All Forum Posts by: Bob R.

@Jason Hartley

I haven't seen anything recently, I posted this a while back when I was using the trial period for testing out buildium, I ended up using rentec.  I agree with you though, I think they are on the fast track to be in the same space as appfolio for much larger PM's.  I think it's unfortunate that they started at such a low price almost seeming to cater to mom and pop landlords with 10's of units, to quickly accelerate to price those people out.

I'm doing some rehab on an SFH that we're about to put on the market for rent.

A friend of ours told us about a friend of theirs and recommended them to us.  The potential tenant is currently renting a home and has been in good standing for 4-5 years.  The owner of the house died, the house is criminally underwater, deed transferred to unsuspecting ex-wife of owner and she plans on letting it foreclose since ex-wife thought she had nothing to do with this house any longer.  The tenant started making her rent payments to the ex-wife upon the landlord passing.  ex-wife has been taking them and basically warning the tenant "I don't know how long you'll be able to stay here"...

So in any case, the tenant is on the hunt, and we spoke with her about our place coming on line and its in a neighborhood near hers.  she's excited because rental inventory is low around here.  

She is a single mother with an adult daughter that has just graduated high school and i think will be going to community college.  From talking with the friend who recommended her I don't think there will be any issue with income/credit/background check (the fact that she started paying the ex-wife in the above scenario was a gold star in our eyes).  I think she could end up being a long term, low-fuss tenant.

We've never rented to anyone with an adult child lik ethis that we intend on getting an application from and running the background check and standard stuff on both and putting them both on the lease.

My question is do you hold the adult child (or any other adult co-applicant in other scenarios) to the credit score limit of your criteria??  I'm pretty sure the kid doesn't have credit history...

http://imgur.com/TmdzF1l

here's a screenshot of the message in buildium

It's definitely going up to $60/mo.  I can take a screenshot for anyone who doubts.

Their response doesn't even confirm that current month to month prices won't go up.  All I read from this is lock in the current price with annual payment to guarantee the lower rate until that year's up...

Their response:

sooo....

I can't see it mentioned anywhere on the main website of bulidium or anywhere else, but I just created a buildium trial account because I'm thinking of signing up and there is a banner in the trial area that says something along the lines of 

"pricing alert! buildiums minimum pricing will increase to $60/mo on Jan 18 2016.  Join today to lock in the current price of $40 for up to 40 units"

so it seems like it's about to go up for new customers in about a week??  So if you were thinking of signing up, might want to think fast.

They make it sound as if the price for current users won't go up...gonna try to confirm that with support.  If anyone knows who is a current customer or has heard about the increase, please chime in.

I only have a couple of units but can see the value of a system like buildium, but man... they just increased prices like a year ago to some strong uproar, but that was across the board i think, maybe now they're increasing, but grandfathering current customers in?

Buildium seems like a very nice solution, but i'm kinda scared to sign up now for fear they'll just keep on increasing and I'll be hooked into it...

rent being charged is 1100, but the rents for the area should be a little higher probalby around 1350

So an acquaintance of mine rents their home.   Their landlord passed away.  The landlords ex-wife is named on the mortgage, but not on the deed.  It's in probate now but the expectation is that because she's on the mortgage the house will be deeded to her.  She was not expecting this and does not want to keep the house.  The acquaintance is paying the rent to the ex-wife and starting to look for a new place.  The ex-wife has talked with the bank about doing a deed in lieu when the time comes, but i don't think that is allowed with deed in lieus because i think that only works as your primary residence as far as I understand and even if it did i think the amount would be taxed as income so she'd have an unexpected tax bill.

The house is under water.  The mortgage was a 10 year arm with wells fargo.  The mortgage amount is ~174k.  the house is worth roughly about 145k currently.  The bubble for the arm is in april of 2017.

The tenant (acquaintance) would want to stay if something was worked out.  The tenant would maybe even be interested in purchasing it or doing a lease/option situtaion.  They have their own longstanding business and great credit, but have been denied loans from lenders recently due to  some debt on the business.

This seems like a crazy situation, I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to profit here, but other than negotiating a shortsale i can't see it.  

My wife is a realtor, but never done a short sale.  Anyone able to see some way to work this situation?  or no real opportunity here?

yeah! and if so send them to me! ;-)

got a hud bid accepted, under contract, paying cash, investor bid, got an inspection...it's a relatively new house (2009) in a neighborhood that still has new houses going up.

We have a little over 2 weeks left to close and hud contacts my agent and says the neighbor called and is claiming the properties fence is encroaching on their yard by a little.  We went by and looked at it again and i could see that on the side shared with this neighbor it's about 30 feet of fence along the line, the front end looks fine, but you can see as it goes to the back of the yard it could be going into their yard by the end of the fence by maybe a foot or 2.  We talked with the neighbor and they said they had an old survey from over a year ago when they were thinking of installing a fence when they noticed this.  the previous owner ignored them and the house foreclosed and they've been trying to get ahold of bank, or listing agent and nobody returns calls appratently until when we get it under contract.  We asked her to email us the survey, she said she would but she hasn't.  Hud said that they've been in contact with her and she had promised to email them her survey as proof but they say they haven't gotten it yet either.

So...we were not planning on getting a survey, but after this was brought up seems like we need to.  The thing is we got such a good deal, I would close on it one way or another including this encroachment issue.

My question is, since it was hud that alerted us to this, should we rush to get a survey quickly before closing? or should we just go ahead and close and deal with it at our leisure. The main thing i'm looking for is would something like this get us a credit from hud to close with the encroachment issue acknowledged?  I know hud won't fix "regular" stuff usually, but would this be something we could get hud to escrow some repair money for even though it was investor bid?

Thanks in advance BP!

 I think you meant to say you will not be able deduct "losses" against other types of income in a year you make over 150k.  You will however be able to carry forward the "loss" until you either sell the property or earn less than 150k in a year (it's a gradual transition from 100k to 150k for the amount of rental loss you can claim against other income).

So if you buy cash and are cashflowing like mad, there's a good chance your depreciation and expenses could still be deducted from the rental income and you still have cashflow earnings left over.  If your depreciation + expenses is greater than the rental income, the excess "loss" will have to be carried forward until sale or your MAGI (i think it's magi) is below 150k.

Seems like IRS doesn't want high income earners to be able to lower their high bracket taxes by buying up a bunch of real estate to reduce their other taxable income unless it has to do with that actual investment.

Not a tax professional :)