All Forum Posts by: Jesse Sumner

  You will need to speak with a bankruptcy attorney that is familiar with rental leases.  Some jurisdictions have ruled that a Trustee can not recover a security deposit because it is being held in trust to secure the lease and is not an asset of the bankruptcy estate.  Because she has moved out this may or may not be the case in your situation.  You have another wrinkle because the co-tenant is still in the property. 

If you do not get it worked out the Trustee, he may file an action to force you to turn the over the deposit.  This may or may not be worth the expense of litigating over the deposit.     

Good Luck,

Jesse 

This post is not intended to give any legal advise or create an attorney client relationship.  Please consult with an attorney about your particular situation and your states laws. 

I don't know Washington law and I am not giving legal advice. However, you may be able to file a "Lis Pendens" notice in the land records that states the property is the subject of future litigation and you are going to file an action. Then send a copy of notice to the title company. It is really nothing more than a notice to the public (or buyer) that this property is the subject of litigation. It does not carry much legal weight. However, it gives the buyer and title company notice that there is a claim against the property and it does not cause problems like filing an improper lien.

Good Luck

In my experience, homes with 2 bathrooms are the easiest to rent. For the modern family one bath homes are functionally outdated. They can be rented but my 3/1 are slower to rent and do not command as much rents. Therefore, most investors try to buy a 3/2 or 4/2. The rest usually comes down to the area your want to be and/or price you want to pay.

Good Luck!

One of my clients received a call from the FBI about one of his commercial tenants in another state. He said they were good tenants and operated a store in his strip mall and he didn't really know anything about them. Apparently, they used the business as a front to start tunneling down and under the street into the bank across the street. However, they were off on their measurements and came up through the floor and missed the bank vault. When the bank employees came in the next morning there was a huge hole in the floor and the business owners were nowhere to be found.

Like @Duncan Taylor posted, it takes time and dedication to create wealth. I view wealth and income separately. Income is what you create now to spend and use to live and wealth is what is created overtime based on how you spent your income. For example, if I save $4 on a starbuck's coffee now, that is money that I can use on other day-to-day expenses. In turn, those savings can be added to my investment capital or it becomes money that I do not have to take from my investment capital. At some point, I have saved up enough money to buy a property. As a result, the savings is returned to me over time, not once but compounded each month of each year as long as I own that property.

This is how I have approached my investments. In the beginning it was slow and I did not feel like I was making any headway. Also, it was tough to save and to do without while our friends and family bought nice cars and went on trips. However, I eventually felt the winds turn and now my investments continue to grow without much additonal help from me. Now, my friends and family are struggling to repay the debts they accumulated and my wife and I are the ones reaping the benefits of our earlier lifestyle.

Also, to say that a person cannot have much of a savings on 50K or less is just an excuse to not make the tough decisions. I have a friend and his parents made 30K a year. They raised him and his sister on 15K and they saved the other 15K. When his parents retired they had saved almost a million dollars. Everyone maybe not be able to do this but saving is just a matter of prioritizing your spending.

I would contact a RE attorney. First, you may want him to conduct a title review and see if he can find the easement. Second, depending on what the attorney finds you may have several options available including adverse possession, several possible easements -implied, necessity, by prescription, by estopple, depending on if the property is located on a section line you might be able to open up a road on the section line. All of these would require a lawsuit. Further, your use may be limited to the width of the small dirt road.

My suggestions is once you talk to the attorney and determine the status of the road, what your options are and the strength of your claims, meet with the landowner and try to purchase an easement. Buying an easement would, most likely, be much cheaper and more definitive that a lawsuit. Also, you could try to get it widen.

Good Luck!

In this case, you might be to contact the city and do a lot split and have the one lot rezoned into two.

I would speak to other insurance companies. Each insurance company has different was to calculate replacement value and you might find one that places a lower value on the property.

Good Luck!

When I was first getting into RE investing, I talked to a man that owed SFH’s, mobile home parks and commercial property all over the US. I asked him how he was able to acquire so much. He stated with SFH’s with a goal to get 5k a month in cash flow and we he got there he made a goal to have 10k. But by the time he reached 10k he had married and he needed more money to keep his wife in the lifestyle she was accustom (I think he was saying this tongue in cheek) and so he made a goal to reach 20k a month. However, once he reached the 20k goal he said he saw how easy it all was and made a goal to have 40k a month income. That was over ten years ago. I often wonder what his goal is now.

The best piece of advice he gave me was when I asked him if earning the first million was really the hardest part. He said that earning the first million was not the hardest; earning the first million that you do not need to live on was the hardest part. Because like any investment, once you start dipping into the principle this uses capital that could be used for investing and this slows down the investment process and momentum.

I figured it worked for him. So I adopted his goals. I reached 5k a month cash flow a few years ago and I am within 2 years of reaching 10k a month. I will probably continue to increase my goal until I can step away from my day job without significantly slowing down my RE machine. At that time, I will probably reevaluate where I am at with my investing. I would like my RE investing to be self-sufficient and continue to operate, grow and increase its momentum and I don’t want it to be significantly impacted when I leave my day job.

Good luck to all on reach your own goals.

Obviously, if you can get rid of the extension cord you could probably get rid of the squatter. Since filing against the squatter appears to only bring retaliation lawsuits on an un-level playing field. Maybe you could go against the neighbor.

You might consider filing a complaint against your neighbor for trespassing i.e. running an extension cord across your property line, and seek an injunction preventing him from do this. If you have a court Order stating he can't run an extension cord over your fence, you can cut it, file police reports, get contempt of court against the neighbor, etc. At some point, he would probably stop running the extension cord accross your fence.

Good Luck!