All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Scott L.

OK. Um...I think Jesus would not want his followers to get rich. I think it's easy enough to extrapolate from that, no?

It's you people that have to do these incredible Biblical gymnastics to come up with reasons for why Jesus loves landlords who make bank.

@Aaron Mikottis

Cornelius the Centurion? REALLY???

Roman Centurions in the time of Christ made only approximately double what legionnaires made. Cornelius was hardly rich. Later on, during the fall of the Empire, the centurions were far better paid, but in the time of Christ...no.

As for WHY an angel of the Lord would value a man's generous gifts so regardless of their value, doesn't Luke 21:1-4 make that perfectly clear?

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

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Who teaches you people this miserable, lying drivel? Cherry-picking the verses out of the NT, putting them up against each other to paint this caricature of the text...it's diabolical.

@Aaron Mikottis

The parable of the talents is an ALLEGORY. It does not have to do with actual MONEY. Matthew 25:14 actually reads:

“Again, it will be LIKE a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them." (Emphasis added)

The original Greek makes this far clearer. The word used is ὥσπερ, which means "just as, even as."


Proverbs 13:22 -- A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children,

but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.

Once again, it should be perfectly  clear that this is also an allegory. If we are going to close-read it, however, we shouldn't cherry-pick it completely out of context. Here's Proverbs 13:20-25

Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.

Trouble pursues the sinner,but the righteous are rewarded with good things.

A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.

An unplowed field produces food for the poor, but injustice sweeps it away.

Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

The righteous eat to their hearts’ content, but the stomach of the wicked goes hungry.

Obviously, THIS IS NOT ABOUT MONEY. THIS IS A SERIES OF ALLEGORIES.

But just in case you continue to belabor the point that the Old Testament should be taken in its entirety by Christians and lived to the fullest as God's direction to His faithful, then should we put gay people to death, as directed by Leviticus?

"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." Leviticus 20:13

@Scott L.

Did Jesus want us to pile riches on riches? I think the New Testament provides evidence that He didn't. As I quoted before:


Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Matthew 16:19-20

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I also think the New Testament also provides solid evidence that Jesus wasn't that big on us worrying about how to get to "financial freedom," to use the euphemism so popular on this website for being independently wealthy and never having to worry about money.

Again, from Matthew, 6:25-34

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

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So Scott, that's two of your points answered rather clearly. The rest of your incoherent rant about Jews and Gentiles, upgrading apartments by raising rents, and Communism, well, I've leave you to work that out in therapy and/or prayer.

In the coming age of the driverless car, the commute distance and time to work versus the current stress level of the commute is going to become much, much more important than it is now. We've been looking at this closely.

@Jonathan Perez

You bio doesn't mention your skill set. So...you need any help or have questions, send me a message and maybe some pics. I won't steer you wrong and let you blow a repair.

Your situation highlights one of the nice parts of owning a duplex. You keep your side tight, you're always more or less ready to go if something happens.

That's the way to do it! When you get all your stuff out of your side, you might have issues that weren't immediately apparent. You need to allow for that in your schedule -- the odd wall to be painted, the odd repair to be made.

@Tim Wittenborn

Glad it made sense. I personally try to get to the Allegheny County sheriff sale here in Pittsburgh every month. I've been doing it for years. The time loss and opportunity costs have been extraordinary.  But I'll be damned if it wasn't the best no-bull education you could get on distressed property investing in my area.

Tim, even if the first deal turns out not to be so good, as long as it doesn't break you, you'll end up ahead in the long run. There are too many swirling tornadoes of vague fear and failure that go on in this business and too many smug self-congratulatory types who never get tired of patting themselves on the back or putting you down, and preferably (for them) both.

I know the jargon at the auction can be overwhelming. I know a lot of these guys look like worldbeaters. But if you go in there with the certainty that you can (painfully) afford to lose every cent of the money you bid for a property and a willingness to take a punch in the kidney and get back up again,  you're more ready to take your shot at this business than half the dudes in the room.

Our big thing outside the auction is pocket listings. Get your cash reserves in order and start talking to as many 60-year-old-plus real estate agents as you can, men and women who have been plugging away at it for thirty, forty years. Old real estate agents who have huge personal good-old-boy and girl networks to draw on, membership in the local social organizations, maybe did a stint on a local school board or a municipal council, that kind of thing.

Especially when it comes to buying local rental properties, you can't do better than old landlords who only own one or two urban residential duplexes that they inherited from Daddy way back when, places that have provided them just an ever-dwindling bit of rental income all their lives in exchange for a bit of hands-on maintenance. And now that the old lumbago is acting up sumthin' fierce, it's time to get that condo in Florida that they've been dreaming about since their kids finished high school. And for that they need some cash for a down payment.

The good-old-boy real estate agents know every single one of those landlords. They've been sending them Christmas cards for the last fifteen years. When it comes time, the landlords always call the agents they met way back when through the Masons, the Elks, the Rotary Club, their church, whatever. The agent sews up the pocket listing and off they go to find an all-cash deal with a young whippersnapper with fire-in-the-belly who'll really do right by the place. The agent has huge pull with the seller, and the agent is looking first and foremost to cash out as much of their carefully-built-up networks as possible after a lifetime of eating stale cookies at church socials and scrimping on groceries to pay for stamps to send out their newsletters.

You use the magic terms "all cash buy" with the agents, meet the sellers, listen to their maudlin stories of how awesome the United States was when Mutual Assured Destruction was considered a sane foreign policy, and you get deals like you wouldn't believe.

Good luck!

@Brian Lesko

Here's the number one thing I would check, the capitalization rate. IF total gross rent is $1050/month, that means a yearly gross of $12,600. What are the yearly taxes? Is the duplex in Washington or Allegheny County? Check that. Check that like a hawk.

For a purchase price of $69,000, you're going to need the net operating income to be $6900 to hit a cap rate of 10%, which is the minimum rate I would accept for a duplex buy way out in a place like McDonald. To hit a cap rate of 15%, which I would consider a sweet duplex deal, that NOI would have to be at $10,350. I don't think that's possible in this case.

Figure out the taxes and expenses and come back with the cap rate. If it's below 10%, present the numbers to the seller and start squeezing them down on the purchase price.

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You're buying a duplex from an older couple who wants out of the game. You should expect that the building is not in good shape and there are many deferred maintenance issues. You correctly identified the roof as something to look at carefully. There are other things to watch for, maintenance issues that will push your NOI down to zero and into negative territory in a hurry. Here's some building basics for your inspection tonight.

1. How old is the building?

2. Is the electricity knob-and-tube, rag wire, or updated modern wiring? If the wiring has been updated, get yourself a cheap electrical plug tester if you don't have one already. Sperry makes a cheap one. Plug it into all the existing three-prong outlets and look for incorrectly wired updates, especially open grounds.

3. Insist on a sewer inspection. If it's an older building surrounded now or in the past by mature trees with serious root systems, there's a chance the main sewer line to the stretet is leaking. Get a plumber with a fiber optic scope to run the scope through the sewer line.

4. Check the gutters and look for leaks. Check the downspouts.

5. Is the basement wet? Look for telltale white spots, efflorescence on the lower part of the basement walls that commonly indicate the regular intrusion of water. They probably won't have a sump pump in there, but if there is one, look extra-carefully for signs of intrusion a good distance from the sump pit.

6. Keep your eyes peeled for deferred maintenance issues on the concrete work, stairs, landings, slabs.

7. Check the water piping. Is it steel or copper? Steel is bad and is probably already causing issues in water flow and pressure in the duplex.

8. Check the bathrooms. Make absolutely sure there's a modern tub in each of the apartments and the tub surround runs at least five feet up the wall. Often, the bathrooms in these duplexes in this area need serious updating. Make sure the tub areas don't look like this. This was an over-under duplex in Munhall after I stripped the wallpaper and the green plastic film the former owners had superglued to the ceiling to try to keep the plaster together. Note the lath stuck up in the cavities from previous repairs: the guys that rigged the last repair job didn't even carry that out.

@Tim Wittenborn

At least in my area, unless you're completely in the game, you have no real chance of getting a really good deal at the auction unless you have some kind of edge. When I say "completely in the game," I mean that distressed property is your job and your life. I live in Pittsburgh, and Pennsylvania has a judicial foreclosure process. The auction is the nexus of all distressed property in my county. So my situation is the extreme, but much the same factors are in play everywhere.

You have three competitors to worry about at the auction: the stupid bidder, the wholesaler, and the investor-contractor. Of these three, the investor-contractor is the most dangerous. Thankfully, he's limited. He can't bid on EVERY property that comes along because his resources are limited. The reason he can always outbid you and everyone else is that his renovation costs are ALWAYS going to be lower than yours. He has multiple edges. He gets his materials far more cheaply. His crew makes peanuts off him compared to what your contractors will charge you. He has long-term relationships with his main specialized subs, and often reciprocal barter relationships. He knows the code enforcement people in the area he's bidding in. He can better evaluate the condition of the property. You know those really nice hot new splash fixtures most real estate investors have to spend lots of money on? Quite often, he gets them for free as one or another trial program to evaluate them for the manufacturer. And of course he installs them in his projects for peanuts.

Again and again, he can bid higher on a property than you can because he doesn't have the same expense structure. Stupid bidders who are willing to pay too much money for what they think is a good-looking property come, lose their shirts, and go, but the investor-contractor is a constant fixture at these auctions, an adversary who does not go away and just keeps showing up, ready to bid.

Even worse, the investor-contractor is a known quantity. When he starts bidding at a property, you'll notice that the regular wholesalers who frequent these auctions remain silent. There are all sorts of barter relationships going on in that room between veteran auction-goers. Why work against each other when you can work together? I do you a solid, you do me a solid. They know they simply can't beat out the investor-contractor and still make money on the deal because their numbers won't add up. Let the lion have his share once he makes his interest known. There's plenty left over.

Another poster has pointed out that flippers need to keep their crews running to make money. This is perfectly true. That's a good reason for an investor-contractor to spend a bit more money on a property than he otherwise would. But here's another scenario: maybe the property the investor-contractor is bidding on is right next to a property he's already working on. The two crews working on the houses can easily share members, materials, and tools. His renovation costs on the second property just tumbled another ten to fifteen percent as one project became two with multiple shared costs. That's an incredible edge.

So, let's say for some reason you take away the stupid bidders and the investor-contractors. You still have to get through the wholesalers. These are typically the most successful wholesalers in your area. They don't have quite the same money edge that the investor-contractor has, but they've spent many years studying their area and studying real estate, and they have established relationships with the investor-contractor, and they will pounce on every good-looking property they see, and they typically know large areas like the back of their hands. They do nothing all day but go look at properties off the auction list, run their own title searches, and line up investors.

So what's your edge? If you don't have one, you're not likely to beat the auction.