All Forum Posts by: Anthony Micklus

Do you have access to Craig's List you could look at housing for rent and see what other landlords are charging for rent. You could also pick up some of the local papers or go to apartment finder or whatever (I don't know what is available in the Philippines.) Just make sure when you are looking at the rents they are for similar sized condos in similar areas.

In my area buyers can enter into a buyer broker contract with a Realtor. Having been in said contract as a buyer it was made quite clear to me that I was responsible for the 3% should the seller not pay it. So I would say yes you can tell any buyer who is using a realtor that you will not pay any commissions. Eeluding to what  @Donny Trana said everything is negotiable just stay transparent and make sure it is in the contract.

@Frank Alexander

I used to do Web sites professionally a while back. A few pieces of advice.

1..Get a .com address if you can.

2..Understand that unless you want to spend money on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and advertising (Google Ad words etc.) you are probably not going to dominate, at least not initially. Search engine ranking has a lot of variables. Do some good keyword research the more specific your site is the less competition you will have in the search engines.

3..A one stop service for both landlords and tenants could be difficult. You are trying to attract two types of audience. It might be better to have 2 web sites one for each.

4..Most importantly know the objective of your website. Are you planning to use your site as a lead collection, informational site or some other purpose?

@William Hochstedler

Yes you are correct I do keep everything I paid down for the purchase price let me give you some real numbers.

House Purchased for 96K in 2000. Govt. Program gave me a grant for 15K and a 0% interest loan for 1.7K to help with closing costs. Total Mortgage Amount 80K financed @ 4.7%. In 2005 refinanced at a variable rate 25year note. At last estimate (a drive by) the property was valued at 180K in 2012 I had to replace roof and windows that was a 2nd mortgage for 21K. Current balances Primary Mortgage 53K, 2nd Mortgage 18K I have to pay the 15K grant and the 1.7K loan when I sell this gives me a total of about 88K I will need to pay back. If my calculations are correct I will get a maximum of $117K. After I pay the 88K that would leave me with 29K to work with on the purchase of a new house. And as I stated in the original post a HELOC is out of the question. I am not allowed to take one out on this type of setup. Also I can not rent the property out that is also against the lease agreement. I am about halfway through the schedule I will make my last payment in June 2030.

Currently I look up the "zestimate" on zillow.com but I don't know how accurate that is. I look at several properties in a week and I don't want to bog my Realtor down with getting property values for me unless I want to look at the property and I usually don't ask to look at the property unless it is priced below fair market value. Do you have any online resource suggestions?

In my state you can only sell so many properties per year without a license. So you might want to look at the laws as well. 

I have been on bigger pockets for a couple of weeks now a I have found all of you to be a wealth of solutions and answers so I thought I would share some details of my situation to see if there is any hope at all. I started studying real estate in 2008 where I spent my entire life savings and maxed my credit cards to learn from a Guru. Great education I will grant but I payed WAY to much for it (About 31K). I live in a home which a state program helped to get me into. This state program requires me to share 75% of my appreciated value when I sell. Additionally because of the strings attached I don't have the ability cash out any of my equity (but I do have quite a bit.) when I bought this house I knew nothing about real estate. I am self employed which earns enough to pay the bills and gives me a lot of flexibility with my time. My credit score is fairly good (in the 700s) however I have a huge debt/income ratio in part because of the Guru Lessons but also because I co-signed my son's student loan to get him through college (about 56K). Wholesaling is illegal in my state. I know this because one of my colleagues received a cease and desist order from the State's Attorney General.  Fortunately for her they decided to drop the charges because she was so cooperative. We are a licensed lending state also. Any mortgages over 50K need to be underwritten by a licensed mortgage broker. We do have one company that will do it but they charge $500 and 2 points. The median home value here is about $250K. So what do you all think? Does anyone have any strategies for me?

Hi All,

In my state they collect almost no data in the Real Estate Transactions. Basically how much it sold for and when it sold. Any ideas on how to get more details on the properties sold such as beds/baths, square feet etc.

I live in Chittenden County in Vermont. This is probably the hardest state to be an investor in. We have licensed lending laws, Wholesaling is illegal without a real estate license (technically it probably is legal but no one wants to foot the $1000s it would take to fight it.) we are very tenant biased and i won't even mention how harsh the taxes are. Financing is very difficult here. Just pull up some hard money lenders you will find that many lend in all states except Vermont. We are probably the most business unfriendly state in the union.  In short no I don't stay here because it has good investment potential but in spite of that I have knowledge and connections that can only come from living here. I firmly believe that anyone can make money in any market it is just a matter of finding the right way of doing it. There is no better way of finding that right way than living in the community.

First and foremost you need to an exit strategy in other words how is this property going to make money for you? In this case this sounds like it could go well as a Buy and Hold or a Flip. 

Questions you could as are.

What is your asking price?

Is the property habitable?

If so are there any Tenants in the Building now? What are the tenants paying for rent? Are they current on their rent? 

If the property is not habitable, what is wrong with the property? What would it take to bring the building up to a point where it is habitable?

Your objective in asking the questions are to determine if this deal is viable. 

You might also want to check out the BP deal analysis forms you could probably build a lot of questions from reading that.