All Forum Posts by: Chris Titcomb

NXT REALTY, LLC

Real Estate Assistant

Part-Time Position Profile

Overview

Responsible for: Developing real estate sales opportunities for NXT Realty, LLC's real estate business. Primary duties include management assistance, including but not limited to outbound calling, appointment setting, handling customer inquiries, e-mail communication, and drafting correspondence. Additional primary responsibilities include updating customer database records and executing off-market deal sourcing to assist management in achieving its acquisition and disposition goals. The ideal candidate performing at a high level in this role will ultimately manage the principal's deal pipeline through the entire transaction process, including the purchase, financing, closing, development, leasing, and sale process. The ideal candidate is someone that has strong communication, organizational skills, motivated and eager to learn the real estate development business. A candidate with social media and online marketing skills will be considered as a plus to the company. An Illinois real estate broker license is preferred but NOT required.

Job Expectations

• New hire will be responsible: for inbound and outbound calls and to set appointments for our principals to meet with clients, stakeholders and venders.
• Respond to inbound sales inquiries / off-market leads.
• Become an expert on the evolving North Chicago multifamily real estate market (exclusively the following zip codes: 60618, 60622, 60647, 60625) and accurately present NXT Realty LLC's unique value proposition to prospective clients and expertly handle and overcome objections
• Maintain rigorous prospecting for new business and equally rigorous follow up with leads in your pipeline.
• Organize paperwork and systems for current and potential deals.
• Conduct market analysis to help establish property values for new deals
• Prospect new deals through various off market opportunities / deal sources.
• Qualify potential sellers for appointments with principals by assessing motivation and goals
• Accurately track and convey productivity and sales metrics to principals and expect regular accountability meetings with owners.
• Maintain contract compliance with current new development projects.
• Participate in regular training and education requirements
• Other duties as assigned

Qualifications

• Passion for real estate
• Passion for selling
• Enthusiastic and self-starting approach
• Demonstrable record of sales success against quota: commit fully to achieving and exceeding significant daily, weekly and monthly productivity and sales quotas
• Knowledge and experience in real estate and B2C sales (Real estate industry experience preferable but NOT required)
• Extremely strong communication skills: ability to set and close appointments over the phone, willingness and ability to spend majority of workday on the phone, organizing data, and assisting with management tasks.
• Ability to use or quickly learn Google Apps/Calendar, web based dialers, real estate specific CRM and marketing technology, Multiple Listing Service and other technologies as needed
• Be a team player who thrives working with a tight knit company where their activities directly affect the bottom line

*$15/hour plus commission (if a licensed broker) and bonuses for productivity quotas.

*Currently part-time with potential for full-time within 6-month trial period.

*State of IL real estate broker’s license preferred (must be willing to obtain).

@Lindsey Matejak and @Brie Schmidt, if the condo declaration is currently silent on rental restrictions, you have the right to rent out your unit. The proper procedure to implement rental restrictions is to amend your declaration, which will include notice to, and voting among, the unit owners. If 67% of the unit owners vote to implement restrictions, you may be prohibited from renting, unless there are grandfather provisions or hardship provisions included in the restrictions.

If you're already renting when that vote passes, you should be able to continue to lease your unit for the remainder of the lease term. I can't predict the exact restrictions that will be passed because all HOA rental restrictions are different. But most rental restrictions that I read allow for grandfather provisions.

The board may also try to enact rental restrictions without an actual unit owner vote by adopting a rule and regulation that restricts leasing. Through this process, the board votes – not the unit owners – to adopt a rule/regulation. However, there is 2015 case law (Strobe v. 842-848 West Bradley Place Condo Assn) that states this rule/regulation is invalid if your declaration contains language that recognizes a unit owner’s right to lease without restriction. So keep an eye out for the leasing provision in your declaration (if any) because that is the controlling document.

So to recap, if the declaration is silent on leasing, you’ll be able to rent unless the declaration is properly amended, or if the board adopts a rule/regulation restricting rentals. If your declaration allows for leasing, the board will need to amend the declaration if they want to restrict rentals – a rule/regulation will be invalid per Illinois case law. Hardship and grandfather provisions are typically included in a rental restriction, so monitor the discussion and proposed language, should your board contemplate the restriction.

Good luck!

Happy to offer some suggestions, @Brian Bradley.  I'll PM you.

@Dan McGrew, most Chicago leases do not contain early termination provisions (although that's not to say I have not seen one thrown in a lease here and there).  You'll need to read through each lease to see what landlord rights are provided.  Otherwise, cash for keys will be your second best option because you 100% cannot unilaterally terminate a tenant's lease based on the sale of the building (unless that right is provided for in the lease).  

The 60-day period you're referring to is the mortgage's Occupancy provision.  This provision is standard for primary residence mortgages.  Here's the exact verbiage:

"Borrower shall occupy, establish, and use the Property as Borrower’s principal residence within 60 days after the execution of this Security Instrument and shall continue to occupy the Property as Borrower’s principal residence for at least one year after the date of occupancy, unless Lender otherwise agrees in writing, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, or unless extenuating circumstances exist which are beyond Borrower’s control." 

This provision is really somewhat of an "intention test".  As you can see, the language in the provision allows for extenuating circumstances as well as lender consent.  If you're closing in a couple weeks, you should consult your attorney and seek his/her advice.  Otherwise you could be in non-monetary default if you fail to occupy the property within that timeframe.

Ultimately, however, good luck with the house hacking!

@Brie Schmidt

@Steve Rogers there are some issues here that require more details.

However, the advice regarding “acceptance” is correct. If you’d like to PM me the address, I can look up the Quit Claim Deed (QCD) on the Recorder’s site and see if a “Statement by Grantor and Grantee” page was executed. This page verifies that the name of the Grantee on the QCD is legal person/valid Illinois entity. If you signed that, you essentially accepted the conveyance.

Regarding property taxes, they run with the land and are a perpetual lien on title. So if your name is on title, you have an obligation to pay the taxes. However, if you take your name off title, via another QCD, your obligation to pay the back taxes end.

And along those lines, you don’t need to have taxes paid in full to record a QCD; you just need to pay the outstanding water bill in Chicago. That’s one of the risks when taking title via QCD, the Grantor is not warranting anything, like unpaid property taxes for example. Quit claim deeds operate, in effect, as a release of whatever interest the grantor has or may have in the property.

Regarding city fines, I used to work for the City in the Department of Administrative Hearings, and, typically, if you no longer own the property, the City can’t collect against you.

There is no risk of an increased assessment from a tax appeal in Cook County.

It’s also rare to see a reduction when the assessed value is lower than a recent, arms-length sales price, although that’s not to say it’s impossible.

I had one client, for example, that recently purchased a SFR for $702,000, which had an assessed value/market value of $661,530. In Cook County, the Assessor classifies properties based on type/size/age and this property was classified as 2-05. Logic would dictate that this would be a worthless appeal, since arguing to the Assessor that my client purposely overpaid for the property would be a difficult.

However, there is a great basis for appeal called Uniformity. Under this principal, taxing officials are prohibited from valuating one kind of property within a taxing district at a certain proportion of its true value while valuating the same kind of property in the same district at a substantially lesser or greater proportion of its true value. 

After a detailed analysis of all comparable 2-05 properties surrounding the subject property, it was determined that on a Building Assessed Value price per square foot the mean average of each comparable was $19.44 per square foot, but the subject property was being valued at $28.92 per square foot. As such, the subject property was being radically overvalued by 48.76% above the average of each comparable 2-05 property in the township.

The appeal was successful, and we were able to reduce the value down to $465,545, or $195,985 less than what my client recently paid for the property. This reduction saved my client about $20k in property taxes over the following two years (properties are reassessed on a triennial basis in Cook County).

Ultimately, it’s always a good idea to look at the uniformity of surrounding, comparable properties, even if you think your property value/assessed value is in line, or if you recently purchased your property and the purchase price is in line with the assessed value. 

Thanks @Ashley Carter and @Ashour Rehana!

@Jen Ruffner, here to help answer any questions you may have regarding LLC's.

Feel free to PM me.

@Michael Halow, any update on this database?  Sounds very helpful!