All Forum Posts by: James Masotti

During the week I could do something in the evening with enough notice. Or coffee on the weekend. 

 If you want to get $1200 a month or higher for a 2/1 then you need to be looking in Trolley Square and maybe some of the fringe areas of Cool Springs/Little Italy that boarder Trolley. You could MAYBE get that in The Triangle as well, but most of what is in the Triangle are families who want to be close to Salisianum so there is a lot less demand for any legal single family duplex conversions you may find. So younger or hipper people don't necessarily want to be there because it doesn't have the access to the amenities that Trolley/Cool Springs/Little Italy have. 

@Jared Smith and @Regina Jones - If you found the information from @Scott Smith helpful you should also check out his podcast. You can get to it from his company's link in his forum signature, or you can find it on your favorite podcast store.

If you're looking for people who are successfully investing in real estate in general to help you get to 18 doors, than you've come to the right place! If you're looking for specific feedback on markets in Delaware than I would suggest that you join the DelREIA facebook group. There are only a handful of Delaware investors here on BiggerPockets. 

I see from your profile that you work in Collingswood as well. We do a meetup once a month that is organized by @Justin Eaton. Take a look at the event page and you can see some of the past ones we've done, and reach out to Justin directly to be added to the mailing list so that you are made aware of when something come up. 

Happy investing and look forward to catching up at a future meetup!

 I think you're missing the part that I have bolded which should cover you in the scenario you outlined. However I do suggest you reach out to an attorney to discuss your specific situation. 

@Jared Smith - @Eric Nguyen, @Forrest Williams, @Trin Nagireddy, and @George Skidis are all correct LLC's are quick and cheap to setup yourself...BUT...mine are partnerships so the attorney was used more for the implementation of the operating agreement, which, again not an attorney, but from my knowledge is an important factor of the asset protection. If you don't execute the operating agreement correctly, and/or spell out everyone's roll and responsibiity in the partnership. You're doomed if the you-know-what hits the fan.

The time and cost to actually do the filings was relatively low for him and I could have done it myself.

Had a great time! Thanks to everyone who came out to the brewery to hang out! Looking forward to seeing folks at the next event!

 Jared - To start - Yes you will pay about 1% higher on the interest rate for a commercial loan. You will get 15-25 year amortization and likely have rate resets and balloon payments. A fixed rate 30 year mortgage doesn't exist in commercial financing. The exception to that is if you're doing larger commercial deals with agency debt.

To the second point... I'm not an attorney, although I did complete pre-law and take the LSAT to go to law school...just never actually followed through, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. 

If I'm an attorney looking to sue you and go after your personal assets my goal is to pierce the corporate veil of protection and identify some sort of activity that can negate your claims of separation between your LLC and you as an individual. I would certainly hope if I were suing someone that my attorney would due a title search to establish a trail of ownership and figure out that you purchase the property in your own name and then did a quit claim deed to your LLC but never refinanced. What this effectively would tell me and the argument I would want my attorney to make is that you did this purely to establish a higher degree of anonymity from you tenant, but never actually had the intentions of running a separate business entity.

Would this stand up in front of a judge and jury? I have no idea. But I also don't want to be the one to find out the hard way.

You are correct that plenty of people do this process, and that's a part of their risk assessment they have taken under advisement from their legal council, so it's fine for them. I'm just saying it's not for me. 

I own a rental in my own name, because it was my primary residence that I converted. I didn't transfer it to an LLC, I just have insurance to cover my increased personal exposure on that property and my overall asset holdings. That being said any property I purchase with the explicit purpose of owning as an investment, is purchased in one of my LLC's and treated as an investment and a business day one.

Hopefully that helps better understand my personal thought process for why I structure my things the way I do. 

@Cassandra Sifford - Make sure you run a full title search on every property you're interested in before you go to the auction. Some of the properties are second mortgages not first, so you need to know that since it doesn't wipe out the first. You also need to know if you'll have any other leans to deal with that wont be wiped out during the sale. I would also suggest that you do a drive by of the properties and get a sense of whether or not they are occupied or vacant, the condition of the exterior. If it appears vacant that you can look in the windows (keep in mind this is technically trespassing and therefore not strictly legal) and see if you can assess any information about the condition of the interior. You'll need to be able to estimate how much work the property will need and whether you'll have to evict anyone. Then there is whether or not it's a legal multi-family. Many of them are not legal and if they were at one point legal and have been vacant for more than 12 month, as determined by the city's vacant property registration program, then it loses any  zoning variance that had been granted and odds are you wont get another one with the current zoning board. 

In addition to all that I recommend going a few times before you even think about bidding on anything in order to get used to how things work. See who buys stuff and then try to ask them some questions. Some are a little friendly others are kind of jerks... it may depend on their mood that day.

 What she said :-)