All Forum Posts by: Colin Buckley

So I wouldn't have to do anything out of the ordinary on the selling end?

Thanks for the info.  I was worried things would get complicated.  I've never sold a house before.  

This is a difficult scenario to search for, so I couldn't find anything.

I have a house that I bought in early 2012 (in Illinois) on a Contract For Deed (land contract).

I still owe money on the house (and do not have the deed), and now I want to sell it this summer.

I don't really know the best way to go about doing that.  Would I sell the contract?  Have some sort of double-closing?  I'm sure I have to involve the guy I bought it from in some capacity.

Thanks.  Sorry if this has been discussed before.

Welcome @Jeff Stapleton !  I'm also in Oswego, and found this post because I have an alert set for "Oswego" as @Brandon Turner also suggested.

Good luck!  There's a lot to learn here.

@Peter K. Thank you for the encouragement.  That was very empowering.

@Sean Brooks I win either way, you are absolutely correct.

I'll let you all know how this progresses!

@Brian Gibbons I am unaware of any current financing.  Is there a way to find that out with public records?  It is my naive assumption that he paid cash.  I assume motivation would come from being behind a few grand on taxes across two properties.  I did not consider the option of a partnership of some nature; that path definitely merits some thought.

@Sean Brooks So, what you're saying is that before I even determine the owner wants to sell, I could talk to another agent to approach him?  That actually sounds like a pretty attractive way of conducting things.

Thanks for the input!

I have yet to contact the owner of this property.  2/1 with detached garage.  It is literally next door to my present rental property.  It was purchased two years ago (17.5k), and the new owner has done essentially nothing with the property.  He'll come by every few months, but all he's done that I'm aware of is drop a bunch of wooden fence panels on the back porch and park a car in the garage for a few months.  This is probably the ugliest house/yard on the block, and fixing it up would also probably up the desirability of my rental next door.

The owner is behind on property tax payments.  He has two payments due for the property this year, and as of yesterday, he is now behind on both and incurring penalties.  I looked into the owner, and he is a realtor that owns at least five properties relatively nearby (within a few miles), and lives about half an hour away.  He is also behind on one other property tax payment that I can see.  (Information gathered from Google searching his name looking for online county records.)

I don't have the cash up-front to do a cash offer, and the house is too cheap for a bank to be interested, so naturally I landed on seller financing as a potential path in, assuming he's interested in selling.  I've thought of something along the lines of paying him the back taxes owed + penalties (~2k) as a "down payment" and making payments from there with whatever terms.

As he is a realtor, I'm sure he knows the tools and tricks of the trade.  How can I approach him with this in a way that he'll a) take me seriously, and b) give me the time of day?  As he's a realtor, should I abandon the plan, as if he wanted to sell he easily could in theory?

I am also open to any other creative financing routes I could utilize.  I don't have too much in the way of other assets (~$4.5k in a current 401(k), conservatively ~$12k equity in my current rental (value ~20k).

Any input?  I will 100% admit that I don't know exactly what I'm doing and am not yet an expert of any kind.  Thanks.

Absolutely not.  I have no degree and no intentions of getting one anytime soon, and things are going just fine for me (in RE and elsewhere in life).

Hello everybody.  My name is Colin and I'm a newbie to investing, but I've been learning a lot from BiggerPockets.  I already have one small 1 bedroom rental property with a tenant in place but I plan on moving back into the house next year.

I have already learned a lot from the blog and podcast, and hope to find even more on the forums here.  Over the next few years I want to accumulate a few more buy-and-holds in the area, and eventually outside my area for geographical diversification.  I hope to eventually replace my paycheck with passive real estate income.

My income right now is not all that high, so even with a savings rate north of 30% it will take me a while to come up with cash for down payments, so I've thought about pursuing creative financing to an extent, which I still need to research.

Also, I've thought of dabbling in wholesaling via Driving for Dollars to generate extra income towards down payments on buy-and-holds.  Driving for Dollars could also help me locate cheap buy-and-holds needing a little work.

I've already done some research into the house next door to my current rental, since the owner has done nothing to it since it was purchased almost two years ago, it has been empty, and he is late on property taxes.  I've thought of trying to make that my next deal.

Anyway, I'm happy to be here and hope to learn a lot!  Thanks for reading!