All Forum Posts by: Marquest Page

Hey BP! As the subject states, I'm in need of an investor friendly GC. I reside in Florida but originally am from the Burgh. Looking to invest in the entire Allegheny county. Started lightly pulling some leads and am really getting some strong ones and want to connect with a GC to walk through properties. If you or anyone you know happens to be an awesome GC with experience working for investors please drop the info with a review. It would be greatly appreciated.

 I never properly thanked you for this post. Your $0.02 definitely helped then. I was completely green. Thanks again and hope your endeavors are going well. 

Hey BP,

It has been a while since I've written anything on the site, I haven't been very active as I let other things in life detour me from my investing endeavors. The few deals I have closed were wholesale deals for residential properties. I started getting new leads going and have few perspective buyers I am working with. This passing weekend, I went to view one of those properties and came across a large plot of land with signs stating FSBO and Owner Financing and the amount of land was 62 acres. I was baffled. I never thought about looking into land deals before but even if I did I figured this may be a big thing to tackle. I took the number anyways. Spoke with the guy briefly and he advised he wanted 4 million for the whole land or was willing to sell in increments of 10 acres minimum but didn't give a set price on the minimum purchase.

I for one wouldn’t know the first thing to do to reverse engineer this thing. I figured I would first need to find developers who purchase land in the same area and figure out how much they paid per acre just to see if what he is asking is fair. I have heard somewhere that some people use listsourse.com to find developers using certain fields to narrow it down but I have NO IDEA how that works. I am not sure if there’s another way to find this info out either and I am open for ideas. I know such a list would also give me potential buyers to wholesale this land. Seeming the owner is willing to finance the deal it shouldn’t be too difficult to wholesale if the price is write for the end buyer.

Also, I have no idea about zoning, multiplicities and whatever else I would need to know about this stuff. If there is anyone who has any experience in flipping massive land deals whether it be you’ve wholesaled a deal to a developer or have purchased and developed properties like subdivisions or what have you, PLEASE SHARE as it would be an eye opener.

Thanks in Advance :-)

@Dmitriy Fomichenko my mentor has been doing short sale investing since he started back in 2008. He does a great job negotiating the short sales as well. I focus on getting the deal (acquisition) and he focus on the negotiations and then finding a buyer. Works out great. I eventually want to learn his end as well but for know this works.

It was a regular purchase sales agreement. And yes the bank gave a 5% discount on the BPO.

Hey BP! Well I just closed on my second deal and figured I would ramble about it here and hopefully have others enjoy the read. Just to give a background story. I am a NEWBIE INVESTOR in the Orlando, FL market, just started taking action last year and completed my first deal on my own. I found a motivated seller from probate records and got the property under contract and then sold the contract to a cash buyer whom I found through craigslist.com. While I was in the process of doing my first deal I was being very public about my adventures into REI on my Facebook which gained the attention of a friend of mine whom was investing since 2008.

He later became my mentor and I probably bugged him to death on a daily basis asking questions as well as being on biggerpockets and reading. I decided to look into pre-foreclosures. Since my good friend and new mentor has extensive experience with short sales I decided to look into those as a lead source. ended up finding two motivated sellers. I ended up losing one of the leads due to her choosing to work with a realtor but was able to continue working with the other seller. This had became the Second deal that I made mention of before.

SHORT SALES TAKE FOR EVER! lol, I knew about this going in based on the content out there but reading about it and going through it is another story. My seller lived out of state in Ohio but owned a property in Orlando, FL. They were in debt with their bank with about two years of non payments. She took a reverse mortgage out on the property and was unable to make payments on the note. I reached out to her and we began the process. Since she was in her golden years she wasn't well versed in anything that has to do with technology so documents had to be sent via snail mail and that added to the length of time. Also the mortgage company wasn't to organized either. The seller didn't have any desire to receive anything for the house and just wanted to get rid of it and signed the purchase sales agreement with no expectations of being compensated.

After receiving signed contract I sent the documents to my mentor and partner in this deal and he handled the negotiations with the bank. Sent the contract to the title company and began to request for a BPO from the bank. The bank eventually sent out their Broker to do his Price Opinion on the house but we found that the house had been broken into, locks changed and a dog was occupying the house which had no power or running water. Since we couldn't gain access we had to cancel the BPO. We ended up calling the cops to file a police report right then and there and spoke with many of the neighbors in the process. They provided a great deal of info on the squatters. I gave them my business card and asked to give it to the people occupying the house.

I revisited the property a few days later and seen the house was vacant and no dog. came back a few days after that and same situation. After I realized the squatters ran off due to the police being involved I contacted a property preservation company and had them change the locks on the home and place a lock box on the door. We then rescheduled the BPO and ended up getting a price that we thought was too high but we worked with it. The property was a 4/2 1397 sqft and was priced by the bank at $137k. The bank would give us a 5% on this price to purchase which had us at $130,150.00 to acquire the property. We then had the property listed by an agent. Only issue we had was at this point, so much time had passed with the delays that the property had a foreclosure sale date which was set for 05/25/2016. We listed the property on 05/09/2016.

Due to their being a foreclosure sale date set we knew there was a limited amount of time to find a buyer which eliminated our chances of finding conventional loan buyers as we would need to do a double closing to exit this deal and this may have taken longer depending on how fast the buyers bank would complete their end. We basically needed a cash buyer and only had one initial cash offer of $134k. My partner first suggested on moving on this deal and I was very hesitant. I suggested waiting a few more days and luckily it paid off. We had an all cash offer for the listing price which was $143k. That's a spread of $12,850 that my partner and I are splitting and we officially closed this deal on 05/20/2016.

This deal wasn't easy as I put a lot of time and effort into it. I had to clean up after the squatters and their dog nearly destroyed the property. The dog used the house as it's own personal toilet and crapped and urinated everywhere. I had to mop the floor about half a dozen times. I threw away the belongings that were left behind by the squatters as well. Had to rent a U-haul and get cleaning supplies and got my hands dirty. I honestly wouldn't change anything. It made the closing of this deal that much sweeter because of the effort and time it took to ensure that I was successful and I honestly have to be thankful for it. I am still learning and it's great to earn while I am getting my education in this business. I hope you guys enjoyed the read and feel free to comment.

 Well to my defense I made sure to be very open regarding the process to my seller. She was in no rush to sell fast so it gave me the ability to learn through the process. But thanks for the encouraging words Phil. God bless.

Well based on the comps the ARV should be 70k to 80k. I managed to get the seller under contract at $41,250. Today is my scheduled closing which I found an end buyer whom I assigned the contract to for a fee of $3,750.00. the property is a 2bed and 1bath home with about 858sqft of living space. This wasn't a property that would have been used for fix and flip but a good buy and hold cash flow property. I didn't really try to number crunch going into this and. I'll be sure to use more analyzing in my next endeavor. Thanks for the advice, it has shed more light to other aspects of this business that I didn't consider before.

 I just called, they referred me to their website at https://www.octaxcol.com/tax-roll-download.aspx and advised me to sort through the links there. Wasn't much of a hand holding experience. Am I on the right track or did they just gave me the least amount of help possible?