All Forum Posts by: Kristine Eickman

Brock-I would be interested in hearing more about your duplex. Can you please contact me privately about it?

I own 2 successful vacation rental properties and am thinking about purchasing a local LTR to add to my list. Are there any MUST HAVE books that I should be picking up to learn about how it works?

Vacation rentals are a whole different animal and I know nothing about LTR and what goes along with it.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Kristine

Funny thing with the bank who is our lender. US Bank bought our loan and when we contacted them about a re-fi or HELOC, they said they could give one to us because they do not service that area. But you bought the loan for a home in the area that you don't service?

We have a mortgage, but the mortgage is only in myself and my husbands name.

We have a vacation rental home in Florida that does very well. The problem is that I entered into it 1 1/2 years ago with a partner who has done 0% to make it as successful as it is. It is all myself and my husband. So we have told the partner we want to buy them out as we do not feel it is fair to share 1/2 with them when they literally do nothing for it.

The problem is that the buy-out is going to happen January first and I cannot come up with all of the money in that short of time. Does anyone know of a way to finance this? We wanted to do a HELOC on the rental home but it looks like that is next to impossible and even if it is, it will not give me very much money at all. Should I be looking at a personal LOC or personal loan from a bank? Ideally we would love for the home to pay the bill for this since it is doing so well.

Sorry to sound so naive, this is the first rental property I have purchased.

I think it is an artifical raise in prices, that is my problem. All the other homes have been selling at these prices for months and months with really no uptick. But now this one house will change that. Am I kicking myself for not buying sooner, totally. But it is not for trying. Vacation homes are a totally different beast.

I totally agree with you actually, I blame the buyers. They were stupid to pay that much for that place when the others were selling for so much cheaper. I am just mad that this is going to mess with the comps and raise prices.

So I am trying to buy a home in a particular developement that has pretty equal amounts of regular sales and REO's and short sales. The regular homes are selling for $168,000-$177,000. These are vacation homes so they are sold fully furnished.

The short sales and bank owned have been selling for $140,000-155,000. Most completely stripped and some don't even have appliances. Here comes the issue.....there were two REO's that were Homepath Homes and both were listed at $189,000. Both sold but had not closed so I was not sure what they sold at. Well, the first one just came online and it sold for $180,000! Over the regular home sales! So now I am trying to put a "fair" offer in on a regular sale at $170,000 and my latest comp is a bank owned at $180,000. This is going to push prices even higher than they already are.

Any thoughts on this? Do they normally use REO's as comps on regular sales? Even if they don't - those who are looking to buy a SS or REO are screwed because their prices just jumped $25,000 overnight because of this stupid homepath house.

We put an offer in on a house last Saturday morning. We got a call that afternoon from our realtor that the seller signed and accepted another offer the night before but that they would keep our offer as a back-up. Ever since then, the house is still on the MLS and listed as with contract - waiting for earnest money. This would be the 4th business day since they signed the offer and the buyer still has not given them their earnest money?

We are ready to go and would have written a check for the earnest money right away after acceptace of our offer and we have financing all lined up already to go. We even sent them a pre-qual letter from our bank with our offer.

So as an agent, how long would you let this go before you would contact the back-up and start with them? We would really like to get this house but it kills me to keep seeing it just sitting there!

Thank you so much for clarifying this for me. I feel much better now. I do have an agent, she was just not availble for me at the moment and I knew the experts here would have some advice. Thanks again!

Kristine