All Forum Posts by: Bill Hamilton

Hire an off duty police officer to go with you to inspect the property. If the officer decides the dogs are a threat, he will deal with them. Make sure everything is perfect. If not, you might need to start rehabbing the house. Entirely. To protect your asset and for the benefit of any tenants of course.

I am echoing the responses here. Local is not needed. Real estate expertise is paramount. Personally, I also only use CPA's that are lawyers. Attorney-Client privilege in all communications and they can actually give legal advise on any strategy you take.

It's almost impossible to tell until you get into the nitty gritty. Depending on zoning you could have a duplex with an illegal mother-in-law addition. They could have gotten a zoning variance for it. You need to both find a good mortgage broker and ( hopefully through the mortgage broker) a good title company. They can help answer a lot of these questions.

Call an appraiser in the area and get an appraisal done. Or see if they will tell you if they would include foreclosures as comps. In general, based on my experience) an appraiser has to include foreclosures if they are a significant part of the market. If they are a rare occurrence in the area or tend to be passed over by the majority of buyers then they can exclude them. But keep in mind the appraisal will usually at least address how they are dealing with the existence of foreclosures in the area. And ultimately (unless you have a cash buyer) the banks underwriters will decide how important those foreclosures are. If they think it lowers the value, then that is what they will do and they won't lend above that amount.

I am not sure if Illinois or whichever city the properties are in, requires that property managers be licensed as @Fred Heller indicated. Not all states or jurisdictions do. Either way I would get a lawyer and have them review your contract for a way out. If you appear stuck and they have to be licensed RE agents, then if they battle being fired you can threaten them with going to the RE commission as they are not fulfilling their fiduciary duties to you. Either way it may be cheaper to suffer whatever loss breaking the contract costs rather than continue to have that many units unrented. Best of luck and let us know how it turns out.

The survey is usually required by the title company rather than the lender. And they will usually waive that requirement if it is a long settled area with no new development. But when they require it, it is usually for a reason and not one you want to bypass. You don't want to end up purchasing a property with encroachment issues.

Best loan out there in my opinion. But find a mortgage broker that knows this program. It has some weird parameters that can surprise you if you don't know them really well. There are limits on income, sales price, out buildings, pools etc. All sorts of things that you wouldn't know unless you specialize. And unless they have changed in the last few years, they will actually let you roll up to 3% in closing costs into the loan i.e. sales price is $100k and the loan amount can go up to $103k. Again, you need a good mortgage broker.

Get a good mortgage broker. The 2 year thing for counting rental income is either based on it being an LLC (this would be considered self employment and almost always requires two years history and tax returns) or is probably what is called a bank overlay, meaning it is not a Fannie/Freddie requirement. Talk to Uppen Patel based on his response above. It looks like they lend nationwide and they could be exactly what you need.

Depends heavily on your credit score. Stated loans for Self Employed do exist now but they are only available in certain areas and fairly stringent. Call a mortgage broker in the area (not a bank) and see if they can help.

There is one thing that would make me nervous if this ends up in court. If the lease indicates that 1st and last months rent is part of what is required, they might be able to successfully argue that the lease was never fully executed because those amounts were never collected and they never moved in. It might be worth a call to an attorney to get an opinion. Keep in mind Bill S.'s comments from above.

"Finally, you can not just "keep" the Security Deposit. You must send them an accounting of how it is used no matter what. Colorado law allows for 30 days to return the SD unless the lease specifies otherwise, in which case the law allows for up to 60 days to return it.

If you do not send them the accounting, the court can order you to pay triple the SD deposit back to them even if they owed you the whole amount. Don't for get to send the accounting in a timely manner!".

The last thing you want to do is end up owing them more than the rent they owe you and you are fast approaching the date where that could happen if you haven't followed the law and they take you to court. If that happens and they win you could also be on the hook for their legal fees. And there are lawyers that will take that on a contingency fee arrangement, and they will charge somewhere in the $250-$500 per hour range. Given that you are arguing over a few hundred dollars this could go south rather quickly.