All Forum Posts by: Jennifer T.

Hi,

I found this off-market deal in Philly and was wondering whether it's worth it to proceed. I feel like I must be crazy because nowadays everyone is dying to evict their non-paying tenants out but I'm looking to voluntarily take on TWO of them in one property 😐.

This property was previously sold within one day of being advertised by the wholesaler but the deal fell apart as it was supposed to be delivered vacant but they found 2 tenants who stopped paying and are relying on the eviction ban to stay. 

I would get about 10% discount from the previous sales price (the most the wholesale/owners would agree to with the squatters), new price being about $110k. 

The ARV is at $240k (there is a direct comps from an almost identical property few doors down sold recently).

It would probably cost me about 40-50k to fix it (to be safe let's say 60k to factor in squatter damages). 

It will rent for about 1400/month.

Currently the squatters have a lease renting one bedroom each for 500/month with lease up in Sept this year. I think there is about a 50/50% chance that they will both take a cash for keys offer (I plan to offer them a generous amount to increase my chances). Else I will go with the legal route. With the lawyers I've spoken to, seems like this is a 6-8+ months process.

Is it worth it to take the gamble and hope that the tenants will just take the money and go, as this is too good of a deal to pass up (even with the 50/50 chance that I might not gain posession for another year)?

Hi all,

With the market being so competitive these days I've been searching off-market deals. I've bought the traditional route before where my agent pretty much took care of everything.

Now, what is the process exactly for buying from a wholesaler with cash, after an offer gets accepted? It's a site-unseen, sold as-is property. I know I need to get title insurance at some point, but what's the order of operation? What about escrow, I'm guessing there has to be some kind of reputable middleman to hold the money? What forms (if any) do I use? Anything I should be on the look out for? 

Thank you in advance!

The 12-month forbearance period has just been extended to 15 months recently. 

Banks don't require you to pay all the missed payments back in a short period of time. If your mortgage is federally backed and payments were current before the covid forbearance, they are simply added onto the end of your mortgage term. 

So although tenants staying in the investment properties may not have been paying rent for the last year, the property owners haven't been paying mortgage either so it's not like they'd have a cashflow problem and are forced to sell/foreclose. 

I've read that title search is a must before buying a property from a mortgage auction. I've also read that existing liens and any second mortgage are wiped following the first mortgage foreclosure, so why do I still have to conduct title search? 

I assume that the first mortgagee made sure title was good (since title insurance was a requirement) before granting the loan. So, what's there to look for? If it matters, this is for Pennsylvania.

Your insight is much appreciated, thanks!

In PA, mortgagees (lenders/banks) can also redeem tax delinquent properties with same redemption period as the owner. My question is, why arent they always redeeming delinquent properties (assuming most houses do have a mortgage on it) by paying a bit of tax on it? It seems like a great deal for banks just pay a few thousands in owed taxes and get a house! 

So, how does any house make it to auctions, or am I not getting something right? 

Hi all,

I'm just trying to figure out my investmen strategy. I'm interested in the BRRRR method - from what I learner, you refinance a rehabbed property after holding it & renting it out for 6 months, and showing the rental agreement with your tenant.

Now, can I do this step with STR like Airbnb instead of a long term tenant? If I can show a couple months of revenue from Airbnb, will I have success getting that property refinanced and pull some money out? The revenue will of course differ a lot month by month, so has anyone tried this, and what kind of issues did you run into?

I'm an Airbnb host in a major city (Philly) and ever since the covid lockdown started, I've gotten a lot of booking requests that are really weird because they all have the same red flags in common. My property manager doesn't accept suspicious bookings and there have always been a few once in a while, but recently that's the ONLY kind of booking request that I have received.  

The people making requests all have: 

- NO profile pics
- ALL are local from Philly
- ALL profiles are minimally verified
- All requests are for ~2 days on random dates this and next month
- Almost no one has any reviews
- No request really has a solid/detailed message stating their purpose for booking 

It almost feels like they are fake accounts compared to all the successful bookings I've had the entire time before the lock-down. I have a couple of theories but I'm not sure how much water they hold lol.. Eg. I know that Airbnb's algorithm accounts for the number of bookings a host accepts, so maybe now the time's tough and people are looking to take competition out by trying to lower their search ranking? Or maybe people are getting sick so they are looking for other places to shelter their family temporarily? 

I've also been reading up on the sketchy stuff happening on both sides of the Airbnb business so this is worrying me a bit. So I'm wondering if anyone else has this happened to them, or knows what is going on?

Hi all, planning on doing my first flip here - exciting times!

So I have identified a property that needs to be renovated but seems to be in decent shape otherwise (no mold or fire damages from the pictures). Given the state of things right now, and that the listing has been on market for couple of months, I'm thinking of making a cash offer way below asking, in exchange for the property to be sold "as is". ("As is" is not currently a condition in the listing). 

My question is, how do I assess how much approximately the cost for the rehab will be? Has anyone cold-called general contractors and perhaps showed them the pictures and ask them for a general ballpark figure? I don't need to know down to the hundreds, but I would like to know if it's closer to 50k or 100k.

My biggest concern is that there could be fundamental structural issues or whatever issues not readily apparently that ends up costing tens of thousands more when rehabbing. But in general, what are some ideas to get an idea of cost for a SPECIFIC property? Can you hire someone to view the house with you and check things out before you offer? 

Thanks guys!

I have a conventional 30-yr mortgage on a home that I qualified for with proof of job income. Let's say years later circumstances changed and I decided to quit my job to do real estate full-time. If I acquire a second house subsequently, rehab it, rent it out (past the "seasoning" period), and try to refi it to get some money out to repeat the process, will I run into issues with the mortgage on my first home when the lenders see that I do not have income from a job to pay for the first mortgage, thus will refuse refinance of the 2nd house? (Let's say I have enough savings or "house hack" the first house so I actually have the income stream to keep paying the first mortgage, just that the income stream has changed from what the initial mortgage was approved based on.)

I guess what I'm really asking is, how does changed income stream on previous mortgages affect your ability to get new financing?

@Mark Allen Kenny what changes in landlord laws were you referring to?

Thanks