All Forum Posts by: James Masotti

@Jim Stoffey Welcome to South Jersey. From looking at your profile I'm not sure if you're still looking for an investor friendly agent, but the one I use is very investor friendly and I would definitely recommend. He works with a number of investors in South Jersey so he knows what we're after and the different types of properties you'd need for different strategies. 

Regarding your GC questions though. There's a guy I've used on my personal residence that I'm planning to use on my fix-ups. He's not technically a GC, he runs a small crew and there are certain things he's certainly not an expert in and may or may not know the right people to bring in to do a job. He  isn't always the fastest but very fair pricing, honest and trustworthy. I'm sure my needs will eventually grow beyond what he can do, but for starting off I'm happy with him. If you get into a bind or anything and need someone to get you started before you find the GC you're looking for let me know.

Welcome to the forums @Michael Hartman! I too am relatively new to the BP forums. Haven't been able to make it out to a SJ REIA meeting yet, but hopefully I will one of these days. I'm pretty sure with the 203k loan you need to live in the property for a year, but someone more experienced than I can weigh in on that to be certain.

Best of luck and see you around the forums and maybe a REIA meeting.

Looking for some recommendations on Hard Money Lenders in New Jersey. I've looked up the companies in the Hard Money section on BP (http://www.biggerpockets.com/hardmoneylenders/new-...), but I didn't know if anyone had actually worked with any of these companies, or any others that they would recommend (or not recommend for that matter)

Also open to private money consideration, but this is my first deal, so lender would need to be willing to work with someone with limited experience.

For those wondering this would be to acquire a buy and hold duplex. Targeted acquisition price of $75k, $20k repair budget. ARV of $140k. Targeting conventional financing after 6 months.

Any other questions let me know! Thanks!

@Brandon Turner - That's awesome. I think this would be a great tool. Especially during periods of evaluate several properties all at once.

@Brandon Turner and @Joshua Dorkin - To start I want to say that I absolutely love the investment calculators. They're super simple and provide a great way to analyze deals on a level playing field, however in the last week that I've been a pro member and taken advantage of these (mostly the rental property calculator) I had some thoughts that I figured I'd throw out there.

1) When looking at deals that you have previously analyzed there should be the pertinent information displayed on the screen.

A) Name of Deal

B) Address of Deal

C) Date of Analysis

D) Purchase Price

E) ARV

F) Total Initial Equity

G)  Monthly Cash Flow

H) Monthly Cap Rate

I) NOI

J) Total Cash Needed

K) Cash on Cash ROI

L) Status of Property (see comment below)

In addition to this information being displayed on screen you should also be able to sort ascending or descending by any one of these values. There should also be an option either on this screen, or in the report itself to indicate the status of the property. For example...

A) No offer made

B) Offer made - rejected

C) Offer made - accepted - no close

D) Purchased

E) Wholesaled

F) Purchased by someone else

     1) Purchased price

G) etc...I'm sure there are more options you could put here that I'm not thinking of or don't know about

These tools would provide some amazing value to investors to keep track of their deals and offer acceptance rates, etc. It could also provide a vast wealth of information for BiggerPockets to compile this information at a macro level in order to assist in the research you guys do for articles and podcasts about different markets. It could also provide an entirely new set of tools around which markets are heating up, which cooling down, where is flipping taking over, vs buy and hold vs. wholesaling 

Not sure if these recommendations have been made elsewhere on the forum, or if you're already working on these types of enhancements to the tools, but I figured I'd share, since I'm already finding them to be extremely useful...but could see where the deals will become difficult to manage in my profile once I start analyzing 2,3,4,5 deals a day or whatever it is for an extended period of time.

@Michael McDermott - No experience but I'm curious to know how this plays out as there's a house I'm looking to acquire right now that if I do I'll be challenging to the assessment too as it is significantly higher than all recent comps. 

Best of luck!

Spoke to my realtor and he indicated that his past experience would be to submit the offer contingent on the fines being paid current. Then I can pay the township construction officer to do a formal inspection of the house to get a detailed list of exactly what needs to be done and then hopefully negotiate with him to have a grace period or a reduction in the fine to address them after the closing date. Fortunately the citations are just due to not having permits for work...so I should just be able to file for permits for the work, even though its technically already been started, it would at least open the inspection periods back up for me to either remove the problem or just have them properly certified. 

@Stuart Birdsong - I haven't done a title search yet to verify if there is a lien or not, but the township office didn't say anything about there having filed one when I went down to pull the details of the code violations and subsequent penalties. 

@Account Closed - I would not be using FHA financing. My only option to move forward with this property if Fannie Mae doesn't pay the fines current before closing would be private lender or hard money and then do a cash our refinance after all the work is done. If Fannie Mae does pay the fines current than I could use my conventional lender. I've been crunching the numbers and Fannie Mae would basically have to give the house away for $10 at this point if they don't pay the fines current.

Thanks for your comments guys!

I'm looking at a Fannie Mae property right now that is a legal duplex that the owner tried to add an illegal efficiency to. An inspection was done back in March by the township (while Fannie Mae owned the property) and there's a number of code violations including the fact it's not zoned to be a triplex in the township. 

Now the asking price isn't far off with the work that need to be done, but with these fines accruing at since March it's a big chunk of change. According to the township if I bring them my time line, cost, and scope of work to remedy the work they may be able to negotiate down the fines, but there's no guarantee of this. They have a vested interest in an investor picking up the house in order to fix it though because anyone doing their due diligence is going to buy accordingly...anyone who doesn't do their do diligence is going to be in for one heck of a surprise and then likely end up foreclosing or short selling again anyway. 

I'm going to get a walk through with my contractor to confirm my estimates are correct and a time line to remedy the issues. My questions is do I submit a an offer planning to pay all the fines myself (much lower than the current asking price) or do I submit an offer contingent upon Fannie Mae paying the fines current so that I'm only responsible to pay the ongoing fines until the work is completed with the proper permits. 

There's a lot of potential in this deal if I buy it right, because in addition to negotiating down the penalty for the code violations it is also way over assessed, and I can appeal to the tax board to dramatically reduce the taxes because it is outside of the statutory 15% wiggle room they're allowed on the assessment value. 

Really appreciate everyone's thoughts and assistance on this!

Thanks @Kara Haney and @David Sisson!

Anyone else have any recommendations?