All Forum Posts by: Hobart King

I’m from bham and would highly discourage investing in any rough areas of town especially as an out of town investor. East Lake is very spotty. Make sure you’re on a “good” street.

Hi -

Weird situation I wanted to ask BP about.

Got a call from a mailer and here are the details:

1. Call was from the daughter of the owner who is now deceased. She is interested in selling the property.

2. There used to be a house on this property which the family tore down. I have no idea why.

3. There was HELOC made by a local bank for 130k on this property. I think the balance is for more than what the land is worth.

4. The original owner has not been paying the loan for some time (I think 2 years) and they have gotten a notice of default and foreclosure. However the lender has not actually foreclosed.

I think they haven't foreclosed because there is no foreclosure deed recorded and the owner in CRS is the original owner.

The bank obviously is going to lose a lot of money on this now that the structure is gone.

Does anyone have any advice on how to get the bank to engage in potentially doing a short sale? My thoughts were try to get the property under contract for a low amount of money and then call the bank to see if they will negotiate?

Thanks for any and all advice!

LOL - brutal auto-correct. Hope that's autocorrect.

I think the ears east of German Village is called "Hungarian Village" right? I helped build a habitat for humanity house over there and it was pretty rough. My employer actually canceled the working for habitat there since some people's cars were burglarized. If you are single and comfortable with living in a C neighborhood could be ok?

$600 is a under market. Tenant has been living there for a long time and has kids. We don't want to kick him out as he's a good guy and occasionally does work for us. We plan to slowly raise rents and relocate him and his family to another property. After that we plan to renovate and hopefully get at least $1k/mo. 

Thanks for all the replies guys I have reached out to NREIG for a quote.

@Hobart King

Haha bad typo above but you get the point.

I sent 100 letters. Got 1 call from a person willing to sell me a house for 15k. I turned around and sold it to a developer for $45k who was going to tear it down and do a new build. I think I got lucky.

You can also try cold calling properties where you think the owner is likely to sell (vacant and behind on taxes etc.)

@Rogelio Casiano

Easy and low cost way to start. Drive around and write down the addresses of vacant or in disrepair houses in areas of town you want to buy in. Another idea is to look in areas of town where houses sell for 300k or so and look for vacant parcels.

Get a subscription to skip genie or similar skip tracing service ($60 per month)

Look up owner on tax portal and skip trace them to get current address.

Print a form letter and send the mail with your phone number.

Don’t do a deal unless you are sure there is no way you will money. Like you could turn around and sell it for a profit without doing any work at all.

That is how to get your confidence up to do bigger and more risky deals.

@Cody McVay

I lived in Columbus for six years but moved in 2019 to Birmingham for family.

Franklinton would be a good place to look. I would also look at Weinland Park (adjacent to Italian Village) and also at the area east of Italian Village before you hit the interstate (not sure what this area is called).

I had some buddies at work look at stuff in Franklinton and they thought it was too expensive and that was over a year ago. The word is definitely out that Franklinton is now a desirable area of town! I’ve heard Bronzeville is getting nicer as well but never went to that area of town.

Good luck!!

I think they are, but I have reached out to make sure they aren't quarterly. 

Reviewing the policy it looks like the premium is set to ~600 for both houses, but I can't get the bill we got to square with that if I multiply by 12, 4, or 2. I am asking for an explanation of the bill and hope to hear back Monday.
 

We use Birmingham Insurance Group (BIG) who is a broker. Out insurance is through Arcana Insurance out of Texas.