All Forum Posts by: Jeff Zamora

We are very clear in our advertising (zillow, craigslist etc) that we will do a THOROUGH criminal background and credit check on all applicants.  I want to weed these people out before they even call us.  We have not had one person with eviction/felony apply.  We have had some borderline credit cases and seems like the lower the credit score the more problems we have.  

When asked we say that we do this so that all the existing tenants know that we vet all new tenants carefully so they will have good neighbors.  

We do not say we will not rent to felons or previous evictions in ads, but I think people get the idea when they see the ad wording and move on to easier landlords.

@Benjamin Cowles

I have had inspections a few times, along with contractor review.  I am also thinking about not doing home inspection but am not convinced it is a good idea.

My contractor tends to be more loose with his estimates when we are evaluating houses, and he wont check things out as thoroughly as the home inspector.  Inspector will climb on roof (if no snow), will go into crawlspaces, and has a long list of things he checks.  Contractor will look at completely different things with me, like options for minimizing rehab costs, ideas/costs for changes to house, timelines, etc.  So, they tend to have different roles at the present.

That said, everything the home inspector has called out has either been obvious or not important.  We do look carefully at the house prior to putting in offer.  I would like to be able to remove that inspection contingency in some cases if we need a stronger offer.

@Mission Flegg

Interesting post as I am literally working on this exact issue right now.

There is a tax sale in progress in my area.  Like elsewhere, the county posts the list of upcoming items for sale 8 weeks or so before the sale starts.  People either contact the delinquent owners before the items go to sale or ultimately wait for the sale and bid.

I am trying to get ahead of this process.  The county sells a list of all delinquent properties, meaning any properties even one payment past due.  I'll merge this list with owner contact info (gotten from other sites) and build a contact list.  I can then target owners > 3 years past due, giving me a couple years before they go to sale to market to them.  

I have experimented with putting similar data (all tax sale properties) in google earth so I can quickly view by region, with color coded pins to represent the amount of improvement on lots, etc.  It is super handy for quickly viewing areas with delinquent items.  I have to manually check against property radar for initial validation, but hopefully will automate this more.  I have another post on BP with sample data.

I think once I have the actual data from county I can track trends for areas are well and do some deeper analysis, or marry the data with other GIS data (incomes, rent/own, etc) to build a better model.

I'd just contact the prop tax office for the county and ask to speak to someone in data services, and  that you'd like to purchase tax data for current and/or delinquent owners.  It worked for me.

Regarding your other question, in the counties I've looked at the parcel information includes info on whether the property is improved or not.

@Susan Bearce

Yes that does sound suspicious.  At the very least I would look up the owner names using county tax records or a service like propertyradar.  Some online services also tell you how roughly much is owed on properties, so you could see if the numbers match up with what he is telling you.  It'd be a huge red flag to see him offering to sell you a house for 100K when he owes 200K and not positioning it as short sale etc.  In other words, I'd be looking for signs that he didn't own the place.  While I can't imagine this would make it through escrow you never know what people will try.

I haven't bought a tenant occupied property (yet) but wonder about the quality of work the tenant does, and liability issues if they do something wrong, or get injured while performing the task.

Have you been down to the area the house is located in?  Do you know what it is like around there, the types of incomes found in the area, etc?  If the tenant moves out the day after you close escrow (or worse, stops paying) do you have a contingency plan in place?  Have you interviewed property managers in the area?  Are you familiar with FL specific rental law (which is probably different than MA).  Are you factoring in insurance costs including hurricane related insurance (being 10 min from the beach)?

I know a lot of people seem to do their first deal out of state but I'd say doing my first ones close by has been invaluable!  From dealing with rehabbing, building teams, to being on hand to learn about and fix issues, I can't imagine starting with an out of state deal.  As they say on the podcasts, there are likely great deals within 1.5 hours of your house!

@Susan Bearce

I use this site to see what crime is reported in an area: http://www.crimemapping.com/

I actually have the same dilemma right now - I am evaluating a decent cash flow property in a 'bad' area.  Called the local police department to find out more and they just directed me to the link above.  After researching (and talking to residents of area) seems there is some small amount of crime but the area has a worse reputation than it actually merits.  More problems have occurred near one of my existing units and we have no problem visiting there any time day or night.

Sorry to hear that! Are they gone on web browser version too? Is there anything in trash, spam etc (like maybe stuff got bulk moved there?) Looks like people see this with compromised accounts.

Here's a link that might help too: https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/453...

or: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78353

FYI the data includes Redlands, San Bernardino, Rialto, and other regions around SB.  I am trying to get more data in this form.  Let me know if there is another San Bernardino county region you are interested in, I will put it out there.

@Kelly O'Quinn Glad you like it! Let me know if you see something that would improve it!

FYI meant to post a sample image of the data so people can see what I am talking about before getting the files:

http://imgur.com/HszYPbZ

Hi All,

San Bernardino county has an upcoming tax sale. It is an online auction and has about 3100 properties for sale (as of now, some will still be withdrawn). I have been working on an easier way to view the data by aggregating all properties, county assessor pic, assessed value and improvements, etc.  I built a tool that aggregates all this data in way that is simple to browse.  You can just load into Google Earth and get a quick overview of where all the properties are.

I'd be curious to get feedback from BP users to know if this kind of thing is helpful.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/jeffreyz/f...

http://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/jeffreyz/f...

I have been using this in conjunction with propertyradar to lookup how much is owed on a property, then contacting free-and-clear owners to see if they want to sell.  I have a couple bites so far so we'll see how it goes.

Let me know your thoughts!

Quick update: replaced all galvanized pipes.  My assumption is that it would costly but should have gotten the quote while I was rehabbing.  Turned out to be $1121, out the door.

Also found out water heater was leaking and would have gone out sooner than later.  Replaced that as well, so hopefully now after redoing all plumbing we won't be having the dreaded 2am water leak call.

@Account Closed Had them check water pressure, it was 120psi!  Needed to also install a pressure regulator.  Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the advice!