All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

Older people with one home have a hard time wrapping their head around seller financing and their kids will not like it if they are the expected heirs. You want people with many properties who won't care about keeping paper on one of them while you do the work. You search the tax records in your area for people who own multiple homes. It's not an easy search.

If you want to be taken for a ride and lose money, definitely do this deal. It NEVER works out that way when you front the money and they do the work and you split the profits. They will assess every extra cost, the time will go way over while you pay all the holding costs. If you have the money, what do you need him for? Go find your own deal, your own contractors and take all the profit. He is trying to triple dip by getting paid from the contractor referral, the profit and on the listing. RUN AWAY.

I'm not against investing with student loans outstanding @Nicole Heasley Beitenman, but to do so it has to be worth it. A turnkey investment in a town across the country will not make enough money and poses way too many risks for it to make sense based on the information above. Too many people try to make more money instead of paying down their debt more aggressively and then end up just spinning their wheels and getting nowhere. Some do it right, but this plan would not be good given where he lives and where he would be investing and the type of property.

Roommates are not a protected class, but you have to be careful that your seller is not using "roommates" to discriminate against protected classes. What's the rationale on no roommates? You have to see if the applicants would qualify as a protected class and then decide if "roommates" is a sham way around that. But if it's just someone who only wants to rent to one person and not two, that is legal even if it doesn't make sense.

The best way to find potential deals where owners would be willing to hold paper is to search for owners who own multiple properties in the same county. Then, drill down to see how long they have held these properties. If some of them have been held for 15+ years, they might want to get rid of the maintenance on one and take a chance on someone with owner financing. In my experience, the only sellers offering owner financing are ones who own multiple properties, don't need the cash, and like to release maintenance in favor of monthly payments and less headaches.

If you have 200k in student loans to pay off, do you really see this passive investment halfway across the country as the way to make enough to even dent something? Just because you are familiar with an area doesn't make it a smart first investment, but it is better if you know real people on the ground to manage. The real issue is if you can't pay cash for the investment in Memphis, do you really want to take out more loans to make a small amount each month, with 200k still to pay off in student loans. Everyone says invest now, invest with no money down, but if you scale it all the way back to caveman thinking - you already have a large loan outstanding, why do you want to put more loans on top of that, especially in an investment that you won't be near and that likely won't be turning great monthly numbers if you are looking for a turnkey solution.

Just to be clear, I did review @Konstantin Boubev's paperwork from the company and there was a groundwater issue where the testing was over the legal limit. So, in this case, the pricing is probably completely legit.

@Steve O. you need to see the report that it came back clean, but I'm a little confused as to what happened. When the tank is removed, it is either a leak or no leak per the town when the come out. If the town confirms there is leakage, you have to run the tests and do remediation. That test could come up clean. The town has to fail the tank when there are any holes that could have had leakage and when they remove and scrape the tank sometimes they make pinholes when doing it. The whole thing is a racket for some companies, but there are good ones.

I've never heard of a one-person tank removal company. It's not possible. How much total did you pay? Was there any remediation required and was it done? What paperwork have you received so far? To close everything you will need a NFA from the town saying that No Further Action is necessary on the tank. That's what you will need to sell the house eventually. Give me some more info on the costs. It could be ok, but there are a few fishy parts here.

Unless your condo is going to print money when you go, sell it now and use it to invest where you are going. The numbers on condos can be pretty tight especially if you need property management for one tiny unit. Even if you break even on the deal, there is no reason to hold it just to hold it. Unless Cincinnati is projected to go way up, which it's not, condos are tough to scale up in value because there are always new ones being built that will be better, pushing your value down.

There is no point to keep collecting alleged assets if you keep collecting debt along with it. How are your units doing each month? What is your market like for deals? How are you finding your deals? Why are you ready to do another deal now when you don't have liquid assets to do it? What about repair costs in the case of a big expenditure? How are your reserves?

Too many people want to collect doors at $100 profit/month and in doing so, collect debt and expenditures that will crash with the market. Take the time to build your 3 doors now into more profitable streams and bank the money before trying to get creative just to own another house.