All Forum Posts by: Max Householder

Think about the profile of your end buyer. $150,000-190,000 range around here is mostly young families with maybe 1 kid and another on the way or DINK couples upgrading from their starter home. My wife and I are around 30 y/o and we wouldn't buy or rent a home without central air/heat. Older buyers who didn't always have central HVAC or renters might not care as much, but I think most younger folks would want the efficiency and ease of use that comes with a central system/thermostat. Also, multiple electric heaters might make families with toddlers a little nervous.

Mark Podolsky http://www.thelandgeek.com/ and Seth Williams http://retipster.com/ are the two biggest raw land experts I know of on here and i think they would both generally agree with @Jason Pachomski on this. I have read and heard Mark say that he closes many smaller deals with a mobile notary and not much else out of pocket besides maybe a title search. Seth was on BP Podcast 39 and talked in depth about the process of buying & selling raw land and he seemed to reiterate the same kind of thing for very small deals IIRC. Good luck!

Update: St. Louis County Bill Threatening Eviction Over Misdemeanors Slated for Vote Tonight

@Ronald Perich I agree with you 1,000%. This is how bureaucrats think though and unfortunately they have been given the power to make idiotic laws like this. All laws have unintended consequences which is why we need less of them, not more. Yet, the solution offered by the folks who made the laws that didn't work? More laws, baby!

Your comment about putting "responsibility for one's own actions in the hands of another" is so right on that it's almost painful to read. This is our entire society today: everyone blaming others for their problems and then passing the buck on their own responsibilities by asking government to fix the problems in their life which they're more than happy to do, nominally, because they get to spend more money. Then what does the government actually do? One side of the aisle blames the other side of the aisle and nothing gets done. It's a sad state of affairs.

@Lee Carrell The city claims they don't have money to pay for more police officers, so I guess forcing landlords to act as their own police is one way to remedy that a little bit, lol.

@David Dodge Exactly. I assume there are already local landlords fighting this, but it's the first I've heard of it so I thought this would be a good place to get the word out. Sounds like the vote might be very soon.

@M Marie M. The article says, "The bill is already drawing harsh criticism. In a press release, Reverend Larry Rice, head of the embattled New Life Evangelistic Center downtown, wrote, "Innocent children will be put on the streets if any member of their family commits any of the violations" listed in the bill. 

Willie Jordan, executive director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council, told St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU 90.7) that the bill could end up disproportionately hurting poor and minority tenants.

“In the light of what’s going in Ferguson, we really feel like this bill is going exactly the opposite direction. We feel that it’s going to impede the county’s ability to help to dismantle segregation and racism with the disproportionate number of minorities that this bill has the potential to affect,” Jordan said." 

I was wondering if anyone on here had heard about this controversial new bill that is going to be voted on for St. Louis County? The first couple of paragraphs of this article cover the broad strokes before offering more detail.

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2015/09/28/st-louis-county-could-force-eviction-of-tenants-with-misdemeanors-under-new-plan

"Mark your calendars, landlords and tenants of unincorporated St. Louis County: Tomorrow at 6 p.m., the county council may take a final vote on a controversial statute that would add new "residential rental license" laws to the books. 

The free license would require an annual application from the landlords of residential rental properties in unincorporated St. Louis County. The application would include things like the name, street address and telephone number of the landlord and the address of each rental property. All basic enough.

However, buried in the guts of the bill are several paragraphs describing how those licenses can be suspended or revoked. According to a copy of the bill, the licensing law would allow the county to force landlords to evict any tenant convicted in the past year of felony, misdemeanor or ordinance violations on a variety of crimes, from drug dealing to alcohol consumption to gambling.

Landlords who don't evict tenants after 30 days would risk a $1,000 fine, one year jail and the loss their rental licenses on all of their properties."

Doesn't this seem outrageous? For one, there is enough government oversight of landlords anyhow without adding a "free license" which appears to be little more than a backdoor way for the county to exert pressure on landlords to evict tenants that they don't like. If neighbors or local officials gripe and complain enough, this new bill would give the county leverage to lean on landlords by threatening their entire rental portfolio over one tenant. Anyone with more than a handful of rentals would likely go along with an eviction rather than risk losing their "free license" on all their other properties. I also doubt the county is going to foot the bill for the cost of the eviction. 

Does this seem like a giant overreach by the county gov. to anyone else or am I reading it wrong? I know there are a ton of St. Louis investors on the forums here and wanted to make them aware of it just in case. Thanks

It would seem that an NFL team moving to LA is inevitable and possibly even two teams. If it were two teams, almost surely one would be the Rams, but San Diego and Oakland are also possibilities. Either way, St. Louis is looking to secure financing for a new stadium so they can present a viable proposal for the Rams to "decide" to stay even if it proves futile.

@Patrick Gleason This is a huge point of contention for me. The owners of the sports leagues and teams hold city governments hostage by threatening to leave without a new stadium being built which forces the city officials to deal with mobs of angry fans who buy into the BS marketing put out by the team that the stadium will "raise" revenue and "create" jobs and has all these benefits to the city. Fact is, most of these statements are patently false and many studies after the fact have shown that at BEST paying for these stadiums with public money has negligible to no benefit and at worst is a colossal waste of money.

For example, the city of St. Louis is trying to push through public funding for a new stadium for the Rams while they're STILL PAYING for the Rams' last stadium that they owe on for another 5 years. In fact the city went so far as to sue itself and then throw the court case so that they could get a judge's ruling that the new stadium site is "adjacent" to the old one and therefore a public vote it not required to approve a new stadium because the vote would be too "risky", i.e. the public might not want their elected officials to spend their money on corporate welfare. Nope, can't have that.

On top of the pressure exerted by the team, many of these gov. officials are flat out corrupt. The Milwaukee Bucks just approved a new stadium with a lot of taxpayer money pitched in and there were some shenanigans where a local real estate mogul who had donated a ton of money to Scott Walker over the years and purchased land around this new stadium site then became part in the group that recently bought the team right before Walker pushed hard for this new stadium deal. Then the guy takes a job as Walkers campaign finance manager. Lots of back-scratching going on there while playing with taxpayer dollars.

The bottom line is that many of these owners are billionaires and the ones who aren't are part of large ownership groups who certainly should have enough pooled assets to secure financing for a new stadium. The fact is, if getting in on building a stadium was such a "good deal" then these guys would never give the public the "opportunity" to buy in. They know it's a crock, but hey free money is free money so why not extort the city to pay for a stadium with taxpayer dollars and then turn around and make them pay through the nose (and into the owners' pockets) to go and watch a game in there.