All Forum Posts by: Kel S

We've lost out on a good number of houses because of the banks putting restrictions on investors putting in offers for the first 15-30 days on foreclosures. I understand why they do this and of course it probably helps to get owner/occupants in the houses but boy is it frustrating for investors like myself and unfortunately I don't see away around it.

Do you all see a lot of this as well where foreclosure listings say owner/occupant offers only for the first 15-30 days?

I failed to mention that I do believe the dining room might be an addition that was added on at some point. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the info! We hope to get a roof contractor to come out this weekend and take a look and give us the run down and est. on doing the roof repair.

I think on the 4th bedroom issue, we are going to have to decide if it's worth taking the risk. Seeing that it's going to be a rental and not a flip, I'm not too overly excited about it at this point but you all are right that it could become a real concern if/when we ever decided to try and sell it.

Hi All,

It's been a bit since I've been here. Glad to be back. I have a question for you all. We are looking at a 3/1 that is 1070 sq ft and in a nice area. The house overall is in very nice shape and you can tell the previous owner did some updating (ie; new carpet throughout, painted walls, etc.,). However in the dining room you can see there was some leaking from the roof. The ceiling has a section that is about 3 ft x 3 ft that is sinking, soft and generally you can see that there has been water damage. On the roof outside they have it tarped. There is new carpet in the dining room and we don't think it's received any water there as it's nice and dry. However, my concern is how much this repair could cost. I'm thinking it's not just shingles, it's possibly the framing, etc., that needs replacing on that area of the roof. Has anyone experienced similiar and if so what was the outcome? Did a roof issue deter you from buying? In our case, we would need to hire someone to repair it as my husband doesn't have enough experience to do roof repair beyond just putting new shingles on.

My next question is a code issue. This house is a foreclosure, offered for cash only and we suspect the reason why is even though it's listed as a 3 bedroom, when we walked through it there is a 4th bedroom that is what I would consider the master as it's the largest. However, it looks like the previous owner built it by using part of the attached garage. When we went outside to open the garage door there is a wall in there that would be the back of the bedroom and the garage is no longer big enough to hold a car (well, maybe a Smart car LOL!), so instead it could be used as storage.

We aren't looking to flip this though and instead this would be a rental property. Will we have any issues having a bedroom that might not be up to code? Now granted, it's a very nice bedroom and if you didn't see the garage and how tiny it is, you'd never know that the bedroom wasn't always there. So as far as safety, etc., that isn't a concern. Just wondering what sort of ramifications there might be down the road buying a house that has a bedroom that they probably never got a permit for.

Kel

My husband and I just talked about this very thing last night. Noticed the same thing here in Toledo, OH area since November. Before there was 3-4 new ones on the listing weekly. Now you are lucky if you see 1 new one every 2-3-4 weeks.

No basement in this house. So family room is on the first floor. There is one bed down and two up.

It's not near any colleges so I think our plan after pondering the possibilities is to just leave it as is and rehab it with the existing family room as a family room.

I'll be sure and take some AFTER pics to show you guys.

Jeffrey,

Hubby seems stuck in the mode "If I can do that kind of work myself why would I hire it out and spend more?". I have yet to convince him that he's slowing the process way down doing this all himself and that we could make more $ in the long run. I'm still working on him though to see the logic my way (:

Tracey,

I'm no expert by any stretch but feel free to PM me and I'll answer the best I can (:

Yes, if we keep this one we could still buy more in the near future. Actually, our plan is to work on this one (either as a flip or rental...yet to be determined) and then likely take a little time off through the summer and perhaps look at more late fall/early winter.

The reason for that simply being I think my husband can use a break and we really want to take some time over the summer and do things like camp, etc., If he's straddled to working on a house that wouldn't happen. Plus we sort of have the best buying times down to a science now in relation to when the most people are looking to rent. It's definitely more challenging to rent a place here in the dead of winter when there is over a foot of snow on the ground. So we'll try and time our purchase/closings where they fall in winter, then the hopes is to have the house rent ready by spring.

Joel, the credit union that we belong to apparently doesn't have a problem with doing mulitple investment prop loans. I need to get more details from my husband but he doesn't anticipate more loans (if we went over 4) being a issue. Though we paid cash for this particular house only because timing was an essense (couldn't connect with the gal at the bank, etc., so said heck with it and paid cash).

Thanks. Yeah I know that purple is awful. It's a shame because the paint job is good but the color is awful.

The tax value on this house $107,000 So our first thing will be to reduce the taxes (:

Thanks Scott.

Here are some numbers.
Purchase price: 21,500 (had to subtract for the bank paying taxes)
Estimated rehab cost: $8,000
Monthly Rent: $850-895

I was thinking about the flip idea. I would think we could rehab this and flip it asking $49,900 -$55,000. I'm making a broad statement because flipping isn't my forte and I'm pretty ignorant in that area right now until I get experience under my belt.

The more I look at this house the more possibilities I see with it. If you go back and look at the pictures of the family room. It has the fireplace, bathroom w/shower and a sink and bar in the main part of the room. I could see that room turned into a studio Apt by creating a kitchenette. It technically could have a separate entrance. That is one reason I want that bar/sink out of there if it's going to be a rental because I'm sure a tenant would think of that possibility also. But would be neat idea if someone bought the home instead of renting and was looking for that kind of set up.

But then again, I don't know what the city policies are on that and would have to check into it. Because the utilities would not be separate and so it wouldn't be a duplex. But if you own a house I don't see why you couldn't rent out a "room" if you wanted. Am I wrong about that?

In any case, it's just an idea. Before I go tearing out that sink I wanted to see what you all thought first. Is there benefit to leaving the sink (it's the small one near the bar if you look a the pictures).

My husband also thought of turning the family room into a 4th bedroom. But that would make it a HUGE master bedroom and I'm not sure if there is any added value in doing that?