All Forum Posts by: Dan Stehr

Hello, I am St. Louis investor.  I own a lot of rentals and active flips in North County.  What do you need help with?  

Good point. Probably best to stay off the board in these situations to avoid any potential conflicts. With majority ownership voting rights you would have a lot of sway on HOA dues, rule/declaration changes, and which board members get elected. Hard part is trying to get anyone else to run for the board.

Actual apartment complexes with the same cap rate sell for much more than the current combined condo values, which is the purpose behind deconversions.  Overall it would be much better for all existing owners to agree on converting and sell as an apartment, but very hard to get that many people to agree on anything.

The target condo complex is close to 100% owned by investors currently and investors have trouble with loans.  The thought process is to buy as many as possible at close to market rate with cash.  Any remaining holdouts I would assume you would need to pay double or triple market rates.  I believe the magic number is 75% ownership before you can essentially force a deconversion and convert the complex into an apartment complex.  All this is legal and done all the time.  Just looking for someone with experience.  Any other owners who refuse to sell would get a big payout at the conversion.   

Has anyone attempted to purchase all the units in a condo complex before?  Once I identify a good condo for investment I try to buy multiple in the same complex.  There is one complex in particular that I believe units are undervalued and I was thinking of reaching out to all owners and trying to buy them all as long term rentals.  Does anyone have any experience in doing this?  If so, do you have any strategies you can recommend?  Below are some ideas I had:

1. Run for President of the HOA
2. Try to increase HOA dues and reserves
3. HOA aggressively foreclose on past due HOA dues and buy them at auction
4. Try to prevent any MLS sales by making owners aware of my intentions and reaching out to them directly
5. Try to disqualify complex for conventional/FHA financing due to owner/investor ratio rules
6. After disqualified reach out to all owners at the same time and offer to purchase
7. Continue to purchase units off MLS if any become available

Any thoughts or recommendations?

I would recommend Meyer Real Estate in St. Charles County.  They are the best I have worked with.  For St. Louis County or St. Louis City try Renter's Warehouse.  They are a national company and have done a decent job on a couple of my rentals as well.

Sure.  Shoot me your email address and I will send it your way.  The City Tax Sale 206 map and list just came out.  I do pay for mapline, but I think there are free versions without the route optimization feature.  I buy a lot of foreclosures and tax liens in Missouri.  I use moforeclosure.com for the foreclosure lists, county/city websites for tax sale lists, and mapline.com to map properties and routes.  Moforeclosure.com and mapline.com cost money, but are well worth it in time savings.  The attorney maps are free, but for me the route optimization and ability to quickly add/remove properties from the map is worth the extra cost. 

Several local attorneys send out the mapping for free.  They deal with all the quiet title suits and send out the free maps to try to get new clients.  You can get the lists themselves from the city and county websites for free as well.  There are also mapping services online like mapline.com that I use.  It will not only map the properties for you it can also map out the most efficient driving route.  It comes in handy when you have to drive by a couple hundred properties.  

Missouri is a judicial and non-judicial foreclosure state.  It is the same for all counties in the state.  The majority of sales are non-judicial, which just means it doesn't have to go through the courts.  All sales are required to be posted in the local paper.  In the paper they are required to post the legal description of the property, book/page of deed of trust, date/time of sale, and location of the sale.  Prior to buying anything you need to pull title (hire someone or do it yourself).  Second mortgages are foreclosed on all the time and have no impact on the first.  The best resource to obtain the list of sales in KC is www.moforeclosure.com.

Here is a website that shows all the trustee sales across the entire state of Missouri ->   www.moforeclosure.com    This is the only website I've found that has this data.  

I am currently paying around $330 per window installed in St. Louis.  The problem is the lead time.  It is currently around 3 months where it used to only be about 2 weeks.  If you need any local referrals let me know.