All Forum Posts by: Jeff Kehl

Hi Morris,
The process takes so long because there are a lot of legal loopholes to jump through to notify people who have an interest in the property. And then you have to file a quiet title motion in court to get the title clear. Part of the notifications is public notices in the newspaper that have to run a month. I'm very much in learning mode on this too though.

What you've heard is correct from my experience, 95% of the properties are just land and a lot of that is junk land that has no access or is not buildable.

I had fun driving around finding all of the properties though and the two I bought had abandoned houses on them but were so overgrown I don't think anyone at the auction knew they were there. So I got lucky. One of them will have to be torn down, the other I'm going to attempt to rehab. Both are nice buildable lots close to town though.

I am very new to tax lien investing. I bought a couple last year to see how the process worked and I'm now going through the legal process to get clear title on them.

Our county is having an auction next week to sell off all of the properties that no one bought at the tax auctions over the last couple years. The county seems to buy the lien on any properties no investor bids on.

The auction says the county will convey their interest in the property via quit claim deed and they haven't taken any title action to take ownership in the property. I have researched the properties and have found a couple with small houses I am interested in. Some of them seem to be occupied.

So my question is this, if I buy the property from the county at this auction, do I have to go through the legal notification and title process before I take possession? This is taking me about 6 months on the liens I currently have.

I'm checking this with my lawyer just wanted to see if anyone here has experience with it.

Thanks.

Wow Joel you are very pessimistic. I love it! Are there any areas inside the perimeter you would recommend? I have a daughter attending Georgia Tech and would like to buy her a small house in a good area that will appreciate when things recover.

We have eaten at a few places around piedmont park and it seems nice,

Hi Shaneel ,
I've been following a similar strategy to what you describe for the last 4 years not far from you in Rome, ga and its certainly possible. I have more than 20 properties now and so far so good.

From what I hear lawrenceville is a better place to invest than Rome. Faster population growth, lower unemployment and higher rents. That's the good news. The bad news is you'll probably have a harder time finding deals and you'll face more competition. The word is out that Atlanta is a great place to invest.

Couple pieces of advice. Look through the mls for properties in your price range in your area that mention bank owned or foreclosures. Whatever agent has the listing on the most, use them as your buyers agent.

Good property management is key. Spend a lot of time making sure your using the best property manager in your area.

Find a good small local banker and explain what your doing. They're key after you get past 10 properties.

Find an honest contractor to do your rehabs.

Take a look at 2-4 unit buildings. Cash flow is better and there's a lot on the market.

Hey Chris, thanks for the info. I don't think I could work enough of a tax savings to make enough on this property BUT it is 1) Historically significant and 2) Necessary for the community. There aren't a lot of good 1 br apartments close to downtown.

Although I backed off it, I'm fairly confident I could have made this deal work.
There are just so many opportunities in this market I wasn't willing to take the risk,

Thanks Kenneth for the ideas on heating. I had not heard of gas monitor heaters. I will research that.

And thanks Joel for adding more insight. I had financing lined up and think I could have gotten the bank to come down substantially on the price given what we found.

But what you're saying makes a lot of sense to me. Find the newer properties or already rehabbed where the money's already been spent and buy them for a discount.

Hi Joel, thanks for the response. I agree with your assessment and that's why I backed out but a couple of other factors were in play.

- The location is excellent, very in demand
- When the market was hot someone paid over $1 million for this property
- I had already negotiated the price down substantially before the inspections but don't want to go into specifics
- It's a bank owned foreclosure

My reason for posting this though was more to ask about strategies for older properties that need lots of work.

I had considered things like moving everyone out of 1 floor and redoing everything a floor at a time.

For the heating issues I was looking at solutions like submetering or individual electric units where the tenants would pay for their on heat.

And I'm looking at a similar but smaller property now so was interested on any strategies like this anyone had done successfully.

I was recently under contract for an older apartment building and have backed out of the deal because of problems uncovered during the inspection process.

I'm now looking at another older building and I'd be interested if anyone has found creative ways to make these deals work other than moving tenants out and completely gutting and rehabbing.

The property consists of 2 brick buildings built in the 1930's one has 12 1-br units the other has 6 1,2 and 3 br units. There was also a more recently built duplex for a total of 20 units.

On paper the numbers looked ok. Gross monthly rent of about $8000, asking price $640k.

There were a lot of things unvovered in the inspections but some of the worst were:

1) The heat for the two big buildings is provided by a central gas boiler. The hot water pipes leading from the boiler were leaking in 20 places the inspector could see and as a bonus were wrapped in asbestos.
2) There is only one thermostat for the building so the tenants on the top floors often open their windows during the winter because so much heat comes off the radiator, as a result the gas bills (landlord payed) can sometime be more than $3000/month in the winter.
3) Some of the electrical panels had been updated but most had not and the wiring was all original fabric coated and would have to be replaced if worked on.
4) The roofs needed replaced.

I could probably use all of this to get the price much lower but it seemed like just too big a project to take on especially when the numbers were good but not great.

Any experiences working with older properties like this?

Thanks for the welcome!

The multi-family I'm working on is a bit of an unusual property. It's 20 units in the downtown area of Rome. It's in a very good, desirable location but has a lot of maintenance issues. It consists of 3 brick buildings built in 1935 so let's see the hvac, electrical, plumbing etc. all have issues. We're going through the inspection process currently to learn what all exactly the issues are.

The apartments are mainly 1 br but there are 2 2br and 2 3br. They're very charming, with hardwood floors and cool architectural details. And Rome's downtown is a few blocks away and is a big draw because of the restaurants and shopping.

I've looked at some other similar multi-families but oddly the financials are not as good as the SFRs I've been buying.

Hello,

I've been a member for about a month now but have been lurking and reading back through the forums. Thought it was time to introduce myself. I'm a buy-and-hold investor in Rome, GA which is about an hour northwest of Atlanta.

I started investing in Real Estate accidently in 1997 when I needed to rent out my primary residence. I bought and sold rental properties on and off after that, but have become much more active over the last three years because of the tremendous bargains out there.

My approach is to buy foreclosures, rehab them, rent them out and start the next one. I have always bought single family or 1-4 units but am currently under contract for my first true multi-family.

I very much appreciate all of the information posted here and was very happy to find a site like this where I can learn more about other areas of Real Estate investing.