All Forum Posts by: Bryan R.

As long as this topic has been brought back up, I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I signed up for Foreclosure Radar about a month ago. While overall it is nice, and there is some good useful information, there are also some serious shortcomings that will prevent me from relying on it.

1. Data accuracy and timeliness. I cannot rely on Foreclosure Radar for primary bid information. It misses quite a few of the smaller trustees and doesn't get the opening bids, postponements, etc. in a timely matter. For that info I'm going to have to continue to rely on a more local service (Vestus, Datasnap, REIF)

2. The 2 price points. They want an additional $80/month to send me alerts when opening bids or postponements are posted. First, that seems really pricey to auto send me a few emails. And second, I'm certainly not going to pay $130/month for a service that isn't accurate and on time. If they had the data accurate and on time I would be OK with it. But if they can't do that, I'm not going to pay for emails that come in too late, or not at all.

3. For whatever reason it never saves my customizations. I have to redo them every time which is really annoying.

4. Finding the opening bid is constantly a pain. Everything is based off published bids which are useless. I don't care what the published bid is. Nor do I want an analysis run based on the published bid. That does me no good. The opening bid, the actually useful bid, is generally hidden, while the published bid is listed everywhere.

5. There is no option to sort by [opening bid to assessed/estimated value ratio]. No service I've used offers this and it boggles my mind. It would be so useful and so simple to add, yet no one does it.

Man, everything really is more expensive here. I need to move somewhere cheap.

I suppose I should throw in too since I'm in WA.

20yd dumpster is $225 for 2 weeks, $25/week thereafter. $98/ton in dump fees. Total cost ends up being $500-700.

30 and 40yd dumpsters for some reason are really expensive. To the point that if I need more than 20yds worth I just get a second 20 yarder rather than pay for a 30 or 40yd.

I don't use the 50% rule. I think it's value and accuracy is severely overstated by many investors on this forum.

At best it can be used for a fly by evaluation of a property. On any property I'm seriously considering I, like Mitch, run a spreadsheet.

Every property and every region is different. Different taxes, fees, due, utilities, maintenance costs, vacancy, rent rates, and so forth.

Relying on a rule of thumb for something I'm going to sink a large pile of money into is simply too risky when I can spend the 5 minutes to plug the numbers and run a spreadsheet.

Perhaps if you hold a large number of properties in certain regions they average out to 50%, but the properties that I've owned long enough to incur capital costs and average out expenses vary by as much as 30%.

There are a number of approaches to dealing with bad appraisals that I've had success with. In brief:

1. Immediately hire an appraiser myself to do a field review and pick apart the appraisal.

2. Try to get the buyer/agent/lender on board to ask their appraiser to review what your appraiser came up with.

3. Depending on how financed, local may have ability to adjust value, ~3% is the number I've seen.

4. Then ,again depending on financing, start the formal appeals process. You many be able to short circuit this by contacting the regional controller direct.

I'm sorry I'm having trouble understanding what you mean here. Maybe I'm parsing the language wrong.

You bought a lot for 39k

Financed construction with a private lender

Sold the new house for 319k

Profits of either 84k or 45k???

Many experienced investors in my area (Western WA) are moving back into building so threads like this are interesting to me.

I've been looking pretty hard at it, but haven't pulled the trigger yet because I'm not sure the return over time frame and effort supports building over rehabbing.

Eviction laws are very state specific. I would contact your local landlords group regarding the eviction process. You don't want to screw that up.

Here in WA eviction is a somewhat lengthy process. I start that going immediately upon acquiring the property. Simultaneously I pursue a cash for keys offer. I generally send a nice letter explaining what is going on (I now own the house; eviction process has been started, it will not stop; I can help you out with cash/movers/etc.;).

I prefer cash for keys because (here at least) it takes less time than eviction, generally costs less, and preserves the property from spiteful damage during eviction process.

Cash for keys is conditioned on me getting an immediate walk through of the property and another one when they hand over the keys before they get any money.