All Forum Posts by: Matt Inman

@Joe Spence I mostly focus on the St. Charles area, but will look at just about any area if it meets my criteria. The South City area is a great place for deals, you should check out the South Side Investment Club(SSIC)

http://www.meetup.com/TheSouthSideInvestmentClub/

Great group of people! I'm a member and have learned a great deal at the meetings.

HI @Joe Spence welcome to BP. Have you targeted an area in St. Louis to start in?

HI @Bradley A Ewart welcome to BP!

@Stephen Watkins are you looking for houses in your local area? or is this state wide? I have a few lenders I work with and also a few HML as well but I think they all want to loan in the local St. Louis area.

Welcome @Brad Donley . Do you frequent any of the local REIs? Just wondering if we've met along the way somewhere. I mostly do buy and holds, so feel free to add me to you contact list when you get a new property you want to move.

Welcome @Steven Haskins what area is your rental in?

@AJ Romero I actually just went through this very thing, I put an offer in on a HUD home. It was accepted, I went through and had the property inspected and my inspector found a lot of mold in the basement. He then went on and found the cause of it, a crack in the foundation behind a finished wall was causing water to pour into the basement when it was raining. The house had been sitting for 10 months and the mold just built up. I had accounted for some mold removal in my cost, but not a complete gut and removal of the finished basement plus the foundation repair. With the additional cost the numbers didn't work for me so I passed. So my advice is if you are concerned get an inspection. It was $300 well spent IMO.

Well I've learned quite a bit in the last few days. I've talked to multiple lenders, a few contractors, and tagged along while the inspection was taking place to the house.

So I've been able to expand my knowledge in a few areas. I've found areas where I overestimated and areas where I underestimated on my repair costs, so I've adjusted my spread sheet. I've found out what a Radon mitigation system looks like and how they work, and I now know how to check for mold.

The 2 big things the inspector found that I hadn't counted on were mold (lots of it) and the root cause of the mold which was a bad part of the foundation which was causing water to enter the basement. It was behind a framed in wall, so I just didn't know what to look for, I do now though. So with all this in mind and the cost that it would add, the numbers just aren't going to work for us. Which is disappointing. But I have to look forward and know what to be better next time.

One other thing I've learned is that, at least in my area YMMV, HUD has reworked how it has done it bidding process. They will now close with a local title company and the earnest check has to be made to the title company. Before you had to close with their title company and the check was made out to them.

@Jon Holdman Sorry to hear about your home.

@John Thies I'll second Andy's suggestion and actually give you a link. :)

http://www.meetup.com/TheSouthSideInvestmentClub/

I also like the group at Street REI.

http://www.streetreia.com/