All Forum Posts by: Catherine Coy

The listing at 155 N. Edgemont Street expired unsold in September 2017.

A family member can buy the house for 95% of fair market value.  Find a knowledgeable RM originator in your area who can 'splain it all to you.

Less Vacancy: $432 (with a 3% vacancy rate)

Three percent seems low.  When one borrows from a bank, they use 25% vacancy factor.

Who paid the $18,000 for repairs?  That wouldn't exactly be "no money" in the deal, would it?

I quit using these vacant house lists a long time ago due to the inaccuracy.

Exactly.

I forget if it's every 90 days or 120 days, but basically, the post office determines a house is vacant if no mail has been delivered to it in 90 or 120 days. They then give this list to HUD every 90 or 120 days.

http://about.usps.com/publications/pub32/pub32_ter...

vacant delivery point:  A delivery point that was active in the past but is currently not occupied (generally not occupied for 90 days or more) and not receiving mail delivery. It does not include businesses or homes under construction, demolished, or otherwise identified as unlikely to become active.

no-stat delivery point:  A business or dwelling under construction, demolished, blighted or otherwise identified as not likely to become active for some time, or a rural route address that has not been receiving mail for 90 days or longer. No-stat and vacant tables are part of the Delivery Point Validation product.

Obvious logic:  If no mail is being delivered to a house, why would an investor buy a list of such houses, and spend money to deliver mail to it?

I rest my case.  No sale for Cameron Dunlap's iFlip system.

Thanks for responding, Larry.  You wrote:  There are a lot of sources for vacant house lists and they all originate from the USPS.

Again, how does the Post Office know if a house is vacant?    If mail is piled up on the front porch, is that ipso facto proof there's no one inside and never will be?  Does the mail carrier report his suspicions to someone, who then compiles a list and sells it to gurus like Dunlap?  Absent an actual visit to the property, there's no way to know if a property is vacant--and even then you might not be able to tell.  Therefore, I dismiss out of hand anyone claiming to have a proprietary method of determining vacant houses.  Indeed, such a claim detracts from their credibility.

One can, of course, VISIT the property to TRY to determine if it's vacant, which then, with enough follow up, may deliver a motivated seller into your funnel, but that's a LOT of work.  One could spend several hours on a single possibility.

Steve Kirsch wrote:  Another option is to sell the current condo and apply for a Reverse Mortgage. Then she will not have to come up with a dp. But in this scenario the bank will own the house (especially if she outlives the money from the loan.

Steve, the bolded portion of your statement is definitely not true.  Unfortunately, it's one of the many myths surrounding reverse mortgages [RM] that prevents seniors from taking advantage of this great program.  When your relatives passes or permanently vacates the home, her heirs have two choices:  (1) buy the house for 95% of the then-current fair market value, or (2) sell the house.  RMs are non-recourse.  This means that neither she nor her heirs are responsible for the negative balance, if any, remaining on the loan.  Your relative can be upside down in the loan, but that doesn't matter.  The choices are still (1) purchase the house for 95% of current fair market value or (2) sell the house and pay off the loan with sales proceeds.  Of course, if neither of these choices is acceptable to the original homeowner or her heirs, the bank will take the house back, just like any other default.

I strongly urge you to find an experienced RM loan originator in FL and/or the new location and discuss the actual, not mythical, terms of an RM.  It sounds like your relative can sell the FL house and buy another house in a new location and never make another mortgage payment.  Only in America is such a useful outcome possible.

Yes, there's a cottage industry out there to help seniors hide their assets so that fellow taxpayers pay the senior's long-term care bills via Medicare/Medicaid.  They call it "Medicare planning."  Some people have no ethical issues with this plan, but an RM must be held in the name of the senior, so the hide-your-assets strategy won't work in conjunction with an RM.  Besides, there's a 5-year look back with respect to "Medicare planning," so your relative will be 77 before she can legitimately hide her assets.

Cameron Dunlap just gave a "live" webinar hosted by Larry Goins ("Filthy Riches," "How to Get Started in Real Estate Day Trading," "How to Buy HUD Houses at Half Off"). I had several questions and typed them into the chat box, but they were not addressed, which led me to think the webinar wasn't live. Anyway...

Dunlap's complete system is $1,497--(don't know why gurus never round up to an even dollar amount)--and includes "free" transactional funding.  That's right...he claims to charge no points, no fees, no interest, no nuthin' for his funds.  However!  You must obtain an LLC because he won't lend to an individual--pursuant, he erroneously believes, to the Dodd-Frank Act. Seeing as how the guidelines of the Dodd-Frank Act pertain solely to consumers purchasing or refinancing a primary residence, I don't see why an investor must obtain an LLC as a condition to using Dunlap's money.

Furthermore, the usual 30-day test drive that accompanies Dunlap's system is neutralized by the LLC requirement because it takes => 30 days to complete an LLC. IOW, if I found a property tomorrow, I couldn't use Dunlap's money immediately because I'd first have to obtain an LLC.

Dunlap claims an extensive and proprietary Vacant House Data File as part of his system. I didn't understand how a database of vacant properties can ACCURATELY be compiled. After all, an owner doesn't report the occupancy status of his property to anyone. I can see how an REO would be considered vacant, but other than that, how do you know a property is vacant unless/until you visit the property? He said, "The properties in the database may be occupied one day and vacant the next and vice versa." Well, of course!  Then why call it a proprietary Vacant House Data File?  It's just a list of properties.

He also said that direct mail is a good way to reach the owners of these allegedly vacant properties.   What--does the owner visit the mailbox of his now-vacant property daily to retrieve the direct mail marketing pieces you send?

I dunno...there were a few things that didn't add up.  I may have been born at night, but I wasn't born last night.   Dunlap claims he has a full-time programmer on his staff who keeps his unique software up to date with "verified" vacant houses.  He must be attracting an awful lot of $1,497 per pop sales to pay for such a person.  I was surprised that Larry Goins, who promotes a similar system [virtual wholesaling], hosted Cameron Dunlap, who surely must be a competitor for the same "marks."

Thoughts?

I just finished listening to Clothier's webinar.  He says that you hook up with a mailing house, attach that mailing house to the software and send the mailing house an email when you want them to execute on your list.  

Of course there are recurring and hidden costs.  One cannot expect to market without incurring costs such as stationery, postage, printing, mailing house fees, etc.

I'm listening to Clothier's sales pitch as I read the posts in this thread.  The system now costs $1,995.   Clothier claims he closes 900 real estate transactions (not software sales) per year.  That's 3.6 transactions per day (250 business days per year).  VERY hard to believe.

I read a lot of Bigger Pockets threads.   BP is my go-to resource when I want to clarify something but, damn, it's frustrating to read these threads because nine out of ten writers can't string two coherent sentences together.  Good grief, does no one proof their writing before they hit "Post Reply"?!  Here's a tip for all BP members:  get the FREE Grammarly extension for your browser.  It will correct your grammar, spelling, and punctuation so that you sound as intelligent as I know you all truly are.   https://www.grammarly.com/?q=grammar You'll thank me later.