All Forum Posts by: Andy Tomaswick

James, to answer your question, I remember there being a last minute delay both times I've closed on properties here.  The first one I think was the title company's fault, but I honestly can't remember what the issue was, nor do I even remember who the title company was as it was the first house we bought when moving to Ohio.  The other, now that I am thinking about it more, had to do with the previous owners, so that wasn't actually the title company's fault.

Sorry if I sounded a bit more negative than I should have there.

Is that the ACREIA meeting or a separate one?  I thought the ACREIA one was monthly, and I've been meaning to go but keep missing it.

Hi Leon,

I'm a relatively recent transplant to the Akron area, but I must say it's a much better market that some other ones I've lived in.  That being said I mainly go for B-class suburbs a little bit outside of the city.  I'm still learning the neighborhood-by-neighborhood details of the city itself, but live about 20 minutes outside and wouldn't mind doing some scouting if you had somewhere in particular in mind.  I've also got some good leads on agents & contractors, but do my own property management and had a nightmare of a time with the title companies I've dealt with. Happy to discuss it with you though.

- Andy

Got it - thanks very much Chris!

Thanks Edward, I'll take a look!

It does indeed help very much, thanks for the detailed answer Oren!

Hi All,

I recently applied for a conventional mortgage, and as part of the preapproval process turned over my account statement for a Scottrade account that I use a my investing exposure to assets other than real estate.

When the underwriter was reviewing the application, they asked about a specific asset class that I held (ticker: GCC), a "continuous commodity index fund" that I use as my exposure to commodities.  I only had about $2.5K in the fund, and owned less than .001% of it.

My question is - why does the underwriter care about this? Is it somehow different than the other index tracking funds that I have that track stocks?  Is there some other way to get exposure to commodities that wouldn't come up on a underwriting search?

Thanks in advance for the feedback - looking forward to it!

Hi All,

I understand that it's extremely important to take capital expenditures into account when doing the numbers for a rental property.  However, I've been looking at several properties where they haven't had anything that would be conisdered "cap ex" expenses in the few years of expenses that they give me.  I'm assuming that I should consider this as they haven't been saving up for things like a new roof, new furnace etc, but I'm not sure how exactly to go about taking account of that.

I guess the first question I have is what all is considered to go into the "cap ex" category of expenses.  Roof, water heater, furnace, AC, kitchen remodel?  Am I missing anything?

The second question I have is how to best to budget for what I know is deferred cap ex spending - save up a higher amount from the rental income to play directly for it, or try to decrease the purchase price by some sort of amortized amount of the expected repair cost of the roof.

I hope those questions make sense and look forward to some feedback.  Thanks in advance!

Welcome to BP Charles!  I think both areas have their own unique advantages, but there are definitely alot of opportunities here in Lansing.  Hope to see you around!

Welcome to BP Josh! Indeed Brad is right in that there is an investors meeting on meetup.com, though I think the one for March was this past Thursday so you might have to wait a month.  You can search some other threads in the forums to find a link.

Hope to see you around!