All Forum Posts by: Laura Richards

If your lease was assignable they could be considered a new tenant under that lease unless your permission is required first. Otherwise, you don't have an eviction at all but rather an ejectment of a squatter. Little more complicated and you should use an attorney. 

Aldo, 

I am a real estate attorney in Maitland. What type of due diligence are you looking for? I assume you want pencil searches and the like, correct? If so, a title company may be a cheaper option. If not, most attorneys will flat fee a pencil search for you, 

Hi Katie. 

I'm a real estate attorney in Maitland and represent mostly investors. There is a great investor group that meets the first Wednesday of every month at Edgewater High School in College Park. It's called CFRI for Central Florida Realty Investors. You will find investors of every skill level and a lot of vendors that cater specifically to investors. This would be a great starting point to begin building your team. 

Hope this helps!

From what tax does the lien arise? What tax have you levied to get a lien? Or do you mean you purchased a tax deed?

Your're in Florida and have the benefit of a very favorable land trust statute - you may be able to use it here.

Place the property into a florida land trust with seller and buyer as beneficiary's. Also prepare a conditional assignment of beneficial interest with the condition being that upon evidence the loan will be satisfied (payoff on HUD) the sellers interest automatically assigns leaving just the buyer (you?) as the only beneficiary. You could also put some reverter language in there saying that if loan satisfaction doesn't happen in a certain amount of time the buyers beneficial interest is voided and the property reverts back to current owner.

You could also use a wrap around.

In any case, you need to review the due on sale clause in the current loan docs to make sure you aren't going to trigger anything.

As for the unlicensed practice of law, anytime you draft legal documents for anyone other than yourself (or a transaction of which you are not a party) you are practicing law- UNLESS you have  a license approving such servicces. Real estate agents are allowed to draft things like contracts and addendums for transactions where they represent the buyer or seller. However, I believe a deed, mortgage or note would fall outside the scope of those services realtors are licensed to provide.  

I received a few private messages from this response and one I other I made on BO asking for more info on what I may know about land trusts. I get a lot of land trust questions so I started a blog series on them you may find helpful since you are exploring this investment tool.

This will be a whole series on the subject so you may just want to follow the blog to see the whole series as they are posted. I usually post every 2 weeks or so.

Hope it helps.

You need to call Southeast Professional Title, LLC in Maitland FL. They close all over FL. Their marketing guy is on BP. His name is @Ryan Kopczyk. They close about 100 deals a month and 90 of those are for investors. Whoever told you that double closing are illegal is misinformed. Same goes for simultaneous closing. If not done correctly - yes- they CAN be illegal, but an established an experienced title agent can handle them.

The idea that REO offers with la and trusts as buyer is stale. I represent the largest wholesalers in Central Florida, hold over 300 properties in land trust and many were acquired as short sales and REO's. Offering in a land trusts on these properties can be very beneficial. Even if you don't ultimately use the land trust for the overall "structuring" of your deal the cost is so low that it's well worth it.

My office charges $250 for a land trust. Keep in mind, though, you must designate a trustee for that land trust in the offer and that entity frequently must be able to provide POF for the offer.

My first clerkship was with a firm in CA that worked overages from the FC sale - same basic principle as tax overages. The downside to FL vs CA is that if you can't find the next in line to claim the overage you are dead in the water and can't go any farther on that file. In CA you could skip that person and move to the next after a notice period. FL just doesn't seem to be the most profitable venue.

There are 3 ways to go about clearing title. I actually blogged about this last month. Check out richardslawfirm.blogspot.com.

You can wait the 4 years which is fine if you are a buy and hold type of investor.

You can use the company tax title services mentioned earlier by Tom Yung. I have had clients give mixed reviews about them. You must then get a title policy through first american. There are positives and negatives to this approach. They are faster and usually cheaper than an attorney (depending on value of the home), but if they are unable to give you a tax title certificate due to a defect in the clerks process you are out your deposit which is around $750.

You can hire an attorney to quiet title. The prices you have  been quoted here are pretty accurate for an uncontested quiet title action.

I noticed that you are local. You should consider going to a class by Sandra Edmond "The Queen of Tax Deeds". She is affiliated with CFRI which is an investor club that meets at Edgewater High School the first Wednesday of every month. She actually mentored me through my first Quiet Title when I first started doing them.