All Forum Posts by: Bill Walsh

Hello
Over the past 7 years I have had 2 REO houses from Washington Mutual. The secret that I have found is to find the broker responsible and let them know your serious. I always put in low offers, to the point of absurd. But what if they did take the offer? Which on one they did. It was a townhouse termite damaged and had been sitting for 1 year empty.
the value at the time was about 55K. I got it for 28K, WAMU financed it as a construction loan. (Interest Only) and in 6 months I had sold it for 54K (in one day, no realtor). Putting about 8K into it and a lot of hard work. Just depends on your level of expertise, what the market is doing and the NUMBERS! Go for it and learn from the mistakes you make to become better on the next one.

Hello
Has anyone taken the opportunity to buy any property in the bahamas? I am interested as I live in FL and have been there many times. A friend has family that lives there and he also goes for the beaches etc.
I was wondering about the laws for real estate etc, taxes, blah blah
Bill W

Hello
You mentioned a capital gains, this indicates you have had this property for a relatively short time and that the property has a value probably much more than original purchase (LAS mkt was hot for a while)
Negative anything is not good especially on an interest only loan?!
Take the $$ and run! There are dwals out there that can make you an income, but you have to talk to everyone you meet and be patient
Bill W

Brian.
I have had one dealing with them where I had the experience you speak of. They said 12K of rehab and it was really 35K after all was said and done. The good side of that is that it was in the Orlando area and the neighborhood had not been discovered and it took me 8 months to finish the rehab. (Mistake #1- don't do all the work yourself) . And in the time it took me to finish the values had gone up so the house was appraised at 40K more than the original appraisal. I was able to make a little and learned many lessons!
I just had another dealing with them , which is why I posted what I did, in where I was awaiting on money to come from a refi deal and I asked the sales person how long we could hold off on the house I wanted. he told me 2 weeks and I thought great! We had been in contact several times on phone and email. I went out looked at the house and sent an email to the agent 2 days later that I had submitted for a 401K loan because the refi was taking longer than expected. He told me the house had been sold! It pissed me off, cause I did the research and could have made from 12-24 K depending how far I went with the rehab.
I blasted him and shot an email to the company owner, who called me to see what had transpired. The deal was that I was never asked to put any earnest money down and I was also in the process of buying 2 other houses, as well as a 70 hr week job, so I didn't even think to ask about it.
So it has been resolved and the agent had a talking to about the deal from John Parrett and there will be another deal sometime in the future.
The orlando market is so dry as far as good deals and the competition is so intense the deals that really work are few and far between!
Let this be a warning for the new investor. Do you own homework!
Bill W

Anyone dealt with realnet? The owner is John Parrett anyone know anything about him?
Thanks
Bill

Hello
I am considering that I have to start to be a little smarter when it comes to protection and structure of my investments. Anyone know a good Attorney and Investor familiar with Fla Law
Bill W