All Forum Posts by: Eric M.

I have zero specific knowledge of this other than knowing someone who has a house with a video game addiction program out in the country where no one knows and no one cares....but my gut says you would have zero chance of doing this with a townhome lease because on top of every state, county, city and ward issue you will need to navigate, you have the homeowners association and very close neighbors who will raise holy hell. I have never seen condo or homeowners declarations/by-laws that would allow such a use.

And my guess is you have next to no chance of doing it with a SFH lease. You would have to disclose everything and I just can't imagine a landlord signing off on it. Heck, it is often impossible to get them to accept a dog, let alone random people in rehab. I guess if the rent and deposits were high enough, maybe, but then the numbers would probably push you to owning. Though there may be mortgage difficulties too.

I think its an achievable and maybe very profitable venture but you are going to need to own your property, not lease.

You are not particularly clear with the scenario. First of all, there is a lot of competition so maybe buying 2 is doing well. These things go in waves.

You say you are beat by cash offers but are you saying they are not offering a higher price? My guess is you are being beat by higher price offers which just happen to be cash. If they have cash their holding costs may be less than yours and thus they can pay higher prices.

If you are getting beat by lower price offers that are cash, then maybe you need to look closely. You say HML and conventional but IMO those are very different. Which are you using? As a seller, I view conventional with pre-approval as nearly the same as cash. The only thing cash sometimes helps is speed of close.

HML is VERY different. HML's cannot be trusted to close, IMO. Are you actually using conventional with an investor?

So yes, HML could be a huge issue but I would guess price is your main issue and there maybe other issues like contingencies or speed of closing that may be a bigger issue than just financing source.

Well, you cleaned it up well. Good job.

Nice. Am impressed with the speed of the work. My flips are DRAGGING this summer. 

In my experience, that is not a hoarder house...it's a normal messy foreclosure. Hoarders stack to the ceiling!!

Hopefully all of you know that HD matches the Menards 11% rebates when they have them (past several weeks in a row). Only in Menards markets.

I buy a lot from Home Depot and their rebates are good and bad. Good in that they can be redeemed online but bad that you get a gift card for every receipt and I end up with stacks of cards for $1-2, but that's not the issue.

As I said, I do a lot of receipts so I just submitted and trusted them.
The issue I have is that I had noticed the dollar amounts of the gift cards weren't adding up to the receipts I thought I was submitting.  So I decided to do a test and write down the tracking number on each large receipt and follow up. 

What I found was pretty disturbing. Basically HD is committing fraud. I discovered that they were rejecting every single receipt of mine over $90. Every receipt under $90 went through fine and every one over said rejected because of "invalid receipt amount" implying that I had entered the wrong total. 

I am working with customer service now and they are apologizing and fixing it but I have no idea how many hundreds of dollars they have shorted me.

Wondered if anyone else keeps track of their HD rebates and if you have noticed this same scam?

You should start your own thread instead of reply to one that is 2 years old.

If you have a few houses it is worth your while to learn about taxes and the appeals process. I do all my own appeals. No need to pay someone else a third unless it is a very complex big money situation where you need some "clout".

It is not complicated. Take an afternoon and read the assessor website. If you know how to do comps, you can file an effective appeal in an hour.

I just filed one yesterday. 

If you don't understand how they are calculated, call the Tax payer advocate to ask. If you ask, they actually will give you a lot of information. 

That said, south suburban C and D areas like Chicago Heights are terrible for taxes. Their tax base is deteriorating and so the prop taxes as a percentage of value are often wayyyy out of whack. Some people are good about appealing and others are not, so you get a wide variation in assessed values.

The keys are:

-knowing when the appeal window is open. COVID is messing with those windows.

-being persistent. Appeal every time. Don't accept the first decision. Always ask for a hearing.

This is a game you will be playing with the assessor for the entire time you own the homes (I am still appealling properties after I have sold them)  so it is to your advantage to get good and knowledgeable about the game.

They want to remove because they aren't paying rent. Just changing the locks is considered an eviction, which is not allowed.

When you are comfortable disclosing, I would be interested in seeing the details and numbers of this deal. I don't think I have ever seen a deal that actually adds value by splitting a SFH into a multi. In my area, it is always the other way around. You add ARV by converting to SFH. Adding units, yes, splitting units yes, building new multis, yes, renovating multis, yes. But deconverting to SFH vs rehab as SFH I haven't personally seen as max use of the property. Maybe just because I have never looked!

I can envision a time (years ago) and possibly a scenario where it might make sense, just haven't actually seen it and would be interested.

Depends what you mean by "foreclosed". But, it rarely works like that anymore. If you mean the house went through FC process and is now REO, then it will be listed with REO brokers. The most efficient way to sell them is list them on the MLS. Some banks in the old days maintained a list but I don't know any who do anymore.

If you know the lender try to google for their loss mitigation dept and call, but 99% you are wasting your time.

If you mean it is at some other point in FC process other than REO, then the answer is different. Many people think pre-foreclosure is "foreclosed".

Thank you, it is indeed very strange. You would think with guys being so busy and charging premium prices that there would be cushion but there never seems to be. These GC's are always over extended.

I made the mistake of lending money to one of my GC's for his personal project. It was supposed to be just until he got his draw from his lender. Turns out he had already promised that draw money to another lender so I am getting paid late in pieces and probably getting money he has promised to other lenders. Kind of a ponzi.

And meanwhile, when he is behind in payments to me, he doesn't really want to be in my presence working on my project. Communication has deteriorated.

One of the subs got COVID and everyone abandoned the project for 2 weeks and got busy elsewhere and it was hell getting them back. 10 week project is on 12 weeks and only half done.

Other GC's have other health issues or can't keep up with work. It's crazy.

I can afford to be patient but that patience just seems to push me to the back of the line.

Inspectors have been surprisingly good though.