All Forum Posts by: David Dey

in a nutshell, yes you may have a deal.  Have they started a probate to get the property into their name?  If they haven't, you may have an absolute gold mine on your hands.  

It could be that they don't have the money or the desire to actually do a probate in which case they may take a larger discount just for their interest in the deal and you do your own probate as the owner of their interest.

They may accept 5-10k for their interest in the estate.  You will need to know who all are heirs.  ( ex: 4 heirs equals, you may have only bought 25% of the interest, etc.) so do your homework.

 Our group did over 600 houses in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.  

During that time we learned the local and fema remedy for mold.  Gallon of bleach water with a small bottle of dish detergent, put into a pump sprayer.

The bleach kills the mold and the dish detergent keeps the bleach attached to the walls or beams if you have to remove the drywall.

We have used this system over and over, both in NOLA and in FL, where we do the work then call a remediation company to test.  We always get a clean bill of health.

@Seth Wilson said it best.  Or more specifically, Seth reiterated the investor mentality perfectly.

At one point I made a campaign where I went into the property appraiser/assessor office, (in many areas you can do this online) and received a list of all the duplexes in my county.  

Yes, the property appraiser has a database of every single property and property type in that county.  They have this info so they can charge taxes.  And since it is the government that has this information, it is public record and you can have it too.

My rational was that, I would market to this specific list because this was a list of investors.  (It doesn't matter if you are renting both sides or "house hacking" as the cool kids on BP call it, and living in one side and renting the other, both are investors in mentality)  

In marketing to investors, I removed most of the emotional entanglements that I would address with single family owners.  Investors, cash flowers or house hackers, all have one mentality in common, "everything is for sale for the right price."

Additionally, I would sort the list to show longest term owners as they would have the most equity to play with and out of state owners, who would be most willing to sell.

Over all this was an awesome campaign and we got a lot of deals done.

 You just stepped into your best and passingly only chance at selling these suckers I your statement.

Talking to the owners.

Get a list of every owner in this complex.  You will see a number of them with multiple units, (like your owner, I assume) reach out to them and see if they want this package. 

As my mentor always used to say, "you can market all over the world, but your real buyer is just a stone's throw away."

Heck, you may be able to sell them to a regular buyer in there that wants to choose their own neighbor.  

 you should be able to look up sales in your neighborhood on your county's property appraiser/assessor site to see if the price point is good or not.  

If not, get a good realtor to pull all the sales for mfr in your area.  (Let's say in a 2 mile radius)  

1)  you'll know the price point investors are paying in your area.

2)  you can look up those sales on your property appraiser/assessor site and see who was in those transactions.  (I'm assuming that mfr stands for multi family residential, in which case, every single sale that is pulled up will be your potential buyer in the fact that anyone buying an mfr has to be an investor whether they're renting both sides or house hacking. (as the trendy kids on BP call it)

You don't need a bigger buyer's list, you need a closer buyer's list.  My mentor taught me long ago, "you can market all over the world but your real buyer is just a stone throw away."

So by looking up the investors who have bought just a mile or 2 away, you are finding your real buyer.

I have had varying levels of success in this area.  

I have been able to create some really good opportunities but have also hit dead ends.  

Use some of these tricks to see if they will help.

Contact the big bank REO Dept. If it's a newer one. They will not deal with you direct but will tell you who they are hiring for their realtor. I have used this trick on a number of occasions to find the agent before he/she even knew she was going to be the agent.

By doing this, I was able to influence the sale price as a pocket listing that I created.

If it is an older Reo that is part of the "shadow inventory," look up the address in the property appraisers site and see where the tax bill is going.  It may be going to the home office but many times it is going to some obscure location. Do a reverse search on that address and you may get to the right group that handles that property.  

The address many times will go to the mailing address of the foreclosing attorney.  I would also try calling them as they may have the ear of a decision maker at the bank.  I have done this a couple of times and they have offered to forward my offer if I put it in writing.  (Truth is in the couple of cases that I called the atty, it was a passing fancy on that deal and I got distracted by another shiny object deal and never sent the offer in writing so I don't know how effective it will be.... But they did offer so you might as well try it)

I have had success with the other approaches to varying degrees so try them and see how

Much mileage you get.

 Craig, you are getting great advice already and I think you'll probably get all the info you need.  

However, I had to respond to this part of the post.

The best advice I can give you is, have a back up plan. 

This year has been one of my best years in terms of volume of deals.  This is in no small part, thanks to a multi million dollar hedge fund specializing in FL tax certificates, but had no back up plan for when they actually got the property.

You see, this fund spent millions of dollars buying these certificates with the intention of making a great return on their investment.  They expected that the owner would eventually pay the taxes or some investor would buy the property at tax deed sale.

This happened 80-90% of the time, however they never made any contingency plan on the chance that they would end up with the property.  

As a result they ended up with almost 200 homes in very rough condition.  (Keep in mind that a lot can happen in the 4 years it takes before one can apply for the tax deed and these properties had to be real dogs in order to not be bid on by investors)  They had no exit strategy and almost all of the homes ended up with code enforcement lie and some of the homes ended up being demolished before we got to them.

We ended up taking a contract on 185 properties around FL and have succeeded in getting these homes off of their books but for pennies on the dollar and are now their exclusive liquidation arm, but had we not come around, they would have ended up losing everything on those homes. 

Yes, it's true that 80-90% of their deals ended up being profitable but those liens and judgements could become problematic for future transactions and you're definitely not doing yourself any favors in making enemies with the municipality for not taking care of your properties.

The best advice I can give you is this, especially as an individual doing this where every deal counts.  Do your due diligence and build an exit on each property as if you are going to buy it, because in the end you just might.

 Yes, as a quit claim deed, you may sell with clouds in the title.  The main thing is disclosure, and they have to understand all ramifications.

The name of the game used to be location location location, now it's disclosure disclosure disclosure.

@Jennifer Tan @Brett Youngster there is a site you can go to that will take you to public records anywhere in the country.

http://publicrecords.netronline.com

Click on the desired state on the map, then click on the county.

Then click on go to data online for the desired site.

The property appraiser/assessor site will give you ownership info, sales info and property info.

The clerk of courts/register of deeds will tell you about mortgages, liens, foreclosures, etc.

Tax collector should give you the info on if the taxes are current.

Hope this helps.

Full disclosure, I posted this in another thread but I think it applies here so I am copying and pasting it to this one, as I haven't figured out how to put the link to just my post:

I tell people that I have a story that was built for late night television. With all due respect to those who say you must have money to start(or at least your own), I think I may be the mythbuster to his scenario that the no money start is a myth.

When I first started, it was 5 adults and 3 dogs living in a motel room. 23 years old, No job, no cash, bad credit. We had been evicted from our apt, (long story) and I was giving blood on a weekly basis for food money, to the point my veins finally collapsed and I was no longer allowed to give.

It was at this point, on one of many sleepless nights, at 3 o'clock in the morning, that an older silver haired investor spoke to me through my television.

"You too can be a real estate millionaire with no money down," Carlton Sheets said to me.

Maybe it was the fact that I had no other prospects, maybe it was the fact that it was at 3 am, and everything sounds amazing at 3 o'clock in the morning ,(I'm not even allowed to have a credit card after midnight anymore) but his message really resonated with me.

"Yes I wanted to be a real estate millionaire, and no I didn't have any money," so this was a perfect fit!!

I was so excited that I grabbed my checkbook, which had just $235 (or so I thought) and made the call and bought the course with my check by phone.

However, little did I know that my brother had made the weekly payment for our motel room and had not informed me, so the check bounced.

Somehow, through some miracle, (and also a crappy fulfillment company) the course still arrived.

Over the next few weeks, I followed up with the company to try and pay them for the course but they just couldn't find me in the system. 18 years later, over a thousand deals completed and millions made, I still owe Carlton 200 bucks. (If any of you know him, I'd gladly make good)

I'd love to tell you that once I got the course, it was smooth sailings. Unfortunately, that only happens in the infomercials.

For the next 7 months everything seemed to go from bad to worse. Our arrangement was that 2 of our 5 worked at a local restaurant and covered the bills while my brother and I worked the system. The problem was the dirty old guru secret, it's as simple as they say, just not as easy. (Especially when you have nothing to work with) The bills kept piling up, the tips weren't really covering everything, one after another deal, fell through, and to make matters worse, the only car we had, (but were months behind on the payments) was repossessed.

Back in those days cell phones were a luxury, and definitely didn't have unlimited minutes. Craigslist, realtor.com, and frankly online public records had not been heard of, so pay phones, the real estate photo guide, and the classifieds were my resources.

Daily, I would take the bus to the northside Barnes and Nobles in Lakeland. The payphone in the back was my office phone and the cafe in the front was my office. I would scour the newspaper classifieds right in the store and make daily calls to the possible sellers that listed their homes along with calls to any mtg company in the yellowpages that mentioned private or hard money. (Yes, Carlton's course had a few paragraphs that addressed private money, however he didn't really say how to find it or secure it) I devoured every book I could find in the store on creative real estate investing. (I couldn't afford the books but I read them there)

Offers were made, contracts were signed, money was found, but I just couldn't seem to get the system to come together and the deal would slip through my hands. I must've made 100's of offers through those 6-7 months. Every day I would go out in hope and every night I would come back to the motel room dreading to see the hopeful look on my comrades faces as they would ask if I had got a deal done or about done, and I would have to answer, "not yet."

After 6 months of trial and error, the stress became too much for most of us. The three roommates approached my brother and I with the news that they were throwing in the towel and were moving back to Va., and who could blame them?

Now my brother and I were on our own. We had used up every favor, beg borrowed and... No not stole, but used every resource a our disposal to survive the next few weeks and I decided we needed some kind of job.

I got 2 jobs. One as a evening caller for the Fraternal order of Police. (Yes those guys that call you for the donations that get you a decal from the cops that allow you to run every GREEN light in town)

The second was night security/janitor for the Carpenters Home Church. (A huge 10k seat church that was very well known in central FL)

This still allowed me to make some calls during the day on the church phone. (Saved some quarters)

During one of those days of calls, I came across a classified ad selling a handyman duplex for 25k. When I called the seller, it turned out to be a person I had met months earlier during a different biz venture at the local flea market that I had treated well.

We got to talking and after a good repor building conversation, It turned out that he was pretty wealthy and didn't need the money. He just had this duplex that he had owned for years and had neglected for quite awhile and just needed to get rid of it.

Using all the great knowledge I'd gleened from both the Carlton Sheets course material and all the books I read, I fell back to the one concept I had understood, the first second finance.

"If I give you 16k down, would you Cary back 9k in a second?" I asked.

He thought about it for a few minutes then, because he liked me and because he didn't really need the money, he responded, "sure."

Now I had a contract on this amazing duplex, worth about 40k for 25 with the seller carrying 9k in a second, where was I going to get the 16k?

I called all the contacts I had made over the last 6-7 months and got the same answer I had received for the last 6-7 months.

"You don't have any skin in the game." "You have bad credit, etc, etc."

Dejected, I was at a loss. I had no idea where I was going to find the money.

That's when I met my Walter Riddle.

I had seen another classified that was marketing a package of 5 duplexes for 150k (this was the 90's guys) and so of course I called him.

Walter answered and within 5 minutes I knew that I wasn't the buyer for these properties. (He wanted all cash) We did however continue our conversation and again, built a great repor.

It was somewhere around that time that I mentioned the fact that I had this deal on a duplex I was looking for funding on.

"Actually, I'm a mortgage broker too that only works with private lenders," Walter informed me.

"This property sounds like a good deal." "If you want, I'd love to check it out."

I was flabbergasted!! Had I known that he was a private money guy, I would have probably blown the whole thing, but because I didn't, I was able to build a relationship and here was this guy going to fund my deal!! (And that boys and girls is a course in its self)

Long story short, (yeah a little late for that) he looked at the deal and agreed to lend me 18k. "You're going to need some money for closing costs," he instructed.

"You'll also need a couple bucks to touch the place up to get the one vacant side rent ready."

When we closed the deal, I actually walked away from the table with a check for a little more than $800. This was more money than I'd seen in one place in a long time!!

I took the check, rode the bus to the bank and cashed it into small bills. I brought that money home to the weekly mobile home rental we had been demoted to, walked in and threw the money on the bed. I showed the money to my brother, who's eyes widened in awe of this kings ransom. Then we both took turns rolling in the dough!!

By the end of that year with Walter's backing, we had bought and closed on a total of 34 rental units. That gave us a good enough income to move out of that rat pee smelling trailer and into a 3/2 2500 sqft log cabin, (rental) and then a year later, into a 4300 sqft 7br 51/2 ba, 4300 sqft home that looks like something out of loghome living.

Which btw, we had found a year earlier in a real estate photo guide while we were still in our motel room and had marked down as dream house...

But that's another story!!