All Forum Posts by: David DuCille

 They look pretty legit to me.  When a mortgage lender puts one "origination charge" fee, people ***** and want to know what they are paying for.  But here when they break it down (underwriting fee, doc prep fee, admin fee) people get upset too.   

You have the right to shop and pick the surveyor of your choice so if you think that is high that is on you to get another surveyor.  I am in Florida and normally pay around $300 for a survey but in your locale $500 could be the going rate.  Obviously the price is going to vary based on the size of the lot.    Lastly, as for the settlement fee, here in Florida as it pertains to title insurance jts nornally seller picks and seller pays so if you are the buyer and my title company is setting the fee.

 THIS.  

I will add that you should get your lawer to type this up on a nice form letter and send it offer to them as well.

i have beef with all of the big box stores from time to time but overall, man I don't know what I would do without these stores.  They are basically a one stop shop.  I don't get everything I need there but I COULD if I needed too. 

Call me one of them I guess! lol! I moved here a year and a half ago for my wifes job and I decided to get my real estate license and get in the mix. Quite frankly, property is just SOOOOO cheap here compared to NYC where we came from that real estate was a no brainer. We aren't doing flips, we are doing buy and holds but in my short career I can't believe how quickly I'm seeing the prices going up on things. The deals are harder and harder to find but there are still some great deals out there. And I primarily work off of the MLS at this early stage in my career. The rental income I get off of our properties averages double the PITI on the mortgage so when I see people on BP getting excited about making "$100 a door" I chuckle and say "no wonder why they want to own 100 units, they need too!"

Just stumbled on this thread but figured Id add my personal experience for you.  Bought a house with 25 k cash and spent 35k to renovate.  we put most of the renovations on a credit card with the plan of doing a cash out refi when we completed the project and then pay off the credit card with that and have a small mortgage on the property.  By running one credit card almost to the limit, it lowered my credit score from 750 to 675.  Because we hadn't owned the property for 6 months there was the "6 month rule" that was limiting our options for refinancing. We found a portfolio lender who was going to be able to do it but guess what?  He said our score was too low, we needed to be at 680 for him to do it. Moral of the story is carrying those credit card balances HURTS a lot.  You are better off saving less and making a smaller down payment then incurring debt on the credit card, even if it is at 0% interest.  Realistically if you did this strategy and went to get a loan, your mortgage guy would possibly tell you that you need to pay off the credit card balance so they can "rapid rescore" you and get approval.   

Now with all of this said, you did state you have credit card with high balances.  So lets say you have a credit card with 20k limit.  the rule of thumb is that you need to keep your credit card balances below 50% of max so that it doesn't hurt your scores.  As long as your income is high enough that 5k of credit card debt doesn't ruin your debt to income ratios, there is a good chance this won't affect your ability to get a mortgage and your method could actually be a creative way to get the downpayment money that you need.   

So at the end of the day, there are essentially 2 issues to pay attention to  Debt to income ratio, and how carrying a balance affects your actual credit score.  If your score drops too much you may still qualify but at a lower rate.

allow me to jump in and beat the dead horse and feel free to show this post to your seller.  20 showings in that time period and ZERO offers.  Price issue Smell issue.  END OF STORY.  Get rid of the lousy smell, stage it right, price it right.  Sell it.  Otherwise, she better prepare to rent it out.  oh wait, it won't rent because it smells!

how bad of a neighborhood is this in that a 1500 sq ft home with an additoinal 1000sq ft basement and a 2 car garage will ONLY rent for $750?  that just seems like craziness to me.  is there opportunity to go section 8 and guarantee your rents?

 Yes he does represent the seller but a call from the unrepresented buyer simply trying to coordinate a test that needs to be done for closing shouldn't be answered like this.  Sounds fishy to me.

www.rentrange.com to get an idea of what rentals are going for near you.  I am in Tampa.  our vacancy rate is at an all time high  of something like 97.5% so units get rented quick because there just aren't enough out there.   Road signs get me TONS of leads but not the most qualified.  I am a licensed realtor so I do list my rentals as well to get the exposure that Zillow, trulia, hotpads etc bring and it gets propogated to all of those sites in one fell swoop.  As joe landlord, you probably need to list it on each of those sites if you do it yourself.  

Also, in Tampa, people don't really hire realtors to find apts as much as in other places and landlords dont' usually offer much compensation to realtors bringing a tenant and realtors dont do a good job of then telling clients they will need to pay for the help.