All Forum Posts by: David Grabiner

Let me get this straight @David Dachtera is calling @Chris K. (an actual lawyer) a lay-person/newbie ?!?

 Thanks Chris for the points you made it is a shame there are FAR to many for David Dachtera to address. 

 It depends what your contingencies in your offer say. Really your relator should be the one telling you about what contingencies he can put in the offer but I will tell you a couple that are pretty standard that can be used to back out.

Inspection and due diligence period contingency, 15 days or whatever you want really during which time you can inspect the property and if you find something you can back out or reopen negotiations with the seller to reduce the price or fix the problems.  You can only use this contingency to back out if you do it within the time frame.  Once the period is done  you can't use it. 

Appraisal and financing contingency, this basically states that your purchase is contingent on the property appraising and you getting the financing to complete the deal. If you can't get financing then you can get out of the deal and get your earnest money back.

A note on your realtor he might be wanting in on the deal because your getting money from a private lender and he sees it as an opportunity to get a portion of a property without putting much money down. But if he hasn't talked to you about contingencies how good of a realtor is he?

Lastly I don't think it is a deal but I'm not a CA investor I know you all do it differently out there were most people just invest for appreciation. I will say this, if you get it for 660K then that is what it is worth it is not worth 700K if it was that would be the purchase price especially in a hot market with a multi bid situation.

Have you thought about paying someone a set fee per listing to do all the showings? Maybe someone who has a flexible work schedule or lots of free time. Like a young realtor who is just starting out and looking to make some extra bucks on the side.  Would it be worth it to you to pay someone $100 per listing do all the showings until you got it rented? That might even be cheaper than the monthly fee for the lockbox.

@Dianne Phelps So are you saying that all the joists were cut short and didn't connect to the joist band that runs around the outside of the house? instead they just connected it with plywood. So when the try to raise the joists the band on the outside of the house does not go up with it? If that is the case I could see why that is an expensive fix if the entire house was built like that.

@Jimmy Moncrief what kind of lending do you offer in the Chattanooga area? 

How about sell them both take all that money and put it in a couple of low cost index funds. You can expect a long term return of at least 8% which is more than you are getting on your rentals. You won't have any headaches, no debt, and it will be completely passive and if you need cash flow you, the math says a 4% withdrawal rate should last you until you die.

@Ian R. I understand the sellers agent dose not represent my interests and I am ok with that. I would rather have multiple sellers agents giving me pocket listings than one buyers agent. 

@Mike Cumbie

It doesn't surprise me that agents disagree with me, after all I'm cutting one agent out of a job. However, as serious investor I know this strategy has helped me get more and better deals then if I had used a buyer's agent. And from your description of moving pets and hiding meds it seems you are talking about owner occupied SFH. That isn't an area I invest in so we are talking about 2 different areas.

Just to add to it we also got 4 units from a sellers agent that never got listed because we bought 2 units through him prior to that.  And another sellers agent got us another 4 units at our price point by lowering her commission so our deal looked better to the seller then the competition. If though our offer was lower.

Despite what the restate agents are saying on here, you don't need a buyers agent. I have found the quickest way to get a realtors attention is to call them say you are investor and you don't have a buyers agent and you want to work directly with them. You will get preferential treatment, quicker and more accurate answers because they know they will make twice as much money if they sell to you.  And they will call you first when then get another listing because, you know, more money! We own 24 units and only used a buyers agent for 6 of them, and I can't see us ever using them again. Of course you have to be able to find deals yourself, but finding deals is so important I don't trust a buyers agent with that task anyways.