All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Kinzle

@Mark F. Thanks for the connect!  

@Hassan Abidi Happy to help, as always.  

Hi @Scott Harper

I'm a local real estate Agent and investor.  I work with property investors and @Mark F..  Stats from MRED shows Romeoville to be very active for rentals, running at under 30 days on market over the last 6 months, with units renting from $1350 to $2100, with a median rent of $1750 a month.  Romeoville also ranks well for affordable housing.  A single family home, 3 bed/1 bath, and 908 sq feet rented for $1350 in 10 days.  Rent to owns are a needle in a haystack as of late, hard to find, but everybody and their cousin wants one!

@Davion Lewis I use Juli Jackson, an attorney out in Elgin to help negotiate short sales with banks.  She works will all lenders, any location. 

@Jocelyn Canfield If this is an agent who is not willing to work with a buyer's agent on a short sale, then perhaps he doesn't know how the short sale with a lender actually works. Maybe he thinks he can get a cash deal scraped together to unload the properties to an unwary buyer who has not done their due diligence, leaving them on the hook for tax liens, HOA liens, or other undisclosed liens that a short sale would wipe out. As an agent, he should also know that full disclosure is the rule, not the exception. The lender(s) will do an extensive review of everything, including title, taxes, liens, comps, appraisal, MLS listing history, contracts, offers, plus the seller's financial state, so there's no place to hide. You could have your attorney pull title and see what's on it, to get an idea of what's going on.

@John Franczyk As an Illinois agent who has experienced negotiating short sale listings, I can safely say they are a lot of work! Granted, it is mostly a ton of paperwork, including a full short sale application packet, with an authorization form, RMA, bank statements, pay stubs, 2 years of taxes, 4506-T, a hardship letter, listing agreement, listing history, etc. The negotiator then needs to do continual follow up, on Equator or with a lot of calls to the lender, and re-send the documents. And repeat this if it is an FHA loan, it has to go through a waterfall process of loan modification to decline first, before applying for the short sale.

After the appraisal is done, if the bank's appraisal comes in too high, you'll need to pull comp's to get prove your offer is accurate. The goal is to get the lender's approval letter. A bank is expecting something around appraisal price, roughly, and they really aren't aware of local market conditions. If the agent can pull recent comps at your price point, that might work. If the appraisal and comps still run high, it might make more sense for it to go into foreclosure and perhaps pick it up later as an REO.

@Sam Burnoski 

Congrats on getting through the testing, now on to the hard part.  I've been licensed for 10 years and if you're looking for minimal brokerage fees for investment purposes for yourself, you'll want to skip the expensive branding like the Coldwell/Century 21/ReMax and go for the slimmed down version like a smaller boutique brokerage or a flat fee one like Charles Rutenberg Realty that offers 100% commission.  

CRR has a monthly desk fee of $35 on the Silver Plan for low volume agents (less than 15 transaction a year) and it's $325 per transaction, or a higher volume plan Gold Plan of $100/monthly desk fee, $50 per transaction.  No dual agency is allowed under CRR.  They charge 10% on rental listings based on 1 month's rent.  You're on your own for training, support and tech. They do not hold client earnest money.

If you're looking to run your own RE business full time as an agent, I suggest Keller Williams.  They offer amazing training, a great set of tech tools, Bold classes, and full service admin and tech support to get you up and running fast in that first year.  They have a 30% split on your commissions, but once you "cap out", you get 100% commissions for the rest of the year.

Good luck!

@Patrick Senas I'd be happy to offer a few suggestions of Chicago area agents who may want to work with a remote investor.  I hope we can connect.

Arm's length means exactly that, so I wouldn't risk losing your license or your RE business over it. No family member can purchase the property, LLC or otherwise. The bank will seek full market value and pull an appraisal when the property is put on the market for sale. Your girlfriend might be able to purchase it, but as you've already stated, that's a conflict of interest and could be fraud. Realtors need to be extremely careful and use full disclosure. I would discuss it with your parents and an experienced, local, short sale realtor, and you might be able to get a referral fee. Good luck!

@Brian Detlefsen Welcome to BP.  I'm also in the Elgin/Fox Valley area.  This is a good area to find multi units, SF, in a huge range of prices.  I specialize in distressed properties and work with a local investor group too.  If you have questions, I'm available to help.  I hope we can connect.

Best regards and see you around BP.

@Alex Manley Hello and welcome!  I'm glad you are taking advantage of all the information and tools available on BP, it is a great resource.  Enjoy the property investing journey!