All Forum Posts by: Jeff Kehl

I would check the county records to see who owns the rehabbed property and.call them up and offer to buy them lunch.

Regarding the IRS lien question, I actually bought a tax deed on a house that has a possible IRS lien on it so I know a bit about it. When I looked at the former owner's name I recognized him as a high profile individual who had been busted for drug traffiking.

The state superior court system of Georgia maintains a website called www.gsccca.org that allows you to search for liens against property or people. It's subscription based and costs $30/month. I imagine most states have some version of that.

IRS liens are against a person so I searched his name and they have a lien against him for several hundred thousand. However, he also owned a lot of very valuable property around town far in excess of that so I'm not sure what will happen.

The house I bought was basically worthless, stripped copper plumbing and electrical, trashed. I'm spending about $20k to rehab it and keeping good records in the hope that if they do try to come get it from me they would reimburse me those costs.

I've found that most lawyers I've asked about this really don't know unless they specialize in this kind of work so you just have to take some calculated risks...

It is 90% occupied. Closing is still 10 days away, but the bank that is holding it refuses to pay for any repairs. It is managed by the same company I use, They asked if they could fix those two units on my dime and I agreed so hopefully 100% when I close :)

It's in a highly desireable area and not much competition.

To finish this story... I originally had this 20 unit under contract for $500k. After backing out I continued working on it and came up with a plan for splitting the utilities. It recently went up for auction and I bought it for $445k. The gross rents are actually better than I initially thought as well about $9500/ month. So I was glad I waited.

Now I get to see how much of a problem child its really going to be.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to explore both as well as possibly wall mounted gas heaters.

Splitting the service would be best and I'm going to call the power company and ask them about it but there's only 1 service panel currently so I know I'd be looking at a new service panel which I know from experience will probably run me $1200. Plus the house has old fashion wiring, knob & tube? and the last thing I want to do is rewire the whole place to bring it up to code.

I may try Kelly's idea of like rent is $300 + utilities of $75/month and see how that goes. I will have 1 unit done a couple months before the other so I can possibly see how bad the utilities look before I settle on a final plan.

I'm rehabbing an old house from the 30's I got from a tax deed auction. It was divided down the middle into two apartments at some point. There is no ductwork and no evidence of hvac of any kind having been there. One of the units has the old parlor and dining room and there's fireplaces in both rooms one of which seems operational and like its been used recently. There's a gas valve installed there so I think they might have been using gas logs.

The neighborhood this house is in is not great at the moment so I plan to keep it as a duplex and make the units decent but not great. So I'm looking for ideas on what to do for hvac. I'm in Georgia and heat is not such a big deal here. It will get into the 20s several times during the winter but that's it.

Some other apartments I have without ductwork I brought in my hvac contractor and he suggested built-in large commercial electric window units. They work great., provide heat and ac and are adequate for 2br apartments. But they were about$1500/ unit installed and the bigger problem is the electric is not separately metered. A/c can be a very expensive thing here especially in older houses.

These apartments wont rent for much probably around $300/month so I'm worried about paying for utilities and getting stuck with big electric bills.

Looking for ideas/suggestions if others have tackled this problem.

I agree with Theresa k. I live in Georgia close to Tennessee but I spend a lot of time in San Diego for business. I would much rather invest in Tennessee.

I buy properties under market value that I could flip but instead I do a minimal rehab and hold them with a tenant. My intent is to flip some of them in a few years when the market recovers. I think Brandon Turner called this 'hybrid investing' in an article.

Ive bought houses for less than half what they sold for 10 years ago in great neighborhoods. And they cant be rebuilt for even those amounts. Our unemployment is still high but trending down. Our inventory of homes for sale is dropping quickly and nothing new is being built.

In the mean time., the cash flow is very good and I use it to buy more properties so I'm not in any hurry to sell.

I did flip one property 6 months after I bought it. It was in a vacation area in the mountains and I bought it cheap at auction. Its a cabin on a mountain stream. After rehabbing it I realized it didn't fit my model. I couldn't find a good long-term tenant and would take a lot of money to make it a short-term rental. So I sold it for a small profit.

So I guess I'm at 1 flip so far with a bunch more in progress...

I'm just about done doing two quiet titles in Georgia. Took about 6 months and cost about $500 per property. I found the attorney by looking through the legal adds to see who was filing the most 'foreclosure of right to redeem' ads.

These were tax liens too so that may not be what you need.

Great topic. I have often though that a big business opportunity is being missed here. If they take one of these p2p sites and add securing the note with the property plus a foreclosure service this would be great for both re investors and people with cash to lend.

I have used Prosper for several years mostly as a lender but I also took a small loan to try it from the borrowers side. I have done well as a lender averaging low teens returns even though I've had a lot of loans default. They say they send them to a collection agency.

I would have borrowed more from them for real estate but last time I checked they wanted a much higher interest rate for me even though I have good credit. I have a lot of debt at the moment though so that is probably why.

I tried a listing for a house I own free and clear on money360. I got 1 question about my cost basis but that was it. I pulled the ad. Seemed kind of worthless.