All Forum Posts by: Daniel Hanson

@Tim Vecchioni

My initial reaction would be to sell (tax-deferred if possible).  

But since you are looking at the refinance, I wonder if it would make sense to shop the refinance fees and closing costs to different banks and credit unions.  I think you could drastically reduce the cost of the refinance by going to the right lender who isn't gouging on fees.

One thing to watch out for is that you don't stop seeing the trees for the forest. For example, I was very recently involved in a portfolio purchase (didn't go through) where the overall numbers looked good but some individual properties in the portfolio were not up to par, and I didn't notice until a little longer than I should have. A lot of wasted effort before walking away. The other thing is to watch out for costs like multiple inspections, multiple appraisals, and extra time to coordinate showings etc. between multiple properties.

Adam Lysak Welcome to BP and to Milwaukee. Its great that you are on a learning path. I see on your profile that you are looking to buy a first multi-family by the end of the year. I think that's a great goal, and it suggests some immediate things you can do to move in that direction. 1) Find some listings on public websites for properties you might be interested in. Contact the listing agents that advertise on the sites where you find those properties. Get in touch with them, talk about the market, specific properties, and neighborhoods. Do 2 or 3 showings at different properties. Keep doing this until you develop a feel for the type of properties you really like, and the type of agent you work well with. 2) Choose one of these agents to be a buyer agent, based on personality, market knowledge, and their ability to work with investors. Your buyer agent can invest some time with you, because at some point in the future, they expect to earn a commission. They should set you up with a buyer portal on the MLS, and then the fun really begins. 3)Start analyzing good and bad properties like crazy on the MLS portal. Download some of the very good analysis Excel files on the BP file site, and tweak the file to your needs as you learn more and more about your market, about investing in general, and what excites you in terms of return on investment. Try to understand what causes properties to sell quickly or slowly, and the difference between sold price vs. asking. 4) Once you've analyzed several properties now it's time to get a few showings with your buyer agent. Download some inspection checklists so you can get good at walking through a property, determining repairs needed and other details on a property. Eventually, you'll only do showings if a property looks good in your analysis first, but in the beginning, do as many showings as you can just to get a physical feel for the properties in the market. 5) At this point you'll probably be chomping at the bit to buy something so now it's time to start building a team. Go to the REIA and/or meet ups, ask questions on BP to get recommendations for lenders, mentors, contractors, indpectors, property managers, potential partners, accountants, lawyers, title companies, etc. 6) Time to... put on the brakes! At least long enough to put a plan together regarding your goals. Do you want just 1 multi-family rental, or several? Do you have room for flipping in your strategy as a cash builder? Are there minimum returns you want to see per property or neighborhoods that you're focusing on ? Will you find your properties on MLS , through direct marketing, or some other method? The reason this is step 6 and not step 1, until you get somewhat far down the education path, it's hard to create a decent plan. 7). Go execute your strategy! Tweak your strategy as you learn or run into problems.

agreed @Joe Splitrock

I won't discuss in this thread, but I'm addressing that as well.

Originally posted by @James Barnhart:

I hope you let us know how this ends up.  I have never heard of something like this and it seems like I am not alone.  Interesting....

At this point I would just chalk it up to crazy things tenants say.  there's a thread around here about that somewhere.

agreed @Deanna McCormick

@Jeff Brower @Mindy Jensen @Chris Mason

Thanks for the other advice from all.  We will be proceeding through the notification and eviction process.

agreed @Christopher Phillips - it just doesn't make sense.

As far as I know they don't have any property currently. Can an FHA loan be done as a refi, as you mentioned, or strictly on the purchase side?

My property manager informed me that a tenant with late rent wants to catch up on rent with proceeds from an approved FHA home loan. My immediate reaction was "B***S***, that's not possible". So I had the property manager tell the tenant they have 1 week to get that in writing from the bank before we start proceedings.

But I thought, just possibly someone on BP knows more about this. My assumption is that an FHA home loan only goes toward the purchase of a new home during a purchase closing- I don't believe it is an actual check that a homebuyer can carry around and spend on whatever they like. Am I wrong?

Thanks @Dorothy York