All Forum Posts by: Susan M.

Is this for yourself or as an investment? 

When we purchased land for our home, we had to find out what utilities were already on the road to the property.  It was only electric and phone, so we had to handle everything else in another way.  I don't know about your county but there's no way our county/utilities were going to run them down our road just for us, at least not without us footing the entire bill.  If you don't have utilities on the road, I would recommend you check with the utility companies about the process before you buy.  We  have electric but no gas, so we're propane.  No city water/sewer either so we had to dig a well and install a septic system. No cable TV obviously so you're talking DSL or Satellite internet and TV. Running the utilities back to your house once they are at the road will be on  your shoulders (labor and payment) and it costs a ton (depending how far back your house is from the road) so be prepared.

Other considerations are where the driveway will go, are there any flood concerns, is there a good building site on the land?  Another consideration is building codes.  We built in an area where there are virtually no codes, which made it easy for us to build and we built a very nice home without any need for a lot of permits, inspections, etc. but that also means that someone could plop a double wide on the property next to us and build a barn out of legos and house their cows in it. 

If you're not going to be on city water/sewer, septic is going to be a major issue and you should have someone come in and tell you where the best place for the septic will be, and what the local laws are.  Does septic have to be above ground?  If so, you have to consider where the "mounds" will be in relation to the house and how you want to orient the house so these are not obnoxious. If you can still do underground septic, you need to know where the septic field will be and orient the house accordingly.

No city water means a well, so you better do your research on how the ground water is in the area.  Our well water is awesome, but other areas can be horrible, full of sulfur and all sorts of crap, requiring major filtration to make it usable.  Location of the well needs to be considered so that the house can be placed accordingly.

Living in the woods is great, very private and lots of nature, but it was a lot of work to make it livable.

I think it depends on whether the tenant has taken possession yet.  If you are still in negotiations and they would prefer their payment date be the 15th rather than the 1st then it's up to you whether you want to do that.  I would be OK with it but we don't have a ton of properties.  I would imagine with a lot of properties, having different due dates for rent could get confusing.  

If they already have taken possession, then they are testing you and you need to stand firm on the policies you established when they moved in or they will walk ALL OVER YOU for the remainder of their lease.  If their rent was due on the 1st and they're late, you assess proper late fees, pay or quit notices and eviction filings if it gets to that point.

The wording is simple.  "When you signed the lease you agreed to pay your rent on or before the first or be penalized.   You currently owe X dollars which includes X late fees and you will continue to incur X late fees until you pay or are evicted from the premises, per your lease agreement"

Thank you Nuhan, yes, I did check with them.  But the closing costs they wanted compared to the savings I was going to get just didn't work for me.  I need a very low closing cost deal to make this work on such low value properties.

I have two rental properties right now that would probably be valued around 40K each. Last year I obtained a commercial LOC on these properties for the purchase of another two properties. I now have a balance of $33.6K and $28.7K on these properties, while the other two are free and clear.

I would like a more "traditional" loan rather than this commercial LOC (high interest). I am very ignorant of what options are available to me, if any.

Can I obtain a refinance on the properties that currently have these LOC balances against them? When I apply, does the LOC balance count as money owed, when determining LTV?

Or would I be better off trying to obtain a refinance on the two properties that are free and clear, and just using that money to pay off the LOC? That seems the more obvious route but I'd like some advice on the best approach here.

Edited to add: Part of my problem seems to be the low values of these properties.  I tried lending tree and as soon as I put in the value of the properties it says it doesn't meet the minimum loan amount for their lenders.  I guess no one cares about loaning money it's such a tiny amount?!?!

Thanks!

Be PATIENT!  This is a hard time of year to rent (at least up here in the North).  Better to wait for the right tenant than to rent to the wrong tenant out of desperation.

Of the four people you've shown it to, why have they not rented?  Did you follow up with them?  They might be able to give you some idea what the problem is if it's not timing/seasonal related.

Is it weather related?  We have a fairly new house that has downright scary loud knocks when it gets very cold out.  We were told they were some sort of "expansion/contraction" issue.  It only happens when it's very cold though, no other time.  We were told it's normal.

It's going to be difficult because they won't have a SSN, therefore you won't be able to run the usual background and credit checks that you would with a citizen.

I had a similar situation once and was equally stumped.  Thankfully I found someone else to rent the place and never had to deal with it because I didn't know what needed to be done either.  The advice I received at the time was to require payment for the rental term up front.  That the renter should understand that you have no way of checking up on them, therefore they should be willing to pay up front.  I'm not sure if that's the case or not, but I suppose it couldn't hurt for you to ask them if they'd pay up front.  But that only solves issues of payment.  What if they are a criminal?  I have no idea how you check that.  I'd move on to someone else if at all possible.

I believe there is a more accurate way to calculate pro-rated rent that covers the scenario of some days in shorter months being "more expensive" than those same days in longer months.

Monthly Rent x 12 = Yearly Rent / 365 will give you daily rental rate.

Let's not argue about Leap Year.  ;)

I just signed up for IPN a month or so ago. Sole proprietor, no LLC or anything. I just told them I was a sole proprietor and used my SSN and it works just fine.

James Park, we were told similar information and do not have an LLC, only umbrella. We were told LLC is worthless in our situation since we do our management and most repairs ourselves, making the LLC easily pierced.