All Forum Posts by: Dean Weltman

Hi Hank,

I have used an Old Republic office near Hebron and Midway. They've been helpful. I'll send you their info.

I don't recall if I ever did any investment for stuff with them. When shopping around for a title company you should ask them how they feel about doing things like double closings, assignments, subject 2's, etc...

The worst tenant I ever had was a friend of the family. He stopped paying rent, but eviction wasn't so easy to do. I finally kicked him out and then I even came over and helped him move. Despite all that he still acted as if he was the victim. 

Don't forget that if the house is worthless and you're just buying the lot, it's not worth what the county says it is. There's some figuring involved regarding what it would cost to build a house to the square footage that would achieve the market average for that area.

But at a minimum you need to figure in the cost of demolition, which I'm guessing would be around $7k to $10k, just looking at the pictures and over-estimating a bit. That demo cost should come off the price of the lot.

Even if you replaced the house with a small thousand sqft at only about $60/ft, that's $60,000. Add in the $10k+ for demo, plans, permits, etc... Now your at an easy $70k, plus the lot and whatever other costs you may have incurred, you're at or over the $100k target. And obviously, no investor is going to all that trouble just to break even or lose money...

Even if it's not a tear down I think she's probably asking too much... Something to think about. 

I enjoyed meeting everyone there. I will definitely do it again.

@Hank A. - I don't think Troy is on BP. He was asking a lot of questions about BP, and he mentioned that he was accompanying a BP'er to our meeting, but his friend had to cancel at the last minute. 

Depending on the appraisal district, they usually show the mailing address for the owner, so you want to key-in on the ones that have a different mailing address.

Also, there are services that mail postcards, yellow letters, etc., that have databases you can access. You can give them the parameters you want to search for (age of home, absentee owners, years of ownership, geographic area, floorplan, etc) and they'll do the rest. Personally, I have never used such a service, but they're on here. If you're interested in something like that I suggest you do some searches for 'postcards' and 'yellow letters.'

Good luck! 

I'm curious why anyone would go to the trouble of posting that...

Mark, sent you a text. 

 I doubt anyone would pay to get out of it. Cheaper to let the county take it to auction. 

But I agree about the possibility of the lot being worth more than some think. The county lot value means little in some cases. I recently bought an old house in an up and coming area to tear it down. In reality, I was buying the lot, even though the previous owner was selling the house... Really depends on the area. 

You're probably right. The tax man went out there and saw that the amount owed them was more than it was worth and they're sitting on their hands waiting for someone to improve the property. No sense taking it now and having to do basic maintenance while you hold it until you can sell for a fraction of what is owed. 

Or, the county just screwed up and the property slipped through the cracks... Like ten times. 

I use MeetUp and Google to find them. Seems like most are on MeetUp these days, but never neglect doing a good Google search.