All Forum Posts by: Jordan Bateman

Sounds interesting, I'll keep my eyes out

Back story:
Today I was making a trip to go change the locks on a few houses I bought at this months County Auction.

While out in the area where I've purchased quite a few houses, I noticed a rundown house and checked it out. It had some broken windows, some boarded up, pretty messy inside, obviously uninhabitable.
I left a note there saying maybe I could help, I'm a buyer. Then on the way back to my car, I saw the next door neighbor and said Hi. He was Hispanic but spoke good English so I asked him "what do you know about this house over here?" He said the guy comes by 2 or 3 times a week, don't really see him often. So I said great, here's my card, I might be able to help him out of this situation.

I could tell on his face that there was more to the story so I just said, look, I just dropped by to offer assistance because I see this kind of thing all the time. That's when he told me the owner is homeless (or living the homeless lifestyle). The house was clearly not livable and had no power or water and roof leaks everywhere. The owner is also crippled in a wheelchair. He told me the corner he usually works, so I headed there.

I showed up to the corner that he works (which is busy) found a place to leave my car with my hazards on and approached two older gentleman sitting on the floor, one of which had a wheelchair next to him. **Will change names for privacy concerns**

Is one of you Bob? One of the men pointed at the other. "Yeah, I'm Bob." What's your last name Bob? Smith, he replied. Now I know I have the right guy.

While this is happening I have cars trying to get around me and honking at me so I'm trying to move quickly.

I wanted to talk to you about something personal. He says ok. I say, it's about your property.

He says, "oh, my property, yeah...you want it, you can have it. You want to buy it?

Me: well, would that be helpful to you?

Bob: oh, yeah, you can have it

Me: who's the bank that has the mortgage?

Bob: no bank, i paid cash back in 1990

Me: really, what do you want for it?

Bob: oh, man, I don't care, anything...$5000

Me: that could work, I just need to do some more research. How can I get a hold of you.

Bob: well, I'm either here or at the hotel down the street

Me: Great, go stay at that hotel tonight, here's some money, I'll come back in the morning so we can talk some more.

Now there's the back story (this all happened today). My questions now are, how do you buy a house if the owner is homeless and likely doesn't have documentation, identification, deed, etc. I plan on having him sign a purchase and sale agreement then opening title with a title company. What questions should I ask him that I may be forgetting:
-Do you have any form of identification?
-If not, what do I do then?
-How can I prove that he is who he says he is? Which I believe based on these events
-apparently he's a veteran
-apparently he spent some time in jail

Will a title company close on a house in a situation like this? Is there anything else I need to look out for?
-there are no liens that I could find, just a sale with a W/D given in 1990
-he does owe some back taxes, but not much (but he says he doesn't since he's disabled, ??)

Also, I plan to try and help the gentleman as much as I can to get back on his feet (so to speak). He has muscular dystrophy and seems like a smart guy who used to be successful and just gave up, but could really treat this as the break he really needs.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jordan

Joshua Dorkin I just PM'd it to you

Thanks!

That was (and still is) my intention, but I'm still getting the same error message when clicking the Upload button that I was getting when I originally created the post.

I will update the post once I'm able to upload to BP.

Maybe this will work?
http://www.4shared.com/file/T95bb38B/Deal_Analysis_-_Rehab_Rental_F.html

In the process of creating a spreadsheet that can help me and my team quickly, and accurately analyze a deal, I've created and excel workbook on steroids, possibly overkill, but I can't let it go to waste.

I started with a couple of excellent spreadsheets from J Scott and tweaked away. The idea was to take a potential deal, then run it through several scenarios including purchase, rehab, hard money, conventional financing, and then compare exit strategies like renting, flipping, or owner financing. It may have gotten out of hand but I think it's still on track and could be very valuable, but I would like to hear some comments from the numbers experts in the group.

I think I OD'd on Excel after about 6 hours, so I'm going to take a break. If there's something better out there that you know of, also let me know. I won't take it personal. Will try to upload file shortly (it's not letting me currently). But here's a link to it on a Cloud server if this is allowed

Deal Analysis - Rehab, Rental, Flip, Owner Fin.xlsx

http://www.4shared.com/file/T95bb38B/Deal_Analysis_-_Rehab_Rental_F.html

If not sorry, I'll upload it appropriately when I'm able to.

Thanks,

Jordan[url]

Thanks Steve Babiak, I'll take some time time to go through all of that to be sure there's nothing we've overlooked.

Thanks again Don Konipol, I may indeed have more questions and I appreciate the offer to help.

Also, I found a company locally that will help with the research and bidding by proxy on tax foreclosures, but no one that does this for the mortgage foreclosures. Looks like we'll be handling everything in house.

Thanks for the information, Don. I can't tell you the number of horror stories I've heard from newbies at the auction. Fortunately for us, we're not newbies to the real estate business, just the auction, which is why we're approaching with caution.

We've attended the past several auctions as observers, talked with as many people as we can that are in the know and are carefully putting together a process and team to take advantage of the inefficiencies that are present. We will most likely start slow, see what happens then reflect and scale our efforts from there.

The logistics seem to be the biggest challenge at this point.

My team has recently spent an exhaustive amount of time researching historical results data from recently completed mortgage foreclosure auctions in Houston (Harris County). We've determined based on our criteria and buying power that we could reasonably win a fair amount of bids and are in the process of determining the logistics of setting up a team to attend our monthly auctions, with all of the needed prep work being done accordingly. We trying to outsource where appropriate and keep the most important analysis in house.

My question to the group is, is anyone actively purchasing mortgage (trustee) foreclosures at the auction in Harris County? Or does anyone know of a company or service provider that will bid by proxy on our behalf? It's quite a process and will demand quite a bit of manpower to facilitate, but we're trying to set up as sophisticated a process as we can.

Also, do any out-of-town investors that purchase at various auctions have some general advice that may pertain to any auction in general?

I am extremely grateful for any feedback provided and wish everyone the best of luck in their endeavors!!

Jordan

I realize this is an older topic, but to piggyback on Mr. Dorkin's post, I just received a similar, and very misleading email today from Stacy.

*On a side note, Stacy said in his previous email he was "giving away" a free copy of "Think and Grow Rich." The 1937 version of the book "Think and Grow Rich" (which is excellent) is in the Public Domain, although still somewhat controversially, but basically means that anyone can obtain it for free (but I'm no attorney) and the fact that someone is "giving" it away is a nice gesture, but merely a gimmick. In my opinion, a more tasteful approach might be to simply "suggest" that someone read it. I honestly don't know if this is referenced on his site or not.

The email I received today was even worse. It talks about Tax Lien Certificates (which don't even exist in Texas). It then goes on to name these so-called "FACTS":

That was it for me. Usually, this would be deleted and I would be done with it, but I can't. I'm sure there is going to be some sort of "system" pitched during the webinar that some unsuspecting person will blindly be sold. No one "buys" these programs, they get "sold."

Sure, it may work, but this is highly misleading and there are far better sources to learn this subject matter from along with the necessary risks and local laws involved pertaining to your state and county of interest.