All Forum Posts by: James Masotti

@Mayer M. and @Charlie Hampton - Try BAM Mechanical. Not sure how he charges on the investor side, but it's a family run business here in Washington Township and they did a solid job at a reasonable price on my house when I needed some work done.

 This isn't really done in New Castle County Delaware. Properties have not been assessed since 1983. So my understanding of the way the process works is that you need to spend an insane amount of time and money documenting every comp sold from then until now, and plot that on a chart of appreciated values, in order to prove that the value assessed on the property back in 1983 was wrong. 

How bad is the assessed value by comparison to the comparable properties around it? 

One of the downsides to new construction in NCC is that you get a newer value on the same old calculation from 1983. This benefits older properties not newer ones. Inside the City of Wilmington the way they're working around this is to provide tax abatement for new construction, but that only impacts your City taxes as far as I'm aware and not the county/school taxes. Then again maybe the opportunity zone has NCC incentives as well.

Anyway...just my $0.02

It's interesting to hear people talk about how tenant friendly places like California are and at least by this ranking my little backyard that is Delaware is the second most tenant friendly state in the country. It's certainly not sunshine and rainbows with regards to some of the hoops we jump through, but I also think that's the difference between being a casual investor, and treating it more like a business. At the end of the day it just means I need to have better systems and processes to ensure I'm working within the law.

Originally posted by @Steve Eagland:

@James Masotti,@Account Closed - I am looking at a property, but the bathroom is small, really small.  The toilet has about a 5-6" clearance in front of it before it hits the tub (see pic below, it looks better than it actually is... and don't mind the awesome colored tile).  I can't find specific language regarding what Wilmington would require in a rental, just information about Wilmington Affordable Housing.  I tried calling Wilmington and that went about as well as you could expect.  Do you guys have any information regarding if it would pass a rental inspection or what the requirement is?

Any information you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated.

Certainly can never promise anything with what the City of Wilmington inspectors are going to do, but generally speaking as long as you do not modify anything, it is enforced based on the code that was in place at the time it was installed. So basically for something like this as long as you don't renovate the entire bathroom, you wouldn't be expected to comply with all the current UCC building code requirements.  

 I didn't even buy during the crash. Even in the past year prices have gone up enough that most buys don't make sense anymore. 

But yes...you were spoiled during the crash 😊

Not on the MLS :-(

Market in the last year is insane. I have alerts set for all the neighborhoods that used to meet these criteria in the City of Wilmington...and they just aren't hitting the market. If they do they're selling for way too much money to get the numbers you're talking about. 

Unless of course you're planning to buy your equity and cash flow with a 20% down payment

The real question is...who went to the better party last night. You or your wife?

Thanks to everyone who came out last night. I can't speak for everyone obviously but it seemed like everyone had a pretty solid time last night. It was a blast getting to meet so many awesome investors and I wish we had more time so that I could have talked to everyone.

I guess that's what the next meet up will be for! 😊

Bring them along! My wife is planning on coming with our 9 month old as well. 

@Steve Babiak and @Joseph Scorese help organize some of the meetings so they can provide some additional perspective.