All Forum Posts by: Kristi Harmon

I was able to find out myself: 3 unrelated people or 1 single family can live in a single-family home in Orem, Utah.

How many unrelated people can live in a single-family home in Orem? Are there same rules in Provo?

Thank you for your comments! I will do some more digging. The lady who does hard money loans is my husband's friend's mom. I wasn't really looking for private lenders right this minute, because my hands are full getting a house ready for renting that we just purchased couple days ago. Plus we have another house that we are trying to close on in the end of this month. We were going to put 5% down and move into it, but I guess my husband is not so excited about it, since it is a smaller house and we already have so much junk. I guess he has been complaining about it to his friends and that is how he found out the private lending option. If we put 20% down then we would just turn that house right into a rental. I just have to get more info and crunch some numbers. However, I would love to find lenders who would do less than what we are offered right now. I have to tell my husband to complain even louder i guess ;)

We found someone who does private lending with 11.75% interest charge. Seems high, but I have no idea if that is a pretty common interest rate. What kind of interest rates have you been able to get when working with private lenders? How fast did you pay it off? What kind of property did you buy with it (buy and hold or did you flip it)? What other stipulations did you have? 

Has anyone been able to get a single family property rezoned into a duplex in Provo or Orem area? If you have, what was your process, who did you talk to, what documents did you file, how much did it cost and how long did it take you?

I have a single family property (6 beds/2.5 baths) that already has a mother-in-law basement apartment and I would like to turn it into a duplex, so i can rent the house out to 2 different families. 

 I'm pretty sure they don't have a mortgage on it. So, from you experience, what kind of deal would you make with the seller to get them to do a "seller financing" with you (interest rate, down payment, time period, balloon payment etc.)?

The house that I'm the process acquiring right now was not on MLS yet--found it on KSL.com. Supposedly I contacted the owner right when they hired an agent and were going to up the price. Maybe they were just yanking my chain, but I was happy not to deal with other buyers.

I also called to couple of places with "for rent" signs. The landlord for one of the places (fourplex) was really nice and talked to me for a while, but she was saying that she doesn't want to sell right now because of the taxes she has to pay. Her plan is to die and then the kids can deal with the inherited rental property and pay less taxes when they do sell it. I don't know how all the tax breaks work, but is there a way to convince some of those retired property owners to still sell? Can it turn into a profitable transaction for both of us or should I move on?

I'm also bit hesitant to buy a multi-family properties right now, since we have so many fancy new apartment buildings built and being built around my neighbourhood. Right now, people are asking a lot of money for those older multi-family properties. I wonder if the prices will start dropping soon, because of so many new constructions.

Great comments! I'm mostly looking for something that I can buy and hold, around Provo and Orem area (3+ bedroom houses) with some TLC. Since I'm new in it I would like the properties to be close to home and population that I know need to rent. Flipping doesn't seem to be so profitable right now here in Utah (unless I get a house that is around $100,000) and I don't have time and contacts to pull off a flip yet either. My agent has set me up with his MLS account, but I don't see very many REO properties on it.

That is amazing that @Jeff Rappaport were able to sell houses for that cheap and hopefully still make some money off from them as well!

I have considered doing mailers--I have worked as a designer for 10 years, so it should be easy...right!!! ;) When I get the keys to the house that i'm purchasing right now and renters in, I'll send my mailers out as well. 

I'm in a process buying an investment property for $235,000 right now (single family home, 4 beds, 2 baths, close to two main universities), but I keep hearing people buying REO properties around $100,000 (not necessarily here in Utah). My cash will not go very far if I have to keep buying expensive properties like that and I will not be able to buy them very often either. Does anyone have suggestions where I could find deals that would be around $100,000 in Utah Valley that are fixer uppers, but not total money pits? Are there websites/banks/institutions that you like to use to find REO properties? There are websites that will require me to pay money to access some REO properties and I don't mind paying, if they are legitimate.

I'm reading "Investing in Duplexes, Triplexes and Quads" by Larry B. Loftis and he mentions that he uses buyer-brokers who are willing to split his/her commission with him (buyer/Larry). He takes them the deals that he has already evaluated and in return he gets 1.5% from the purchase price that would usually go to the buyer-broker. Usually buyer-broker gets 3%, but since the broker only gets the paperwork done for Larry (he doesn't use him for market or evaluation advice) he gets 1.5% commission rebate. The book is 10 years old, so some things are outdated. However, I would like to know if there are buyer-brokers that split their profits with buyers who bring them the deals?