All Forum Posts by: Clark Kirkpatrick

@Cheyten Johnson I'd talk with a realtor who knows your local market, if that's possible. 

Your parents could use a home equity line of credit or a cash-out refinance to pay for the cost of adding a bedroom, and hopefully the realtor could help them decide if it's a good idea or not.

It all depends on how much value the extra bedroom will add. If it costs $10,000 to add the bedroom, and it adds only $5,000 of value to the house, then it's not worth it. If it costs $10,000 to add the bedroom and the value of the house will increase by $30,000, then it is worth it. 

This is where a good realtor would be very helpful - they could help decide how much value the bedroom would add.

I have rentals in a market that sounds similar to yours and have not found issues with this. We make the units look decent and take excellent photos, and usually have someone good within a couple weeks.

No lein info is provided there, I don't think. You need to find someone who can do title research for you - but if you buy a foreclosure, all the liens are removed before you get the deed anyway, so it's not a big deal if you're buying a foreclosure. If you're buying at auction or directly from the homeowner, then you'll want to be more careful. Auctions are the sketchiest - if you buy directly from the homeowner but settle through a title company and get title insurance as usual, then you're covered.

@Joe Crupi

Yeah. Gets foreclosures and other types of potentially good deals to me so I can get to them quickly. It also shows preforeclosure houses, which is a potential goldmine for direct mail campaigns or other sorts of marketing efforts.

We need to know where you're located. Your profile only says NJ.

Find someone that you can do work for who's doing the type of stuff that you want to get into. If you do a good job, they might let you do some of the leg work on a deal in exchange for a cut of the equity. Once you've been a part of a few deals, you might have the credibility to raise private money to do deals on your own!

It'll take a bunch of hard work though. Don't underestimate that. You should start by reading some books from BP and talking with people at your local real estate meetup.

You might consider checking out Michael Blanc's book. It discusses scaling up quickly, and some people can do that very successfully.

I wouldn't be afraid about transitioning to multifamily. If you know single family, multis are really not so different. Commercial might be though, so you'd at least want to get yourself well educated on that before jumping in.

I like private money better because it's cheaper and more flexible.

The downside is that you have to do some serious relationship building. If you don't have a person who trusts you and is willing to lend - or if you just need more money NOW - then a hard money lender might be the way to go.

If you want to raise private capital, read Matt Faircloth's book for a comprehensive overview.

The term of the loan is completely optional. Different lenders have different preferences, so it's whatever you work out with them.

If you're not able to pay them back on time, you can sell the property, ask the lender for a loan extension, or otherwise re-negotiate. In my case, if I can't pay my lenders back as originally planned, I can usually pay off the small part of the loan that's left over with the cashflow from that rental property. Obviously this wouldn't work if you're not doing rentals.

It depends on your goals. If you want to build a new job for yourself, you could go for flips, wholesaling or developments. If you want to work your way out of having to work for money, then you might consider note investing or rentals. 

Go to your local real estate meetup and talk with people - you might find someone there who's willing to help you out. See if you can provide value for someone who's investing in a way that looks appealing to you.

Read the book How to Invest in Real Estate. Save up some cash. Learn about house hacking and do it. For a lot of people, that's the single best way to get started.

I haven't run into this specific problem, but I was using foreclosure.com directly and they charged me like $40/month or something like that. I went to cancel my subscription and it sent me through an automated "we really don't want to see you go!" sequence that ended with them offering me $10/month instead of $40/month for exactly the same thing, so now I'm on the $10/month plan and I'm happy with that.