All Forum Posts by: Christian Malesic

Can you please point to the resource or post here for all to know how to do this.

It does work if you have your own buyer's agent and tell every seller's agent in town that you are buying. You further let them know who your buyer's agent is and pass out their business cards.

After you get a good reputation, you simply pick up the phone and make calls to all of these seller's agents when you are in buying mode.

They love it! They come to your buyer's agent and unload their list. You put in offers. Both agents make money. Seller sells. You buy.

YES. It is THE BIBLE for Residential Construction.

Having said that, not every contractor even knows it exists. Not every judge, has ever heard of it. But, it is THE STANDARD nonetheless.

Example 1: Is 'level' perfectly level? No. Last time I checked 1/16th of an inch 'out of level' over 10' is considered 'level'

Example 2: Hair line cracks in parging are acceptable. (parging is the concrete mixture smeared over block or brick or stone). The field rule-of-thumb is that if you can place a penny in the crack (on end, of course) it needs to be redone.

The list goes on. Again, this is generally meant for new construction or remodeling, not to be used as a buying guide for older properties.

I have not had your EXACT situation, but the basic same thing has happened numerous times... it is extremely frustrating.

There really is only one thing (of which I am aware) that you CAN do. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

If they need copies... take it to Kinko's or Staples and make copies.

To heck with the couriers to run across town for $50 that takes 2 days. you do it for free in 10 minutes.

Call. Be persistent. Draw that fine line between a nag and a squeaky wheel. Show up! Say, "I will wait" and sit there waiting. It is always harder to get rid of a body.

This is not going to work when the office is across the country, but for everything locally, it will.

It is hard to tell from your post if these cracks are acceptable or not. There are 'acceptable' and non-acceptable' cracks by industry standard. This is according to the book, Residential Construction Performance Guidelines, 3rd Ed.-Contractor's Reference which can be found on the National Association of Home Builder's (NAHB) web site here:

http://www.nahb.org/merchandise_search.aspx?sec...&viewAll=True

(Scroll down to the bottom of the 2005 materials)

This is THE book for such things. It is actually a good thing to own for serious rehabbers or builders.

Should you worry... not only yes, but HECK YES!

Do not let this be done by HIS contractor. Make sure it is done by YOUR contractor. Ideally, you will find someone on whom you can both agree.

Better idea. Get the quotation and have him fix, before the settlement. Thus, it will be done as a contingency to settlement and upon your satisfaction of a job well done.

I am not a California resident or investor. As you know, you guys are very different from the other 49 with your crazy laws and ways of doing business, so you should research this yourself.

In doing a Google search, it seems there has been some recent debate in your state legislature and some new laws.

I did find this, broken down by county and local area:

http://www.californiacityfinance.com/PropTransfTaxRates.pdf

It is from 2005, so it may be outdated.

It is very likely that the bank will do nothing until a Realtor is assigned.

Start your research! You are a jump ahead of everyone else. You can literally have a contract ready to go, just requiring a signature and date.

Sure. Go for it! There are some tricks to negotiating a 'short sale' (found throughout these forums); but for the most part, it is a normal offer like any other offer.

If it has been on the market over 30 days they are more willing to deal. The more the better (for you).

We have posted the heck out of this topic recently.

Check out the REOs forum (this forum) or Short Sales forum and look through back posts.

If, after that, you have specific questions, we will be more than happy to help out.

You must choose the path that is right for you (should I add "grasshopper" here?)

Appreciation or Cash Flow. BTW, it is certainly possible to get both. Which kind of means you travel down both paths (so much for the Robert Frost’s "road less traveled" theory).

Let us use the cash flow model, since that is your question. Further, let us be absurd about it. We will say that in 20 years the property will depreciate to 1/3 of its current value. If it is a 2 unit multi-family cash flowing $100 per unit per month after all expenses, should you buy? We are assuming you factored in all expenses, repairs, rehab, ad costs, etc. Further, we are assuming you have no down payment (if any of these things are not true, let me know and we will work them in during a future post).

In 20 years you will have taken cash profits:

$200 per month = $2,400 per year = $48,000

you will have paid off the mortgage and now own the property free and clear

Who cares what it is worth? OK. Let us say you paid $30,000. It is now worth $10,000. So when you sell at 20 years you only make a total of $58,000 (in this example you do so with no money down, which means an infinite return on your investment).