All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

It's not. The banks want to get rid of some and keep some back. The ones that they want to get rid of they farm out to agents. The ones that they want to hold on to, you can't get. Usually. The best rental potentials their software can pinpoint go to private investment firms. It can be very hard to get those.

Occasionally, when you find the property, you find that the owner is a bank through the real estate portal.

The way you get REOs cheapest and most easily in the Pittsburgh area is just before they become REOs -- snatch them from the jaws of the system, as it were. You research mortgage foreclosures and arrange the buys on the day of the sheriff's sale in the Gold Room at the Allegheny County Courthouse. Just talk to the attorneys at the sale handling the auction buys and they'll tell you their max bid for the property. They won't be able to tell you if they're in first lien position or what (if anything) you'll owe in taxes when you buy the place. You have to do that yourself. You'll also have to outbid the other investors that are the sale who may or may not take an interest in the same property you want.

http://www.sheriffalleghenycounty.com/realestate/s...

The lists for November are out.

But the smaller banks do have lists that they will let you look at, and the bigger banks have websites that let you search for properties they're getting rid of. Here's Wells Fargo's:
https://reo.wellsfargo.com/Home-Search.aspx

The home inspector the retail buyer employs to look at the house will note that the water heater does not have a card with a number on it. In Allegheny County homeowners have needed a county-licensed plumber to replace a home water heater since the early 2000s. If the card's nowhere to be found, the home inspector will note the issue.

http://www.achd.net/plumbing/pubs/pdf/domestic_wat...

I have no idea how they handle this in Portsmouth, Virginia.

@Tiffany S.

Congrats on DIYing a water heater replacement, Tiffany. When you sell the place on the retail market, the DIY may well become an issue, depending on permit issues in your county. It would be a problem here in Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania.

@Johann Jells

Got one of those myself -- he made a point of telling me looked me up through his brother (a cop in another borough of Pittsburgh). I think he just hates my guts forever because he knows I can buy and sell him and his crappy house over and over again.

It doesn't help that the property I'm talking abut is next to the local municipal building, and the local code enforcement parking spot is literally across from my front yard. All the building inspector has to do is walk to his car and he can see my only available loading/unloading point.

@Wes Harding

Exactly. I was wondering what I was reading for a while there.

@Nathan Mills Thanks for explaining your policy to me. That's going to work for us, too.

Passive income is the returns on an investment for which you do absolutely nothing. You make the investment and pay off the money, and the returns come to you with no effort on your part.

I too have never made a real estate investment that was truly passive.

@Mark Douglas

If your handyman has brains and a bit of experience, he might refuse the keys and work hard with you on an alternative solution.

The obvious convenience solution exposes your handyman to questions and suspicions about whether he has ever entered an occupied property on the sly and either stolen something valuable or done unspeakable things there.

I'm a renovation contractor and I do most of the work on my own properties. I guess you could call my main helper a handyman. Over the years, I've put my safety and my property in his hands literally dozens of times. He has keys and unrestricted access to all unoccupied properties. He has keys to my house. I have keys to his. But he does not have keys to our occupied rentals. It has nothing to do with mutual trust. It's about protecting him.

@Roger S.

You're in the middle of the garbage heap now, up to your neck, and no one likes to be in that position and listen to criticism by people who are impressed with themselves and have little to offer.

I'm glad there was no dangerous confrontation. I hope this moves toward resolution in an orderly way. The biggest long-term concern I can see about investing in the area are the police. Apparently, they won't run welfare checks when requested. I've done this twice up here in Pennsylvania with two different types of municipal police, and each time it's been smooth. The cops don't like coming out of these, but they do it. Sure, I can see how sheriff's deputies would want to make sure there was a court order, but not the local police. or the municipality force, to come with you to check on this person.

Good luck, Roger. If you're in C-D neighborhoods (I think it's a wise move to be in those neighborhoods as a landlord with a smaller number of properties who handles most of his own maintenance) trying to get it done without the police on your side is a serious drawback.

Seconding the opinion @Eddie Memphis just provided. You paid all those municipal taxes for law enforcement. Now is the time to get a return on your investment. I don't know if you can call for a welfare check where you are. We can here in Pennsylvania.

@Ashley Shearer

Wait till the 15-year-old gets knocked up and the significantly older boyfriend moves in. With his pit bull.

Happened to us.

Here is some early 16th-century wisdom about what I think you're really asking that may help:

"And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. "

"For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are thankless, fickle, false, studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant, to shed their blood, and sacrifice their property, their lives, and their children for you; but in the hour of need they turn against you."

"The Prince, therefore, who without otherwise securing himself builds wholly on their professions is undone. For the friendships which we buy with a price, and do not gain by greatness and nobility of character, though they be fairly earned are not made good, but fail us when we have occasion to use them."

-- Niccolò Machiavelli