s rent. We decided not to proceed after doing more research about the area and I completely understood that I would lose my $100 and the app fee we paid. But in your situation where the size of the fee is greater and you didn’t send the lease in a timely fashion, I would want my money back.

Also you said she cost you August, there are still 2+ weeks till August begins so you may still get a tenant in there.

I would chalk it up as a lesson to stay on top of sending docs to tenants and return her money, minus the app fee.

I do want to commend you for being considerate of her pregnancy and new baby! I’ve had experiences myself that were less than ideal when in that state. I hope you get it worked out. I’d say give her three months to rectify or to find a new place. 

We were mistakenly given an upstairs unit one time immediately after I had a baby (she was like two weeks old, and our fourth child so we had an 18mo also, and the concrete stairs gave me the absolute worst anxiety) so I agree that a three story walkup won’t be agreeable to her after a few months and she might want to leave anyway. 

Serious question...what is the point of the lease and its provisions if a landlord can’t enforce any of it? If the lease says no smoking, and there is evidence of smoking, why would a judge laugh at this? I would do an inspection and check for smells before doing anything, but if she does find more evidence (butts or smells or ashes or yellowing walls - move a picture and it’s easy to see), why is this not something she can evict over? It doesn’t matter if you agree or if “everyone’s doing it,” it matters that it violates the lease the tenant agree to.

If there are no properties like yours (size, amenities, etc.) then it can indeed be difficult to comp it. To some extent you can look at $/sf.

I agree with the poster who said it’s not new construction - it may be newer than others in the area but it’s been lived in and is no longer new.

The location matters for sure, but all those things you’re saying add value may not actually add as much value as you believe.

Likewise, rents don’t matter when it comes to valuation on a residential (maybe to an investor but not to an appraiser).

Like others said, Zestimate can be wildly inaccurate, especially on a unique property or one that is especially dilapidated or upgraded.

Instead of asking agents to comp it, pay a broker for a Broker Price Opinion (BPO). It costs less than an appraisal (which I would spring for if you have the funds and honest intent to price it right) and is paid by a flat fee, not a commission. Although I would say if agents are running CMAs for you, it’s in their interest to get it as high as they reasonably can since their commission is based on that...so it seems they wouldn’t lowball it on purpose. But if they feel you’re just shopping around for agents to do free work, they might not put much effort into it.

I personally wouldn’t expand comps to a 3mi radius but perhaps that’s what is necessary if the home is unique.

Sounds like some of these agents youre dealing with are legit flaky but I think part of the problem is your expectations.

I'm new so take this with a huge grain of salt. But for me, there is almost too much automation. Too many apps to use, many with overlapping functions. I track buyer's properties through the MLS (Paragon, using saved searches and the Collab Center). I am perfectly fine using Google Sheets for tracking FSBOs and open house sign ins (I don't use a CRM beyond what's inside my MLS). I do not want a ton of paper just sitting around bc I will never get to it and use it, and data entry takes five minutes. BUT I do find it helpful to have a paper checklist for the escrow period for the reason you stated. I really don't want to automate that bc I might miss something. Part of my problem with apps and automations in general is that they are either not customizable to my needs OR they are overly customizable and overwhelming to me with all the options.

We are in the process of purchasing a property that has to go through probate. It fell into our laps, we didn’t seek it out. Probate can be complicated and it can be a lengthy process. I probably wouldn’t mess with anything that’s not even gotten a probate case filed yet. Once they have started into it, the attorney can at least estimate how long it will take. The property can’t transfer hands until the probate has been completed (usually). In our case, we are being told 4-6 weeks as the people have been dead for years and the heirs just want to dispose of the property. Other times it can take a couple years. It depends on the assets and debts the decedent had and how much the family wants to argue over things.

You can do this research yourself if you go down to the courthouse as it’s not available online, at least in my area. The record is online but no info or scanned images. I probably wouldn’t pay for leads, depending how much info comes with them. I want to read the whole case file myself. There are companies that do courthouse research (mostly probate) to resell and they do ask for certain information off the case docs but the pay was too low and I didn’t take the job, so I can’t be sure of how much info they are retrieving.

Part of why it’s good to use a Realtor is bc of the contracts and negotiations involved. It’s a lot of money at stake. I would not proceed without an attorney, which you will pay for. There is no cost to you as the buyer to use an agent, and the seller states he is willing to pay a fee to the buyer’s side (this is under the assumption of getting to the closing table). I would bring your agent. It could slow the process a tad bc that brokerage will need to negotiate an agreement for the fee. And it likely won’t be a ton (prob a flat fee versus a %) so it shouldn’t take too much bargaining power away from you.

To give the benefit of the doubt to the first guy, 2001 was a long time ago now. Maybe he didn’t disclose bc of how old it is, thinking it’s irrelevant now. Depends what kind of conversation you had about it with him beforehand and what the app itself says (some say only disclose back ten years, for example).

I would probably see if I could find the court documents to see what actually happened, and I would take the age of both the crime and the offender into account. This was almost 20 years ago, has he had other run-ins with the law? Was he a dumb kid at the time or was he middle aged? Was it a wrong place at the wrong time type of deal?

I, too would prefer to look at credit history and not just score. The way scores are determined is a bit arbitrary. You can have a recent bankruptcy and a 700 credit score.

I agree with the original post. I find it ridiculous...however, I am in Florida. Our air went out (we rent right now) recently and it took our landlord two weeks to call someone to fix it! I figured out how to force it to run but obviously that’s not good for it. But that’s his problem and not mine. But it’s very much my problem if my kids and I do not have air (we homeschool so we are always in the house). Our landlord is out of the country so if I wasn’t here, they would have to get a friend to deal with it (they used to live here and had to relocate). Anyway, i have never had a landlord come over to deal with repairs in any place I’ve lived aside from the example someone else gave of living in a large apartment complex where they let themselves in. We are at this moment facing a new air system ourselves and i have no problem at all being here while it’s done, and even if my landlord was local, I would not expect him to deal with it. Heck, one landlord put in new kitchen cabinets on my watch and then got upset with me bc the idiot contractor tried to put in an island cabinet that had water damage (swollen particleboard) and I called him out. These tenants sound lazy and quite frankly I wouldn’t have done anything with the air until they could deal with it themselves. Not responding for ten days? Very odd, even though I know it’s not nearly as hot up there as it is here. By law even in Florida it’s not an emergency to lose your air so my hands are tied if my landlord doesn’t act. Maybe that’s how it is in Ontario, too, no idea.