All Forum Posts by: Joshua Olitzky

It's against the seller attached to the house. It was something against a business they owned that they signed personally on. The judgment is 2 years old and the lien was just placed on the property. The bank won't lend on anything other than a clear title, so I don't think I can close without documentation showing that someone will pay the existing owed monies. 

Hello, I was about a week and a half out from closing on a great deal in Salem MA and just found out that the seller has a ~$95k judgement sitting in 2nd position on the deed along with a ~$2k water and sewer lien. It also turns out they haven't paid their mortgage in at least a year which brings the buyout total of that to ~$330k. With the agreed upon sale price they're about $30k short. It's a really good deal and I hate to let it go, here's what we've come up so far. 

they find the money (I'm guessing unlikely),

Get the bank holding the judgment to take less, or get the 1st position bank to remove fees and interest for non payment, 

hold a note to a very qualified co-signer (if I can take first position on their deed)

Anyone else have other clever ways they've dealt with something like this?

Hi @Michael Brown welcome to the area. I'm actually a couple of weeks out from closing on a deal with a 203k loan. The 203k is a great way to get into the game with little money down. I'm guessing since you know about 203k you're aware of the PMI fees etc that are pretty easy to find. You can't get the 1.5% fee thats added to the principal back, but you can remove the monthly PMI by refinancing at some point. My lender has been excellent and I'd highly recommend them if you haven't found one yet. It was the Shant Bonosian team with Guaranteed Rate, and the 203k specialist is Victoria Pagliarini.

203k does have some nuances and some costs that you might not expect, however. 

The "Inspection" that your lender is required to do, is more of an estimation and safety check, and it costs twice as much as a normal home inspector. I also recommend you use a private home inspector as well, since the HUD inspector will not be nearly as thorough. So instead of ~$500 for an inspection process, you'll be at ~$1500 plus two trips to the property. During that estimation process you'll have required, recommended and desired "levels" of work. FHA will require you do certain things, for instance screens with no tears on all windows, hand rails to code etc, which is fine in general. The hiccup is that anything "required" will have to be done by a contractor, so with the screen example, it will cost you quite a lot more than if you did them yourself. Those things add up. None of these were deal breakers for us, but some of these details were a bit unexpected.

The contractor part is a little tricky as well, you will have to have a contractor bid the job and accept their bid prior to ordering the appraisal. What does that mean? Well, you must have a contractor or two vetted and selected when your ready to make an offer. This one actually got me. The first contractor I had bid the job came in about 3x too high, so it required another multi hour trip with  another contractor a week later to the property. This made getting everything done to stay on time for closing more difficult. 

@Rich Hupper do you happen to know what abbreviation or search selection masslandrecords uses for the petitions? Of the ones I thought would be correct, they haven't been.

@Brian Ortins, Do you have any recommendations on local wholesalers? I'd really appreciate an introduction to any you've had a good experience with. 

@Amira Kabbara @Patrick Wheeler @Account Closed You guys aren't kidding. I went to an open house at a multi today over in Melrose and I've never seen anything like it. There must have been 30 different people in the 20 minutes I was there. I also did some driving for dollars while I was there. I saw 4 properties that didn't look really well maintained and rehabbed in about 2 hours of driving. Have you all have any luck drumming up leads or deals?

Thanks @Tom Cafarella! 

Does anyone have any experience in Maynard MA?

It's seems like it's a pretty nice town within commuting distance to Boston and close to Acton Commuter rail station. They seem to be turning the town around for the better with a nice main street and brand new high school. Prices seem to be attractive for buy and hold investments, although I'm unsure how strong the rental market is. 

I heard that there's a large retail development planned, brand new schools, and someone put quite an investment into restoring the old mills for the Mill and Main project. Unfortunately Monster.com just left the area, but it seems attractive to other business. 

Thanks! @Cynthia Nina-Soto for the detailed explanation of each. I'm definitely committed and in this for the long term. Good point on deals that don't work for me, I'm sure nothing helps to network more than giving a good lead on something. 

Thanks!@Tom Cafarella That's a great point about distance to work, I'm trying to stay within an hour to work in Lexington. I certainly want to stay in a good neighborhood as well since I'm living there, but I'm ok with it not being a "dream home". More safety and local amenity focused more than anything, which I think great renters look for as well. I'm glad you mentioned 3 vs 2 family, that's basically what I've seen in my analysis of places, the 3rd unit is your cashflow unit. Great to see someone with experience confirm my analysis since I only started analyzing deals a few weeks ago. 

I was wondering what was going on in those towns, since there's no way anyone could cash flow at the prices they're going for. Woburn and Waltham are on my radar, and I go over to Waltham fairly regularly. Thanks for the heads up on Waltham, I was having a hard time getting a read on the area. It has some awesome restaurants down on Moody and did the whole mill conversion thing on the river, yet some areas (even Moody) seemed like the growth could turn around. 

On another note, I was planning on attending your event in Wakefield next week. See you there!

Thanks!@Account Closed I'll definitely do a solid analysis on the properties, I like numbers...and spreadsheets (Engineer by day). Is there something specific that you've heard bad about or that I should watch for in Mass code? Lead certs for instance?

Hi @Matt Lefebvre!  Thanks for the advice. I'll definitely be analyzing with all units rented and with myself in one unit. Also, I recognize Elm Grove Companies, I saw signs around when I lived in Manchester. Congrats on the successful marketing!