All Forum Posts by: Bernard B.

Hi @ Steve Might,  It appears that you want to be right instead of buying a rental property, is that correct? Many knowledgeable investors/posters gave you valuable information on how to get your cash offers accepted. The state of Michigan is not some strange island located in the middle of some ocean. I will help you try to get unstuck. First, get a different real estate agent, you are not obligated to stick with this particular agent( maybe they are too inexperienced in presenting offers). Second , after you get a new real estate agent, present a realistic cash offer( 70% of after repair value minus your repair costs), a  sizeable earnest money deposit of 10% of of your offer, no contingiencies, close within two weeks. If they won't accept that deal. Go to the next property, it is that simple, there is always another deal. As others stated before , please try something different, and report back to us, so that we can help you further. Also you may want to contact Rob C. , he buys quite a few properties in Michigan. 

Hi Steve,

Typically, a potential tenant will mail us their application on Monday, we receive it on Wednesday. We then call their employer, their current apartment,run their data through a eviction database, verify their income, etc. If all is good, we can approve them that day. Sometimes, a potential tenant will deliberately leave information off of their application and it takes longer to verify the essentials. We are not perfect in our process, but we try.

This may have been addressed previously, but I will state it here anyway. Please be aware of any potential tenants who rush you to make a decision on their applications. If they call you five or six times a week and ask you if you made a decision yet on their application, be aware that they may be hiding something. In my experience, I found out that they had a criminal background, previous evictions, sex offender records, and generally they try to do a power play to establish control over the landlord/rent collector. Please be thorough and take your time when you are screening tenants, it will pay off in the long run.

I hate to sound negative, but here it goes.. I bought about 8 tax liens on properties in Huntsville, AL. ( not far from Grant, AL. ). If you buy the tax liens for the 12% interest, that is fine. With that said, remember what Ann B. and Jerry K. posted, you are not the owner of that property for the entire 3 year redemption period. When I bought my tax liens, I made sure that they all had houses on the land, to make it worth my efforts. Some of these houses already had people living in them, did I try to collect rent NO! First, because I did not have a lease with them, second if I made them sign a lease and collected rent and later the tax lien was redeemed, I would be responsible for evicting them. In my situation( for the tax liens), I was responsible for keeping the grass cut to a reasonable level and I had to pay property taxes at the end of the year, if the tax liens had not been redeemed yet. All of my tax liens were redeemed between 6 months to 12 months. Now, you can see the problem with trying to collect rent :).
My advice on your tax liens ( for what it's worth) would be to collect the 12% interest as long as you can, keep the grass reasonable cut, pay the property taxes, don't do any major improvements to the house or property. Maybe, if you are lucky, after three years you can foreclose on the house/land and be the owner. I am not a lawyer, I just giving my opinion. Sorry for the long novel..

Hi Marc,
Having tenants in the house at the time of purchase sounds great, but be careful of what you wish for. I bought a house at an auction, that already had a tenant (she had lived there for 17 years). True , she had a great history of paying rent, but she also had a bizarre sense of ownership of the house. If something broke, her idea of repair was to use a hot glue gun and nails to fix it. Also, whenever I did fix or replace something in the house, her / her sons would quickly destroy the repair or the replaced item. I think that they did this to keep the rent artificially low. I eventually had to evict them out.

Hello everyone, I too am new to BP forums. Actually, I have been following(lurking here) for awhile . I would like to say hello to all of the experienced posters and the newbies today. I am landlord with one property, who aspires to acquire more one day.