All Forum Posts by: James Harkness

This is fraud and illegal.

Rooming houses are extremely management intensive. As an asset manager, I can tell you that I see a ton of owners of rooming houses defaulting on their payments because rooming houses typically attract the types of tenants that won't pay consistently.

I'm no expert on this, but I recently pulled my credit score from Myfico.com. They have a page there that will run "what if" scenarios and you can plug in different things like paying down one card completely and see what it will do to your score over time. I think its $16 for everything. I would recommend it.

You are right Bill. Adding someone as a guarantor is no big deal, and does not take long. However, if I was wanting to assume a note from someone that I do not know, I would not want them to remain on the note with me. In my book, adding a guarantor is different than assuming the note.

Robert,

I think that your wording in the email was a little insulting to be honest. I would have said something more to the tone of, "Assuming the following scenario (then go into your proposal about commissions and percentages of ARV), what would you say the ARV is?"

In your email, while I do believe after reading it several times that this was your intention, it does not come across this way. It instead insinuates that you are going to use her for the listing and that those are the terms. I can understand that if this is how she read it, she would be insulted.

Ultimately, it is the all-mighty dollar that causes the problems and corruption in politics. It has been the same throughout all of history. It is really no surprise that policy makers ignored the signs that the economy was heading towards a crash. As long as there is still money to be made, there will be people trying to milk the system for all it is worth.

Assumptions, at my bank at least, are a long process, and a pain in the butt. This is from my perspective, as an asset manager. They usually take 2 to 3 months to close. Start out by having the owner request assumption paperwork from the asset manager. An authorization form for you to speak with the bank regarding the loan should be included. I do not know a whole lot about the assumption process after that, because I hand it off to the assumption department after the assumption packet is handed out.

I do know though, that you will go through underwriting as if they are writing a new loan. They will assess your risk as a borrower. It helps if you have a large downpayment to bring to the table. Banks love liquid funds in today's economy.

If the rent is on time, then I don't see what the problem is. Maybe he will be back, maybe he won't, but if they continue to pay rent, it really shouldn't make any difference. It is possible that he will continue to pay his share... or maybe they will talk to you about the girl finding another roommate to take his spot.

I made this mistake myself once. Moved into a place with my girlfriend after graduating college. Obviously, in hindsight, it was a bad idea. However, we did continue to meet our obligations to the lease agreement.

While I agree that it is most likely not a good situation, I don't think that there is a need to take action until rent is late.

I was a loan officer for two years for the leader in the industry originating stated income, stated asset, small commercial mortgages. As I say this, I cringe and prepare for the responses. However, I can tell you one thing. About 75 percent of the loans went to foreigners (or so it seemed) and it was prolly an even larger percentage that applied for the loans. Not sure what that means, but I found it alarming at the time.

Tim, I agree with you completely. Instead of taking a more agressive approach to investing right now, I am making sure that I carry zero debt so that should things get bad, I can still get by with little or no income. I have never been a pessimist, but all of the economic indicators IMO point to things getting worse before they get any better, and consumer debt can really bog a person down when things get tight...