All Forum Posts by: Bob McIntosh

Bump!

Anyone?!? Anyone at all???

While your post leaves a lot out... I am going to take a stab that it means the following:

"Does the seller or buyer pay" - I would assume it means closing costs, who is paying them, they are often several thousands of dollars so it can be importatnt

"Loan to Value" -55% Loan to Value (or LTV) means that the loan you take out can only be for up to (or lower than) 55% of the value of the house. i.e. If the house is valued at $100,000, a 55% LTV means that you are obtaining a loan for $55,000 in this case (or 55% of the value of the property).

"All his purchases are conventional" - this likely means that he goes to a bank and obtains a mortgage (likely for 55% LTV) for the property. This would generally be "conventional" financing.

"Signing a contract" - I would guess that this means that he wants to know if the property locater signs a contract... I am not sure why you would sign one... this would be a question for somoene with more experience in bird-dogging (i.e. locating properties).

Hope that helps! :groovy:

Most likely not. A private investor is going to want some profit for his money going into the house. His profit would generally come from either a rehab, or rental income. In a market like this where houses are generally not appreciating, or may even be depreciating, these are really about the only two options a private investor would have if you were to borrow and then refi later on.

In my opinion you would likely do well to do an equity split. You each get 50% of the equity, as well as the monthly (or yearly) profit (or loss). However make sure that you explicitly lay out in the contract for this deal how either party can buy out the other. How it happens who gets what, etc... don't leave any details out.

It *sounds* like this guy has money but no time, so you are his "time", and he is your "money". Use his money and make what you can from the deal, especially if it's something you couldn't otherwise afford. You may even be able to convince this guy to do this on multiple properties. Then at the end maybe you split them half and half, this way you walk away with some real estate for only your time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amortization_schedule

Wikipedia has a formula you can use, however I would recommend just Googleing amortization spreadsheet as you can find a million spreadsheets out there that would save you some time.

So my April Goals fell short. I was attempting to purchase my first property in April. The seller was dragging his feet to accomplish a 1031 with the money from this property for another... So the new May goal is to finish this deal up and get it done. On a positive note however there are an additional 2 properties that I am negotiating on, and if the price is right I will acquire them as well!

I also wanted to take a quick minute to thank everyone on this forum for the help and the insight, it has been just the motivation I needed to get my butt in gear with Real Estate!

Jersey City is an interesting place. You have a huge range of income, background, and available choices. To state that you want to invest in JC would be a mistake. You need to focus on a specific subset of JC, or a couple that are similar.

You have the waterfront region, Newport, Palus Hook... Newport is pretty much all towers now, especially with the last few under construction finishing up here soon. Palus Hook is a beautiful brown stone type of neighborhood however it is extremely high priced. Studios starting around $400-500k. Nearly everything is new construction, or priced so high that it would be impossible to cash flow, or do anything without some serious cash reserves to support you for a while.

Then you have the next step back which is the van vorst park, and hamilton park area. There are some decent places in these areas for reasonable prices, however many of them require serious rehabbing, and the problem you run into there is historical requirements. JC has deemed many of these buildings as historical which means you have to meet a number of guidelines they set forth for you. This is time consuming and can cost you a lot of money up front before you even begin to rehab the building. However if you have the available resources, and know how of the JC government there are some nice deals that can be found in these areas.

Journal Square... There are plenty of deals in the square. This area is largely populated by Indian residents. I don't know to much about it other than that as I have not focused much if any attention on it.

The Liberty State Park neighborhood is picking up however because of its closeness to the the water front and the Light Rail running near by. The only draw back is that the Light Rail stops running from about 1am-5am, so you need to focus efforts on city commuters who are not interested in going out at night time.

Jersey Heights I don't know nearly anything about, it would appear from my forays up there to be a pretty rough neighborhood. The same for most anything located west of Interstate 78.

Thats my thoughts on JC. If you want to speculate on where cities will head stay with anything near the water. It is nearly guaranteed that anything near the water will eventually grow (how soon or how much... who knows) but Manhattan isn't big enough for everyone that wants to be there so people will want to be as close as they can... hence why 10 years ago JC was nothing and now its a mini Manhattan. The thing to keep an eye out for is public transportation to and from Manhattan. If there is a plan to put something in hop on any deals near by that because it is bound to boom.

-Bob

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I haven't bombed out per say, I just realize that at this point in my REI career I can't afford the area I WANT to be in. So that just means I will focus on another area until such a time that I CAN afford the area I want to be in. I will get there, it just takes time, and that I have plenty of! :)

I would be very curious to see the details of how you plan to rent a house for $500 a month positive cash flow (especially in Westchester...)... :groovy:

nothing better than some nice plush carpet in the bedroom!!

I highly recommend a service like Creditexpert.com (I don't know how much it cost as I got it for free with MS Money for a year), but they send you an email anytime something changes in your credit report, it could an inquiry, an address change, or something more serious. This lets you keep on top of it.

I also recommend following the advice here to get everything cleared up. Once you have I would also recommend taking a copy of your credit reports with you to the bank. Sit down with the banker and hand them a copy of your reports and have them walk through it with you. While bankers can not generally talk to you about the credit report they pull, there is nothing stopping them from talking to you about the one you brought in. Not to mention this shows the banker you are prepared, you have thought this through and gives you ground to explain anything the way YOU want not the way the credit report wants. If they see anything that may cause them concern make sure you can explain why its there or what happened. If it wasn't your fault then have the responsible party fix it, or if they wont you can dispute anything on your credit report and the dispute will be noted in your credit report.