All Forum Posts by: Chris Duzan

@Tracy Selfridge

Welcome to BP! I'm in the Columbia are but Lexington seems to be a good place to be. Sounds like you know what you want to do already which is a great start. And Paul definitely gave some good recommendations but I'd like to point out one more for a good overview...

www.biggerpockets.com/ubg - Ultimate Beginner's Guide

Have fun and good luck! Hope to do business with you in the future.

Chris

@Sandy Gee

You're telling me the taxes are based on the amount you pay for the house!? Everything I've been looking as seems to calculate the taxes off of the appraised value. Well this completely changes the game if this is the case. Thanks!

Hey @Tristian Seegars

Welcome to BP! I just graduated USC in December(not quite 4 years, haha) and now I live and work in Columbia. Nice to see another investor in Columbia.

I don't know how long you've been around the site but I know when I first joined some people pointed me in a good direction to get started. So I'll give you what they gave me...

http://www.biggerpockets.com/tour   -   this is a brief overview of most everything on the site

http://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investing   -   Ultimate Beginner's Guide (free ebook to getting started, very informative and I would start by reading this if you haven't already)

http://www.biggerpockets.com/alerts  -   setting up keyword alerts for your area and things like that

As for local seminars, there's the Columbia Real Estate Investors Association. You can check them out at http://www.meetup.com/columbiareia/

Hope this helps! I'm sure I'll see you around either BP or the REIA.

@Brent Rogers

I agree, at least for Richland County. I've been looking for a property around USC myself and the taxes do kill any possible deals. If you find a cheap enough house where the taxes aren't $500 bucks a month then the rent for that area is probably not good enough to cover everything. 

If you are interested in getting in the USC student market though I would recommend looking right across the bridge in Cayce or West Columbia. It's Lexington county and while the taxes still aren't great by any means, they're a good chunk less than Richland County's. 

Here's a tool to get an estimate on property tax in Lexington County...
http://www.lex-co.com/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=w...

I think it's last year's millage rates but it should be close enough for estimating expenses.

Hope this helps!

@Lelith Walker

Thanks again! This definitely sounds like what I'm looking for. One more question, just so I know what to expect going in there. Should I be expecting to pay for this service(I'm assuming it's a title search)?

@Lelith Walker

Thanks for the information. Just one quick question. I'm looking up the County Clerk's office and the 2 positions I found are County Clerk of Court and County Clerk of Council. Are either of these the same as County Clerk you had mentioned in your post?

Hey guys,

I found a house in my neighborhood that looks pretty neglected, especially compared to others in the neighborhood. I've started to make a point go by it every couple of days and there seems to be no activity in the house. So I decided to snoop around the internet a little bit and see what I could find about it.

Couldn't find a whole lot but I did get the owner's name. So I started searching the internet for the owner's name and the city I'm in. However, there seems to be many people with similar names and searching the owner with the property itself only brings up some basic property records I've already seen. So where do I need to go to find out more about the property and it's owner and how to I go about it professionally?

Thanks!

Hey Justin, welcome to BP!

Hey guys,

I'm shopping around for mortgage rates for my first property and I was just wondering if there is any kind of unspoken rule or assumption about this process. Do any national banks have lending standards that aren't investor friendly? Is there a specific bank or credit union that is not investor friendly. Or does each location have it's own standards, so it's just a matter of going and talking to them?

Hey guys,

Looking at buying my first house, so of course I'm looking into an FHA loan. Quick question on how to go about acquiring it.

Seems after all the bickering back and forth between whether to create an entity or not, pro-entity side has won. So, I figured I probably can't use a first-time home buyer mortgage if I am purchasing through an LLC. How do I go about this then? Do I tell my lender ahead of time my plans? I want to leave the house in a year or so(long enough to be considered owner-occupied), and then transfer the title into a business entity, hopefully not triggering the due on sell clause, to continue owning and renting out.

Thanks for any advice ahead of time