All Forum Posts by: Dale Hensley

Originally posted by @Jay Hinrichs:

@Mike D'Arrigo 

  Agree every city in America is subject to these issues.  Its just more prevalent in certain areas .  And there is just no question that its epidemic in low end areas of the mid west.. It just is... I never saw an air conditioner cage until I went out east.. Never heard of a GPS chip for the Condenser unit.  I personally have never had a home in Oregon broken into and stripped of all its operating systems copper hot water heater appliances etc.. And I have 21 new construction homes going right now and the homes do not even get fully secured until well after all the HVAC plumbing and electrical are in.. The door is wide open just walk in and have at it... If we did the same in ANY market in the MID west at say 75k an under those houses would be stripped.. Security helps but not always.

It is one reason investor take much larger risks when they buy down in the market.. NOw you take smaller towns that are not in the metro areas and these issues are mitigated but that is not were out of state investor purchase by and large.

Once you move above the mean in price point these issues go away...

I was sitting in my closing attornies office in Atlanta a few years back and commented why it was so hot.. He said " my condensers were stolen last night" this in a solid A class commercial park.

Its an issue is all I am saying

 I live and work in the richest county in Indiana and our new construction gets hit constantly. Houses start at over 200k in this area and go well into the millions. No major systems go in until they absolutely have to and all plumbing is PEX. Buildings are locked up long before systems go in. I have an alarm on all of my properties now because I get hit twice on my very first one. The funny thing is that the house was vacant for 3 years before I started the project and was never touched. After I started working on it, we started getting hit. Never been touched since the alarms went in them.  

I am fortunate in having a future father-in-law who has done hundreds of deals and is very successful. He teaches classes now and is a guest speaker at REI groups and for other speakers such as Mr. Landlord. His biggest piece of advice is to go out and meet people constantly. He is always introducing me to people and his advice is helping me and my fiance' create a very successful REI business. Meeting people is a big reason I'm here at BP. I'm hoping we get a BP Meetup group in the Indy area soon. I'd take care of hosting it but I have too many other irons in the fire to take up another one.

Take photos of what they notice as well as everything else prior to someone moving in. That way everyone is protected. You can tell a judge that there wasn't a hole in the wall when they moved in, but without proof, it's your word against theirs and they will say that the hole was there when they moved in and you refused to fix it. Courts are not very intelligent and will give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant. 

I own a sign/printing shop and have assisted several other investors that are close to me with their mailings. I would be happy to look at the piece you are sending and let you know if it's in line with the other pieces I have clients using that are getting good responses. I haven't done any DM pieces yet for my personal investing yet but I know it works well for the clients I print for.

I honestly don't understand what the problem is here. It's a simple, short trial. He's never been married to the seller and has no rights to the property. Not much to argue. Your attorney says, "your honor, he has no rights to the property and is a squatter playing the system." The judge asks his attorney, "Do you have proof that you were married?" Attorney says, "No." Judge says, "Then why are we here? Ruling for the plaintiff." Case closed. 

Sounds like you are dealing with a huge court system. My county only has 8 courts total so we don't run into this issue. 

I would probably invest with others on bigger projects or work with someone using it as hard money. I know a lot of investors with a lot less money that invest with me. I have been taking in investors on my flips lately. A friend just invested $20k with me at 10% for a 3 month flip. That's a 40% APR on their money. I'm happy to pay it because I can do bigger deals and get them done quick and they are making a great investment with much less risk because it's secured.

I have been on a lot of new construction sites in the winter and they never have HVAC running. They bring in portable heaters such as the one pictured above. The generic term is a Salamander heater. They run on either propane tanks like the one you use on your grill or kerosene and they really put out a ton of heat. More than enough to heat an apartment to comfortable levels. If it's a bigger house, use 2 or 3. Contractors don't expect to get to work in "comfort" everyday. That's part of the job. 

Also, on ALL of our rehabs, we now use a Simplisafe alarm system. I got hit twice on my very first property. I caught the guy who did the first burglary. He knew I was a police officer and I think he did it just because he had an extensive history that I didn't know about and he wanted to "stick it to the man." I bought my appliances from him after I responded to a Craiglist ad. After he beat up his wife, she called me and turned him in. All my tools had already been sold off for pennies on the dollar. Thankfully, my homeowner's insurance covered my tools at that time as I lost almost $7k in tools. I got hit again a few weeks later. Someone threw a rock through one of my brand new windows to get in and then proceeded to cut out the little bit of copper piping in the basement. Cost me $250 to fix it. There was probably only 30' of pipe but they broke in and took it anyway. And they also cut the copper to my A/C unit and left the unit. I didn't have a clue who did the second burglary but I put an alarm system in right away and haven't had a problem since. 

I actually believe now that it was my painting contractor who took the copper. The house had been sitting vacant for 3 years and it was never touched until I brought people in. On my next project, I brought him in before I purchased the property. He walked through it with me as we discussed what it needed and he took a real interest in some antique doors. The very next day, I went back to look at the house with another contractor and the doors were gone as well as copper wiring in the basement and all the antique air vent covers. I haven't used him again and I haven't been hit again. Coincidence?

About Simplisafe...I have 13 years as an officer. I have responded to calls from every alarm company out there and I did the research on pricing and contracts. Dave Ramsey endorses this company and I tried them out after reading good reviews. All you have to do is buy the equipment. It's all battery powered except for the base station which has a battery backup. It contacts the monitoring company through cell technology. It will operate without monitoring to scare someone off or you can pay up to $25 a month for monitoring. (This is the highest priced package and allows me to operate the system from an app on my phone so I can track when someone is in or out). I turned off the monitoring after my first rehab and put the system back in a box until I needed it again. When I installed it again (took about 5 minutes with the 3m tape strips) I reactivated the monitoring and to my surprise, it had been like hitting the pause button. I still had 17 days left of monitoring from my previous payment! They dont' take advantage of the customer. I will never ever have a vacant property again without monitoring it with an alarm.

My first deal was a flip. I grew up on a small farm and my dad was an electrician by trade and a handy do-it-yourselfer. Wasn't really anything I didn't learn. Summers in high school were spent working part time with a remodeling business where I learned a few things about windows and sideing and became quite good at it. When I met my fiance', she was already a REI who had done a few deals and was selling 2 of her 3 rentals for a nice profit. We found a great bank owned deal and couldn't pass it up. I built in extra padding for things I might miss on my analysis. I did miss a couple of things. Because it was December when I purchased it, I couldn't check the air conditioning unit and had to replace it when I found it was bad. Once we had an accepted offer I had to install a radon mitigation system for $800, found some old that had to be treated for $1100 and although I disagree with the home inspector, I had to put a new roof on the main portion of the house for $1600. I also missed a small amount of termite damage that was dormant but under Indiana law, if there is no evidence of treatment in the last five years, it must be treated if there is any damage. Another $300.

I planned for $15k in renovations and it cost me almost $20k but it was well worth it. I still netted $27k on the sale but I admit that I did a lot of the labor myself since demo is fun and it's not that hard to paint and patch some holes. (I did remodel the entire kitchen and installed new vanities in 2 bathrooms, but I included my labor in that estimate. (Btw, kitchen cabinets are way overpriced at the big box stores. Lowes quoted me over $10k for a nice set of cabinets. I purchased nicer cabinets from a supplier for $3100. If you need cabs, contact me)

What I'm getting at is that if you have some mentors, use them to teach you. I failed to mention that my fiance's dad has been a REI for over 20 years and was a great source to bounce this off of as we were putting the deal together.

This is a ridiculous case. I have been an officer for 13 years and are I find that the court system is an absolute waste. My initial thought after reading the last seventeen pages was that perhaps there could be some laws written to stop this from happening to anyone in the future. As I thought more about it, I see that there are no laws that would have resolved this initially due to the fact that the guy claimed to be married to the seller at the time of sale. I do believe that as soon as it was proven that there was no marriage, the case should of reverted back to the previous judgment of eviction and been resolved at that point. As in most cases, the courts are responsible for not getting things finished (much like Congress.)

I always hate getting involved in civil cases because there's nothing I can do to help and I imagine  several officers felt the same way on your case. I can't imagine how much worse it is in California where they thrive on making more laws. It is extremely unfortunate that this happened to you. I remember seeing a story in the media back in the summer where someone from Florida had been deployed overseas and someone took up residence on his home as squatters and it took him a while to get his own home back. It's certainly not fair and squatting should be a criminal offense. I would be more than happy to jail someone for literally "stealing" a home. In Indiana, the definition of theft is "unauthorized control over another person's property with the intent to deprive the person of it's value," but it doesn't apply to squatting for some reason. I will never understand the court system and how it got so messed up. (While on my soap box, I will mention that one of the biggest reasons people aren't afraid to commit crimes is because there is no penalty. When a person is arrested for a crime and spend a few hours in jail to receive probation that they violate and receive only more probation, there is absolutely no reason not to do what they want and commit more crimes. God help us as it is only continue to get worse over the rest of our lifetimes.)

Good luck to you sir and look forward to a positive update.

I have been a cop for 13 years. Don't push it into the street. Look up the abandoned vehicle laws for your state and follow them. They are probably pretty simple. If you push it into the street and someone sees you and then there is an accident, guess who is getting sued? In Indiana, we deal with this all the time. Property owner calls PD. We tag it for 72 hours and attempt to contact last owner of info is available. After 72 hours you can have it towed off and then it is the tow companies problem. The $150 tow bill is a small price to pay to be legal.