All Forum Posts by: Gregory Guillet

My wife and I are just starting out.  We have an idea of what we want to do but need to get our team together.  Looking for recommendations for a real estate friendly attorney, accountant and lender in the western Wisconsin, Hudson, WI area.  We are 20 minutes away from Minneapolis/St.Paul.  All recommendations are greatly appreciated!

Hi,

If you are claiming a rental property as your residence, how long to you have to live there before you can move out and rent it.

Also, if you're not planning on selling that property how long before you can refi? Is it a year or is it different with different lenders.

Thanks for you input,

Lesley

trying to obtain info on the best places to search for a hard lender starting off in the real estate investing business. Any tips are welcome as well. I was told to not go with any hard lender that wants you to use any of your own money or wants to check your credit. Seems like it limits the availability from what I searched to be able to start off as a new investor.

Hey BP,

My home that i currently live in i purchased for about 80k in North Carolina using a VA Loan. I have only lived in this house for about 6 months and only plan to be here for another 2 years. At that time i will be moving to another state due to being in the Military. My nextdoor neighbor has live in this neighborhood for over 20 years and told me that my house has been bought and sold multiple times and that it always sells for very close to the 80k that i bought it for.

My question is...If i want to get the most profit out of this house what options do i have? Should i start improving the house and try to raise the value, in an attempt to sell it for more when i leave in a few years? Or should i plan to hold on to the house and rent it out? 

Not that we are super experienced but if we hadn't taken classes this is something we may have fallen for. 

Recently we found a house for sale by owner on Zillow. We contacted the seller and received a text back that it was still available for the price of $50k..he just wanted to sell it to pay off his mortgage. We looked up the history of the home and they had purchased the property in 1999 for $200k so it was possible they only owed 50k and just wanted to get rid of it. 

The guy's story was that he and his wife had already moved to Virginia and needed to sell the home. They were currently renting it out we should do a drive by and make sure we were really interested before he puts out his tenants. Fair enough. So we drove by and were very interested, the the place looked great so we wanted to get it under contract to show were were serious and we would do our due dilligence after we secured the property and back out if there were any huge issues. 

I wrote up a contract including a $100 deposit and sent it to him to sign at the email he provided. The email was the first and last name of the deed holder at yahoo.com. The fact that we couldn't seem to get this guy on the phone was a bit of a red flag but we hadn't put any money down or locked ourselves into anything so we'd proceed with caution. He also had a phone number from Nevada which was odd but in doing research I found that the couple who owned the house got married in Vegas so there was a small Nevada connection. 

We waited for the contract to come back signed. Instead he asked when we could provide $1000 check so that he could hold the house for us. We explained that we wouldn't send him money directly because we had no proof this was legit and asked for his lawyer's contact information which he provided. We would put the money in an escrow account and he'd get it when we closed. He said okay but still didn't send the signed contract. A couple hours later he asked about the deposit again like we had never had the previous conversation. Some people are slow so we explained again about the lawyers, escrow, blah, blah. 

Still no contract so we were pretty sure something was up (as we were suspicious of the whole time) so we called the number he gave us for his lawyer and no one answered. He then called us and could barely speak english and the connection was terrible. We knew then 100% that it was a scam but decided to mess with him anyway. We asked him for a copy of his drivers license. He sent some picture of a Texas driver's license with the name Chris Osborne, a picture of an older fellow and a birthdate of 1975. He called us a few more times and we told him we knew it was a scam and we were going to report him. He got angry and eventually text'd "Mugu!". We googled it and found this was a Nigerian term for "you fool". So he called himself out.

I called the real deed holders to warn them that someone was trying to sell their home and they were thankful we called. We never sent the money and never would have but there are probably many out there who wouldn't know any better and may have sent whatever amount he asked for that they would never see again.

Good Afternoon, I am currently analyzing a property management deal. I have all my notes and numbers. My question is can anyone recommend a proposal template I can use as guide to submit a professional proposal. Thanks

I've got software development chops, so if you have ideas, I can make it happen.

As you were previously a game designer, I'm sure you are very thorough, but here are my thoughts.

If you have a lot of buyers with cash, you might want to look into marketing targeted at banks. I've read about a couple people who have done this and the banks will send them all of their new properties first, before even listing them.

Also, maybe if you think more about who these motivated sellers are.   Money from the sale may not be their first priority.  They are not going to fill out a form if they see you as a hungry shark looking to devour their house full of memories.  You are going to match them with buyers/investors who share their values and will treat their property with dignity and respect(whether that is true or not).  Testimonials from other sellers you have worked with would probably be invaluable in establishing trust and getting clicks.

Since you want sellers who don't have agents yet, target your advertising as though you are a local agent.  Real Estate agents aren't, generally in my experience, the most tech savvy people in the world, so you may be able to dominate local targeted marketing.

And, just as a disclaimer, I have no idea what I'm talking about, this is just how I would attack the problem.

If you think I sound competent, I have some more ideas that may help optimize marketing strategies.

Easy question here, I hope. I just started renting out my first house and Im trying to find out what tax documents I need to file when i collect the monthly rent. Im assuming I need to fill those docs out monthly. Is this correct?

If anyone could give me some advice on the advantages and disadvantages of having a rental property with a pool, I would greatly appreciate it!

Warmest regards,

Matthew Fragassi