All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

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.

I would never buy a property without knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. It seems that you are local, with the property, so that's good. But 10k buy with 15k in repairs doesn't add up for me in any market. Your repairs are likely going to be more than that. How did you come up with the reno budget? Do you have a contractor who bid it out?

Homes that cost 10k usually cost 10k for a reason. Because there is no upside. You really need to be sure about sale and rent numbers before you start a renovation. If your numbers don't work you might just need to eat in instead of wasting the time and money just to lose money every month if the numbers for rent don't work or if the market is unsellable on a block that a house just sold, to you, for 10k.

If you live in the Fresno area and did not do well investing in your own market, I wouldn't go investing in some other place where you will have even less oversight. You can't learn anything by investing in markets you aren't familiar with and you will have to rely on area "experts" to help you which can go very right and very, very wrong. Anyone can invest around where they live, at least in a 30-minute radius, it's just about how you find deals. Metrics and spreadsheets don't fix bad tenants, not knowing local ordinances for landlords, not understanding the configuration of neighborhoods. Unless you plan on finding a place where you also want to spend time, fix your hometown rental and learn from it and find the next neighborhood that is still affordable and find deals there.

Where are you getting your call lists for pre-foreclosures? Most pre-foreclosures do not go to foreclosure so this is a terrible call list. A pre-foreclosure can technically be someone who has missed one payment and a lis pendens has been filed. A lot of time it's just semantics and they get back on track.

If you don't have any way of knowing where they are at in the cycle of foreclosure, you are wasting your time calling. The script would be completely different depending on where they are in the process. If you know they have just missed a payment or two, that is not the time for a call.

Dumb sites like Zillow are marking things pre-foreclosure and then not unmarking them. The data on pre-foreclosures is rarely accurate. Many pre-foreclosures don't want anyone to know and will be very annoyed with your call. If your only solution is to buy for cash, they can get that call from anyone. Learn more about where they are at in the cycle and if there is anything you can do to help. You probably won't close a deal on a pre-foreclosure list. Too many of the leads will never need to sell.

Why are they motivated? If it needs no repairs and is worth $300,000, why would they sell it to you for $250,000 or less? How much equity do they have in it? What are you going to do with it? What are the rental comps and are there even rental comps for 5 BR homes in Glenn Heights. Chances are your rental value is less than you might think if there aren't a lot of comps as there probably aren't a ton of 5 BR closed rentals there.

$100,000 is only possible if it hits a water source. The chances of going over $10,000 on a residential property in NJ are very slim because most tanks are 550 gallons are smaller and very few, to any tanks, have more than pinhole leaks. Even in the case of a large leak, it is usually concentrated to one specific area. These are leaks, not spills. The chances of going over $10,000 are probably less than .01%

That makes no sense. They get paid when you close, by the seller. A buyer's agent job is all risk-taking to get the reward, they don't get anything for trying. It's possible that the $150 fee is illegal. No agent, in most, if not all states, can take any payment directly. All transactional monies have to go through their brokerage. Ask them if their brokerage knows about the fee? If it's a fee paid at closing, it could be a transaction fee to the brokerage, which is fine, although totally unnecessary. If it is an upfront fee to the agent, it's probably illegal and extremely weird. Walk away. Find a real agent.