All Forum Posts by: Dawn Vought

Google "Steve Herman debt" and check out his website. He has an e-book you can purchase for something like $59 that explains how to do the same thing. He doesn't give you a computer program for $3,500. He just has a worksheet you could put into Excel in about 5 minutes.

An investor friend of mine bought it, and I thumbed through it at a local REIA meeting. It was simple and straightforward, and personally I'd rather spend $59 on something instead of $3,500. And no, I'm not affiliated with Steve Herman in any way!

BTW - the way Aly described it above is correct. You deposit your pay check into your LOC, and then pay all of your expenses, including your mortgage, out of the LOC. You start by sending in a large payment from the LOC at the beginning of each year, every six months, or whatever cycle you want to be on. Of course there's more to it than that, but overall it works because of the way lenders charge interest. Your excess amounts (that you would normally just stick in a bank account making less than 1% interest) go to pay down the excess payment you made at the beginning of the cycle.

Right now my expenses are a bit all over the place because of some things I have going on, but once I get those worked out I am going to probably implement this.

Sign a Quit Claim Deed giving your title to the property to the seller (the current owner who is leary of you not making payments). Have an escrow attorney hold the QCD in escrow, along with something in writing that specifies when and how the QCD would be given to the current seller in case you are not paying the mortgage.

Another option is to use an escrow attorney to pay the mortgage, i.e., you submit the monthly mortgage money to the escrow attorny instead of the mortgage lender, and the attorney sends the payment out to the mortgage company. The attorney could notify the seller if you didn't make the payment, and you would get assurances that the mortgage would be paid.

You could even do a combination of these two things.

Like Jon said, make sure you have a deal first, but if you do your DD and want to move forward, maybe you can use these suggestions.

Good luck!

If your property is far away, it will probably be cheaper than paying your property manager to do the work. It also depends on the current condition. If you think there may be a lot of unknowns coming your way, I think it's a good idea.

I have it on my personal house, but have not had to use it yet. An investor friend of mine had it on one of her rental houses (that was actually local to her), and they promptly replaced a Cental A/C unit (and changed the associated duct work to accommodate the new unit) without asking a question.

She can't say enough good things about the company.

Can anyone recommend a good Birmingham property manager that deals with Section 8 single family homes? My current one is always telling me there is not a big back log or response, which is why it's taking him a couple of months to rent some of my houses. Everyone else tells me the opposite. I think the biggest issue is he doesn't advertise in the newspaper like everyone else, because he doesn't want to be bothered answering the calls!

He really doesn't have a good attitude, among other issues, so I need to find someone else.

Thanks.

Get landlord insurance to cover yourself, but also leave the existing insurance in place. If you cancel it, the lender will be notified and start asking a lot of questions.

I've noticed that a lot of properties listed in the "Properties" tab are listed as Alabama instead of the state they are actually in. This makes it hard to do a search for properties actually in Alabama, for those of us who concentrate in that area. We have to sift through a bunch more properties only to eliminate over 75% of them that aren't really in AL.

I'm assuming Alabama comes up as the first on the list, and just shows up when people forget to choose their state (which seems to happen a lot, even when they put the state in the title of their post). Is it possible to change the default or first on the list to "State" or blank or something similar, so that if the poster forgets, Alabama won't be the one coming up?

Not sure if this is the only way, but try forging a relationship with an attorney that handles the various foreclosure procedures for a bank. They are working on these as the whole process progresses. I was able to do make a contact like this, and basically could have offered to buy the bank's note as the foreclosure went along, with this attorney as a liason. This is way before the the property is put on the MLS, or you could wait until they get up to that point.

I didn't wind up going forward with it, but if I did I would have had the same attorney continue with the foreclosure process. Depending on where they are in the process will determine how much of a discount you can get.

I was looking into purchasing GO ZONE property in Biloxi, MS a few months ago. I discussed the accelerated depreciation with my CPA, who handles a lot of real estate investors, including myself.

His comments were that if you sold the property before the 27.5 years standard depreciation time, you would need to "recapture" or basically give back any accelerated depreciation that was taken. I would highly recommend you talk to your CPA directly about your specific situation.

Write the lender a letter stating that you are "rescinding your loan application". Google "loan rescinding" or variations, and basically you will find out that mortgage lenders are required to refund to you any costs or fees that are incurred if they do not close the loan. It doesn't matter if it is their choice or yours. You could be sitting at the closing table, and simply "change your mind" about closing, and they have to refund any costs that you laid out. An investor friend of mine who was in the mortgage business told me about this, and when WaMu totally flaked out on a few loans they were doing, I was able to get back $350 application fees (for each of 3 loans) that they said was "non-refundable" no matter what, in big letters in the paperwork.

My friend said that a complaint to the local Mortgage board (I forget the exact title she used) is a VERY serious matter related to this, and mortgage lenders do not want to go through a right of rescission inquiry if they can help it.

According to the info I was able to find on the internet about this, it technically doesn't apply to investment properties, but like I said, I was able to go this route and get all 3 "non-refundable" application money ($350 each) back from WaMu.

I tried refinancing with WaMu for 3 NOO cash flowing rental properties in Kansas City about 2-4 months ago. Based upon my horrible experience with WaMu, I don't believe they really want to do NOO loans anymore. They dragged things out for months, and their appraisers came back with values that were as low as half of the true value (that was determined by a local licensed appraiser 2 months before). The WaMu appraisers used "comps" that included multi-parcel sales (i.e., an investor bought multiple properties at one time from someone, and they used one of the properties as a comp), 2 BD 1 BTH houses when mine were 3 BD 2 BTH, etc.

I found their appraisal dept. totally incompetent. I provided true comps that closed within 2 months timeframe, with everything similar, and was 0.4 miles away. (Their comps were over a mile away.) They came back and said they couldn't accept the comps because they were greater than 2 miles away. I emailed them a PDF from Google maps showing the properties were 0.4 miles away, and suggested they drive from one house to the other. They came back and said their "system" said it was >2 miles away, so there was nothing they could do. That's just one example of what I dealt with.

Run from WaMu!