All Forum Posts by: Kevin C.

I recently purchased a home where the appraisal came in $20K over the contract price. I was surprised to see that since I know appraisals are typically under or barely at the sales price these days.

Even at that, I still think appraisals are a joke since the appraiser knows the contract price. It's not much of an appraisal when in reality the appraiser is just trying to come in with a number somewhere near the contract price.

Would that house be in the St Ann area?

I have a local broker I use here in the North Dallas area for my investment properties, if you'd like the contact info just shoot me a PM.

Kevin

delete - duplicate post.

I added a comment to your Orange County thread.

Ignore this comment, was added at Jake's request to see if he gets an alert when a comment is added.

Mods - please delete this post, Jake has verified he is getting alerts when comments are posted.

Thanks

Appraisal is waiting for approval from lender, once that's done, we're good to go.

Here's a link to a few pictures of the property.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cavpics/sets/72157627063508347/

While this is not quite the investment property I had been looking for, I think there are ways I can squeeze a few dollars out of it.

The plan is to renovate it and keep it for family use. Once the repairs/updates are done and the place is furnished, I believe I'll advertise it as a VRBO. While it looks like a cabin you'd see at a lake, by a river, or off in the mountains somewhere, it's actually in the North Dallas area and only a few miles from major highways, shopping and entertainment. It's amazingly close to where we live, so self managing it will not be an issue.

Surely there's a market for a getaway rental that's close to everything, yet has the look and feel of being far from all the hustle and bustle.

Time will tell if this was a good financial move or not, but regardless of how it plays out as a VRBO, it's a property the family will enjoy for years to come.

Well, I bought it.

It's been quite an experience finding out about log homes.
Log homes are a different beast for sure.

Moving ahead with the deal, but appraisal could be an issue.
I'm told lender will want a 'like kind' appraisal, like kind being a log home, and there are no log homes in the area to comp to. We'll see what happens here.

Home is in an area of 200K to Million dollar homes, all on acreage lots, in a highly sought after school district.

Home has been neglected for as long as current owner has been in it. They've taken care of the inside, but let the exterior go. There's considerable work that will need to be done, but in the end, I'll end up with a sweet log home on a 2 acre creek lot with a metal 30'x60' shop. Shop is less than 10 years old and was built right. It's fully insulated and has its own 200 amp service.

We'll probably keep this for family use, but I believe it would rent pretty easily if we decided to go that route.

This will be loan #4 for me, so next purchase will get me first hand experience dealing with tighter guidelines for loans 5 and on.

I don't escrow with any of the properties I have.

We've always had a pool since moving to TX 17 years ago.

I don't understand why people have so much trouble with chemicals, I check ours about once a week and normally don't have to do anything chemical wise except shock one a week and keep tablets in the auto-chlorinator.

Sounds like your biggest issue is chemicals, find a neighbor with a pool, one that takes care of their own pool and see if he/she can show you how to keep up with the chemicals. Once you have the water right, it's really not that big a deal to keep it right. If you let the water go 'bad', it can be a real mess getting it right again. If your water is that hard to keep 'balanced', drain it and start over so you know you have a good starting base.

When you say you spent another hundred on clorox tablets, are you referring to chlorine tablets? I've never heard of clorox tablets....