All Forum Posts by: Patrick Connell

This just in!!! Man with no real estate experience criticizes another man with no real estate experience, but who has made a lot of money not having real estate experience. I couldn't get through RDPD, not my style and to dry for me. BUT, spend less time having fun writing reviews and learn to have fun doing more productive, income producing activities. At least then you'd have a frame of reference to actually debate Bob should you ever meet him.

As far as what to do, if you can't or won't hire another contractor, you should pay your contractor what's due to him to date, cancel the contract and renegotiate the terms with a new time line, line item SOW for the remainder of the project, and expectations. Then, go spend $100 on a Visa gift card, buy a happy new year card, write something nice, and give it to him after you sign the new contract. Good will will get you a long way in this situation.

Ray Slater I read through this post and have seen a lot of good stuff coming from several people, but one thing keeps reappearing through this thread that I wholeheartedly disagree with; and that's you blaming the contractor for missing stuff. The contractor didn't miss anything, YOU missed it, not him. We all have to start somewhere, but at the end of the day, this is your project, your money, your responsibility. Are there things he could have mentioned, sure, but those things should have been mentioned simply because you overlooked them, not because you didn't know to look for them yourself. You got in over your head with the whole project, failed to vet the GC, and failed to understand the true scope of work needed to complete the project. It sucks, hard lesson to learn, but man up, acknowledge its your responsibility, and move on. You'll likely not make any money on this project, but education is expensive.

Joel Owens , I like that idea but not sure it would hold up in many states (the unilateral termination of the lease by the landlord at will). One provision I like to write into my leases is that either party to the lease has the right to terminate the lease with 60 days notice and a "termination fee" equal to 2x the monthly rental rate. That allows the tenant or the landlord to break the lease and fairly compensate the other side, I also charge the same for the reletting fee in case they want to play games.

Ethical, no. Illegal, probably not.

Not only that, but since you didn't sign a lease you're at the mercy of your State laws to govern your interactions, responsibilities, etc.

Landlords, Every month we take money out of our rents for PITI, vacancy, repairs, advertising/commissions, cap ex, etc. At what point do you cap these accounts and start diverting money into other areas, or reserves? For example, once you reach 3-4 months of vacancy reserves, do you just keep filling it up or start redistributing that money? Same thing with advertising, or any of your other reserve accounts? Where do you set the limits, why, how's it worked out for you?

Jay Hinrichs , I can understand that, Austin is the same way. I was speaking more in broad terms for those reading, and to emphasize that, yes, there may be legal complications if you make a pattern of it. Not to mention being a crappy human being lol.

Shaun Dewitt , I would say that a loose interpretation of contract law, DTPA, and the like could definitely make it illegal to enter into a contract that you knowingly can't perform on. It's one thing to say I'm going to try and wholesale this but if not I'll buy it and go from there, and another to go around putting a bunch houses under contract and then never closing on any of them; because you can't find a buyer. Unless the seller understands way up front that you're going to terminate if you can't find another buyer, and you have them sign off as such, it's perfectly reasonable that a group of people (sellers) could get together and ask the attorney general of a state to investigate fraud. That type of activity is what gives wholesalers a bad name; leaving seller after seller with empty promises and more Problems than solutions.

Ken Badziak , a comp requires a lot more than just a sales price and similar features. Each deal is different and an appraiser must account for things like seller paid closing costs, rebates, commissions, repairs, arms length transaction, etc. It sounds like he explained why he couldn't use your comp, because he can't verify the information that would normally be found in the MLS. If you can go and get a copy of the HUD-1 from that sale (by contacting the buyer or seller), then you may be in business and he could use it. Otherwise, you're SOL. Appraisers always get a bad rap, sometimes worse than agents, but just like agents, most people don't understand their job, rules, guidelines, etc. The other thing is, if there are more recent comps than 6 months ago that only require small adjustments, they're going to use those before the older ones (depending on the situation).