All Forum Posts by: Matt Mach

Welcome Robert!

I'm a fledgling RE Investor as well living in Melrose. I have a few rentals under my belt currently and have had the same thought of trying to grow my rental portfolio through flips. I started looking for flips about 8 months ago but the current market in the areas you/we're looking are very cut throat. 

Good luck on your search!

-Matt

@Ann Bellamy, the house in question is the one I spoke to you about at Black Diamond. I'd be curious to chat with an investor friendly RE attorney to see if there's anything I'm able to do at this point. 

Would the power of attorney be recorded? I know if she died and the title was transferred to the beneficiary it would have been. 

Hello BP,

I'm hoping someone can give me a bit of advice here. I finally got what I thought was my first flip deal in Melrose MA. Here's the back story...

I have an "accepted" offer from someone who I thought had power of attorney to sell a single family house that was put into a trust. The trustee of said trust is currently in a nursing home/hospital. Who I was dealing with was essentially the beneficiary of the trust but the mother (trustee) is still alive. Everything seemed to be working out fine until today when I found out that that court deemed the mother to not have the mental capacity (a few weeks ago) to give power of attorney to her son. So... the offer is not legally binding since he doesn't have the authority to sell (I think). 

To add to this, the seller is behind on her Medicare payments and is at risk of having a lien put on the property along with being in default of her mortgage. So as far as my understanding takes me, I have to wait until the court appoints someone as power of attorney to legally sell the house.

So my question basically is. What should I do at this point? I obviously can't inject myself into their family affairs but is there a way that I can at least find out if all the above info is correct? I would assume it has to be public knowledge that someone is unable to legally sign a contract. 

Thanks @Gino Barbaro and @Greg S. 

How often should I be pushing her? I don't want to get on her bad side but also want to be sure I catch her when she's finally ready to sell. 

Hello BP,

I have an interesting lead and I'm not sure how to proceed. My next door neighbor has abandoned her property since December. Quick back info is that she's a single older (60s?) woman, it's her family home and her Mom (who was living there) passed about 2 years ago. She doesn't work, lost her car and I assume she simply can't support living in the house. She moved to her sister's house in NH, they co-own the house I want to buy.

I was able to get her number from a different neighbor and she answered when I called the first time. She told me she hadn't talked to a reator yet but they were putting up the house for sale in the Spring. She quickly asked me for an offer and going off Scott's book on flipping I didn't give a number but asked her what she was looking for. She just danced around the question and said they were going to make a decision in the "spring".

I since called back and left a voicemail saying I could offer cash for the house but no offer.

So my question is, how do I tread from here? I don't want to harass her but also know that if a realtor convinces her to get on the market I'm done for. What would you do?

Hi Robbie,

Thanks for the reply. So the condo is basically a wash, I kept it at the time because i didn't want to lose money on it back 2012 but its building equity. 

The two family is a very different story. Purchase price was 378, I got 20 percent down from a "gift". I got it appraised last year for 475 and took out 50k (HEL) to keep rehabbing (very comparable house a block away sold for 500k last year). I put 30 of the 50 back into the house (new kitchen, roof, patio, fence, landscaping) and I still have about 20k in the bank. Zillow says about 550k. 

So, both mortgage balances total ~$340k. I talked with a mortgage specialist today and my math for DTI (I think I'm close) gave me a max mortgage of 525k at 4% for 30 year conventional before any down payment.

Obviously I'm new to the game but I understand the importance of finding a good->great deal. My biggest issue right now is cash in hand for a down payment. Does refi-ing both mortgages and cashing out the best option here? Should one be done before the other? Can both transactions be done at once? Does that make sense only for buy and hold, flipping or both?

I keep reading posts that say "no money down" and "bought in cash", I guess I don't completely understand what those mean so hopefully this post will clarify that. 

I live north of the Boston area, real estate is expensive here. I bought a small condo in 2007 (currently rented but $0 cash flow) and was able to buy a fixer 2 family that we currently live in. Thanks to the market here I probably have about 100k in equity. 

Now I couldn't fathom buying either property in cash, so I don't know how a buy->rehab->refi and cashout approach would work for me. My understanding of how to buy a second property would be to put 25% down and in order to use my rental income I would need 2 years of history (which I have now). 

Best case that I can see right now is, I'm able to pull out enough money for a down payment on a second 2 family in order to buy it and rent it out. At that point, don't I need to wait another 2 years before I am able to display to a bank my correct income to buy a 3rd?

Very new to BP but I'm very happy to have found it. Obviously whatever I decide, or am able to do, is my choice but I wanted to hear what other people would do in my present situation. 

Background on me. I'm 32, married, no kids. Bought a small condo in 2007 for 115k. I was able to refinance in 2012, rent out my condo to cover the mortgage and condo fee (1100), got my parents to "loan" me out 75k to put 20% down on a 2 family (duplex?) that I bought for 378k, we live in the smaller portion. It was, and still is, in need of work so I pulled out 50k last year to consolidate credit card bills and upgrade the house. I just broke 100k yearly at my desk job, wife doesn't make much, 20k yearly but just finished school and has lots of student loans in her name. M/T/I on our house is 2060 per month and we get 2000 for rent. We're on the northshore of Boston.

My Dad is a handyman at heart. He is planning on retiring in the next 3-4 months but is picking up random jobs to keep him busy. He owns a 2 family outright in an outlying city of Boston probably worth 700k in the current market (3 family across the street sold for 1.1 million 6 months ago). I'm trying to convince him to use the equity to his advantage instead of looking for the smaller jobs.

I want to help however I can and potentially use any of my leverage to help get financing. We obviously both have experience fixing up houses and being landlords. I haven't reached out to a bank yet to understand how they view my wife's and my income. 

Sorry for the long explanation but I wanted to put a lot of facts upfront and see how like minds would use this info to make some money.