All Forum Posts by: Brandon Tom

@Terry Lao thanks for your honest feedback! This thread is 2 years old at this point and admittedly I was way over my head thinking I could do something to help at that time. I have learned a lot and was able to get into my first house hack in Orange County and would be way better suited to take action now (the house is still in the exact same situation, but farther behind on taxes).

I came across your posts about investing long distance in Vegas and followed you. I'd love to pick your brain and share investing strategies some time.

Thank you for the responses. I've received quite a few private messages and think I might have come across the wrong way. I am not trying to dump this house to the first cash buyer. I know she is sitting on a gold mine and want to get her as much money as I can. However, I realize my funds wont be enough to both rehab the house and also help buy her a home to move into (which would eventually be reimbursed after the sale of her San Jose home). As such I am not completely opposed to partnering if the benefits would outweigh the cost of adding another partner. I am mostly looking for advice on how to get this all done. For example, would it make sense to open up an LLC and make my fiancee co owner of the San Jose home AND the new home? and once the SJ home is sold, pay off the new home and split the profit afterwards? Basically, since we cant really trust step mom with money (because she will spend it on the cats), how can i cover our asses while we are really leveraged out between the rehab and new house? One wrench i just found out on top of all this, the step mom has only officially inherited it a year and a half ago. Thus a sale would result in a huge hit on capital gains. Could a solution be to keep her as the owner for 6 months first and pay her taxes in the meantime? Sorry it's getting late here and this might just sound like a long rant. Thank you for reading.

Hello BP community!

Long time listener, but completely new to the forums. I have never done a deal before, but have done tons of reading and listened to about half of the podcasts. This is complex, but I will try to succinctly describe the situation. 

Goal

Help the owner who is my fiancee's stepmom sell the property and make a lot of money for everyone involved. We are open to rehabbing and rent, rehab and sell, complete tear down, whole sale, or anything really.

House information

According to the city the property is a 2 bed 1 bath. The owner has turned the attached garage into a master bedroom and bathroom (Total of 3 bed 2 bath). There is also a detached 2 car garage. The owner mentioned that her parents had the property zoned (10+ years ago) so that the separate detached 2 car garage could also be its own living space.  Not sure if that is true, nor how to verify if that has expired. Lot size is almost 10K, which is rare for San Jose. It was built in the 50's and the roofs on both the main property and the garage are going bad. Water is not running in one of the bathrooms, nor the kitchen. The ceiling above the kitchen shows cracks running diagonally through it. There are over 50 cats living in the home so the place reeks of urine. 

The Owner

She is retired and falling behind on taxes by about 6 months. She wants to move somewhere where she will have 5+ acres, be near a river, not too hot, not too much rain, not too cold, and not dangerous. Ideally the place will cost no more than 250K. She mainly wants to stay in California or Oregon. She says she is unable to pull money out of the house. She is oblivious to the condition of her home and adamantly believes that with about 15K the house would be in good rental condition. 

Finances

The house is completely paid off. Right now between my fiancee and I we have 49K saved up, 28K in IRA, 750 and 790 credit scores. We have a combined income of 150K and live 6 hours away from San Jose, in Orange County. We also have an investor friend who would invest up to 100K and knows hard money lenders who would be interested as well.

Additionally, if we decide to rehab the property, she would need a place to stay which could house all of the cats. I'm sure I left out a lot of relevant information but am willing to answer all questions. Please help us out with any advice you have!