All Forum Posts by: Dave Chow

Lots of people diy creating llcs. Not sure how necessary to pay extra to those services. Maybe depend on the situation. 

Mine is $350 per year for SFH. But premium is 5k. I heard claiming would be the last thing to do unless it's really needed.

Quite some  posters with positive reviews about this service only have 1 post on BP.  Could  Mark as ad.lol.   We need real and detailed experiences to help others. 

Update:

The sellers got the issue fixed. Below is the summary of the inspection about the sewer line. Suggestions are welcome. 

Its an expensive fixing: 4k.

Sewer line exits the back of the house and turns and runs out to 80th St. in the front. Overall, the line is in fair condition and functioning as intended at this time. The line out front of the house has very little slope going most of the

way across the yard. The offsets in the clay tile presented a problem with catching debris, therefore we replaced that clay tile with PVC pipe out in front of the house. This will allow it to flow better. Due to how the line was originally

laid, there is not a lot of fall so the PVC pipe is holding about an inch of water. This should not be an issue and the line will function as intended.

There is a minor amount of tree roots in the line so I recommend foaming tree root killer be put down the sewer line a couple times a year. This can be purchased at any home-improvement store and just follow the directions.

Additionally The Sewer Doctors will guarantee any work that we did on the sewer line for as long as the new homeowner lives in the house.

Recently we heard a story while closing our property. A rental house got fire and burnt down, and the insurance company refused to bring the house back, mainly the finished basement. The reason was their basement work was un permitted work which did not agree with city code. The insurance company declined claim due to causing of fire from un permitted work.

This is kind of scary. People buy insurance but they cannot get covered and they even did not realize the coverage items in the insurance. The sad story is they did not realize it until incidents happy which is an expensive experience. 

How do experienced rental investors avoid situation like that when purchase insurance for rentals? 

Its a completely remolded house with brand new ac/heater/furnace and 10-year roof. But inspector cannot access crawler basement to check house structure. House got some electric system issues , together with the sewer pipeline issues. 

 @Jon Holdman, yes you are correct that it would be clay. I am attaching the pic that locates the crack. So no need to fix at all? Sounds like the only solution would be replace the whole line which might break the deal. 

@Sam Shueh, I am not sure if it got roots down there. Yes agreed about all older properties having a problem. So to keep the deal going, just take the current situation about the sewer line?

@Steve B. its an investment property and I do have a buyer agent to represent me. In your opinion, how the agent could help more? 

Thanks all for the information. So now we had 2 technicians came down to check the line. And both said they cannot get a full scoping due to a crack down the line. So what we had to do is to ask sellers fix the whole/crack first; upon that we could run another scanning to see any further issues.   Not fun situation at all. 

Thanks for the suggestions, Brandon. We might try to dig a bit more about the sewer line. 

Hi BP members,

How would you handle a nice deal with house having potential sewer line issues?

We are buying a rental property seems to be a good deal. But its house with age of 75+ years. Our initial sewer line system inspection showed that there is at least on crack down the sewer line system. We are not sure if continue the deal: could ask the sellers fix one of them. But its very likely that the sellers will not agree with fixing all the issues. 

Another option is to continue the deal even though sewer line is having issues. But we could get some insurance to cover it. Those sewer line system insurance is cheap $10-25?MO. If something happens in the future, we could use the insurance to help.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated. 

I closed a property on Dec-12, and got it rented out on Dec-14 to a good tenant with background/credit/employment checking passed. For me, winter is a slower season too. But nice property with rent priced properly, taking nice photos by a professional photographer, and good market strategy with posts on main websites(zillow/trulia/craiglist and even paying advertising), and patience would lead to satisfied results.