All Forum Posts by: Christina R.

Also, if the tenant has a lease, the tenant stays for the term of the lease unless they violate the lease, at which point you can choose to evict. 

If you decide to buy this place, then make it lead free, you will have to abide by the EPA regulations and everything else associated with MDE and abating lead. .. you will be using EPA certified contractors, you will have to put the tenant up (at your expense) in temporary lodging with temporary utilities (i.e., a hotel/motel), etc., etc., etc.

Much better to do a full risk reduction (lead safe) or go lead free with an EMPTY unit.  Get it tested before you do the rehab.  Then get all the lead out. 

Shawn - the 4th sentence here is the most important, totally agree with Rich.  Even with lead free certification, there is still room for lawsuits because anyone can sue anyone for anything.  At first, I thought the lead free designation would protect my properties (and myself) pretty much 100%.  Then I went to a meetup where the guest speaker was the guy who shot the XRF gun at my properties to test for the presence of lead.  He's great at his business and knows Baltimore inside and out.  Well, i realized that even lead-free is not 100% protection (but substantially better than any other designation in B'more) but after he was done talking about lead and various assorted other things, I decided I was NEVER going to take a property with a tenant in it. 

Nice thing about Baltimore is there are thousands of more deals to be had.  Good luck with what you decide to do!

@John Casmon is on point.  

I bought a property is Baltimore that was cheap enough to do the entire closing with a cash advance, which in my situation was waaay cheaper than an HML loan. Actually, it wasn't a cash advance (or maybe it was and I'm splitting hairs on terms?) - it was one of the promotional offers where you pay a minimum/possibly a small % a "points" - and then minimum monthly payment but the APR was 0% for over a year.

  I then had a private lender provide the rehab funds.  I had to wait 6 months to do a refinance into a conventional mortgage.  and was able to refinance almost all of the money out... the rehab went over due to some unforeseen issues (beware, this almost always happens, I have now found out). Obviously my private lender was repaid in full and I had to eat the overage out of my funds. 

So to get back to the OP - I would say  using credit cards is a strategy that can be very productive and useful but you MUST BE DISCIPLINED with them (those pesky interest hikes and penalties can kill go), you must have a plan B for if your real estate flip or rental rehab spirals out of control and you can't get it (a) done in time before those credit card fees kick in and/or (b) you don't appraise for what you thought you would when you want to refi (and then pay off the credit card).  Be very careful, also, of then using one credit card offer to pay off another credit card offer.  Pretty soon you think you're flush with cash when you're really flush with debt.  We all know the real estate market can turn very quickly 

Summation - use them wisely, use them intentionally (meaning your number 1 goal is to pay them off in full ASAP). 

I agree with Herve - get involved with local REIAs and meetups.  

Meetups (google them)

BWI Meetup

REIAs

Baltimore REIA

MAREIA

Southern Maryland REIA

start networking - all my deals have come from networking

Start attending REIAs and Meetups and networking.  That's how you develop the lending relationships.  Good luck!

 I never said that "a property only appraises for what the sale price is."  Quite the contrary in my experience.      Clearly THE MARKET is saying "this is not worth 92K."  Why? Because  whatever state it's in, etc., no one bought it.  

@Andrew Michael - I'd like to connect with you also. 

Who is paying her agent, because she has a listing agreement with an agent/Realtor and believe me, that person is going to get paid.  Did you figure that into your numbers?  Does she know she is STILL paying a commission for both the listing/buyer sides?  Plus probably closing costs, etc. 

This is the other thing - if it's listed and she's THAT motivated to dump it, then slash the price in the MLS to 79k. If that is a true bargain and depending on your market, it might spark a bidding war that will get her something higher than 79K.

I always laugh when listed properties say they'll take whatever but it's still listed at a price that not at market (or it would've moved already) - if they TRULY TRULY want to sell, they will slash and burn the price down until it sells.  Otherwise, they are playing the game just like everyone else in the dance is.  

And yet another thing - you got the price "down" 19k. However, since it isn't selling at 92K that isn't the true ARV of the property. The true ARV is probably 79K,.... which means you need get it discounted off of THAT to get your investor a true deal.

In Maryland the standard MAR contract is not assignable.  Now, you can try to strike that language (or use an addendum, to make it assignable) but any Realtor or agent - myself included - is going to look at that cross-eyed because that's pretty much stating you are not the ultimate end buyer.  It's hard enough getting a 'standard' deal to the settlement table at times; a Realtor that does not have a good grasp of wholesaling and a relationship that is established and PROVEN with an buyer that engages in such is NOT going to want to have anything signed by anyone but the end buyer.

Everyone's comments about why pay a fee for something off the MLS... perhaps the person has locked up a HUD listing who has time to data mine and has watched and found something that is actually a deal... I don't think it happens a lot, but it does happen.

@Joshua Martin - EMD is earnest money deposit

If your cash buyer gets wind it's on the MLS, s/he's not going to be happy... why pay you and essentially overpay when they could go to the listing agent directly.. unless it's a HUD, perhaps?

The very first thing I do when someone brings me a property or I see one in some listserv that I want to check out is run the address through the MLS for active, contingent, rented, sold temp off market. In Maryland www.homedatabase.com is the public version of the MRIS system here.

When I was wholesaling this was the part that I absolutely hated, except in my end I was receiving the calls as I did a mail campaign and people were responding off of that back to me.  I have always known that taking and returning calls are not my strength but I will say it got easier the more I did it. 

Since it appears you're trying to create a buyer's list - why not attend some local meetups and REIAs in your area and see who the cash buyers are at those meetings. It's a great way to network and in many cases is free or a very nominal cost.  You get to see who the "real players" are and learn what they are looking to buy.  

Then you focus on getting the properties ... if you want to do it in that order.

Personally, I subscribe to the theory that if you have a TRUE deal, you will have no problem finding the buyers to buy it.  If you go this route, you have to find the deal first.  You can use the search engine here on BP to find hundreds of ways people market for deals.  Now this will involve the phone as well but as in my case, the potential sellers will be calling you.  You will get a ton of tirekickers and some really p*ssed off people at times but if you are consistent and persistent, you will end up getting your first wholesale deal.    

Do both - go to the meetups and REIAs and find out what the buying level is (some buy at 70% ARV, some go even higher, some need to be at 60 or 65%), learn a target market (perhaps the zip code you live in) and start marketing to it.

You can do it!!