All Forum Posts by: Marek Los

 Perfect explanation, thank you so much!

Hi there!  I currently have one house that I house hack in Trenton, NJ and so please bear with me but I am not familiar with the Philly side of things at all.  I really like the Philly market (specifically Port Richmond) and would like to buy an investment property here, but don't know how this would work with the Philly city tax.  I don't intend to live inside the house, just simply rent out the unit and get some cash flow from it.  If I remain a NJ resident and this is clearly an investment property, would I be liable to pay the city tax on my income?  Just to be clear, I have no problem paying my fair share of any profits to the city but I don't want to become classified as a Philly resident so that my regular W2 gets hit with the city tax, that's my primary concern.  Sorry for the dumb question but I kept looking around the Internet for answers and didn't see anyone with quite the same situation.  Thanks!

 Hey!  Glad to meet and connect with fellow investors in the Trenton area!  I really think we need a meetup in the area or find a way to bounce ideas off of each other, haven't seen anything close to the area.

Anyway, what ended up happening is that after talking to my realtor and other people in the area, the main issue seems to be that the value of the property went up so much since it was last sold...and that upon my purchase, the property was immediately appraised at being much higher.  So nobody actually came around to inspect it, but the higher sale price justified the increase in taxes.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is much that I can do.   

So just an update I'm not sure if it's supposed to be this expensive or I just got really overpriced quotes...but for a standard land survey that approximate asking price was $1900...and a few hundred extra just to have the border markers put up.  Not sure if maybe I can get this done for a lot cheaper in Bergen county or not, but at this point I'm willing to say that the juice is simply not worth the squeeze.  We made it as long as we did with our incorrect borders, I don't see a sense in investing all this money now.  

 Thanks so much....my thoughts exactly.  Honestly it's about a foot off...so I thought the same thing that what would I really accomplish by doing this.  But now that you mention it, I think getting a survey of the property may be my best and cheapest option.  I was initially afraid because it seemed like I would have to find a lawyer and then drag this out...but I think getting a survey even in overpriced NJ shouldn't be too bad.  Thanks for the tips!  I'm guessing that even if this isn't an issue for me now, if my parents ever do go to sell the place, it'll end up coming up during the initial inspection/survey anyway.  

Thank you!  Yeah at this point I'm not really sure if there is anything to gain from this...it's a small amount of land and just the lawyer fees and cost to rebuild the fence would make this not worth it.  Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone!

So this issue is pertaining to my parents house, which they've owned now for over 20 years.  Recently my dad got into a bit of an argument with a nonprofit organization about the tail end of our driveyway, which it turns out doesn't actually belong to us.  So we ended up having to move our car and now the little stretch of land doesn't get used.  However this prompted my dad to then study the land that we actually do own, and he realized that our neighbor inserted a fence onto land that we clearly own.  Long story short, all the land that the fence covers, including about a food into the neighbors yard is technically ours, but this must have been going on for over two decades. (Fence is fairly new, but it was built to replace a smaller fence that was there previously in the same location.)  I know this isn't exactly something that most people go through, but what would be the best course of action here.  We live in Bergen County, NJ...and at this point I'm not even sure if there is any point in taking further action.  My dad is adamant that he wants the fence moved, but I myself don't think it's worth the investment just to gain a small stretch of land.  The only concern from my end is that if we do end up trying to sell the property, will this end up rearing it's ugly head then?  Thank you!

Hi Noel,

Thank you so much...I will do that now!

Really was into the idea of getting into AC myself, but a little thrown off by the Airbnb laws that they have in place.  They are some of the strictest short term rental laws I've seen, and that was really the main value that I saw for it.  Some of the hotels and casinos charge absolutely insane rates for weekends, and so having an affordable Airbnb in a nice part of the city would be awesome in my opinion.