All Forum Posts by: Max Gradowitz

If they are on a long term lease, then whoever buys it will have to honor the rest of that lease.  The best thing to do if you want to sell now to an owner occupant is negotiate a deal with the tenants to leave early.  The tenant and you can amicably agree to end the lease early, and they may be willing to.

Welcome from nearby Bakersfield!

It's a good time to sell, we are approaching the peak of the market (spring/summer).  You can list it, and even sell it, with the tenants still in there but it makes it harder to sell because the new owner has to honor the lease terms of your tenant.  So a normal home buyer (who will pay more for your property than an investor) will very likely want the tenants out prior to buying the property.

It's best to just notify the tenants that you want to sell the property and giving them the proper notice (usually 60 days, but can be 30 to 90 days depending on how long the tenants have lived there and if they get any state-funded assistance like Section 8).  At the end of that notice date, if they aren't out, you evict.  But 90% of the time they leave anyway.  THEN you sell the property 

You CAN do that, but keep in mind that as a licensed agent you have a lot of fees to pay every year.  Also, when you are licensed and you close a transaction, the commission check goes to your broker, not you.  Your broker will then give you your share/split of the commission according to your agreed upon split arrangement.  If that's 50, 60, or 70 percent, that's how much you'll get.  So.... With that much work and money in it, you might as well do traditional sales as an agent at that point.

BEFORE the tax sale, there is a long right of redemption (5 years I think) for the owner to pay off the taxes owed and to cancel the tax sale.  AFTER the tax sale, the prior owner must go through a myriad of procedures to challenge it and they must have a legitimate reason to do so (like they actually paid all the taxes before the sale but the sale accidentally still went on, the sale was improper, etc).  Because of the very long process involved in the pre-sale, and the fact that post-sale challenges must have good cause, post-sale challenges rarely happen.

Also, at least with the tax sales I'm familiar with, you need a check in the amount you are willing to pay for that property on the day of the tax sale.  So everyone I know pays cash.  I suppose if you can get a hard money to lender to give you a check for the funds to deposit on the day of the sale, then you can use hard money.  I'm not sure if hard money lenders do that.  Everyone I know pays cash.

Disclosure: I have not bought at a tax sale personally, but I know people that have and that's what I'm basing my info on.  The laws are state-specific but each County handles tax sales so they all might do things slightly differently.

Auctions are risky for this reason.  You always buy subject to other possible liens that only a proper title search would reveal.  But, unless I'm mistaken, you typically buy for cash right there at the auction without a title search involved, although this may depend on location.  I've heard some horror stories.  Not advised for new investors.

If it's a manufactured home on owned land, there is virtually no difference in the financing and transaction as an SFR. However, a mobile home on leased space in a park, there are some key differences than an SFR. First, they aren't considered "real estate", they are considered personal property, so you can't get a normal secured RE loan. Most buyers pay with cash or some type of unsecured personal loan. Secondly, transferring title is a little different, so make sure the seller is using a mobile home friendly escrow company (not all of them are!).

With wholesaling, if you market incorrectly and fail to disclose certain things, you could run afoul of the Business and Professions code that requires you to have a license to market properties to buyers.  If you are interested in getting into wholesaling, you should discuss your plan with a wholesale-savvy attorney and get informed on how to do so in such a way as to mitigate risks of violating the B&P code as much as possible.

Also, legalities aside, soliciting to anyone that already has an agent listing their house for sale is basically asking their agent to file a complaint against you for practicing without a license.  So..... Yeah, don't ever do that.

I only know of a few wholesale-friendly companies in my area, but it's not quite in Orange County.  This is how I found them: call a few of the well-established title/escrow companies in your area and say that you would like to speak with someone who is familiar with all the escrow services that company provides, because you have a question about whether any of your escrow officers can perform a very specific type of escrow.  Whoever they transfer you to, ask them if they or anyone in their company has experience with "assignments" and/or "double closings".  If they say yes, you found one!  If they say they don't know what you're talking about, move on.

If you are wholesaling, it's actually nice to find one really close in proximity to the area you are prospecting, because it will be a short drive for the buyer to sign docs.  Even if you live far away from the area you are prospecting, the escrow company can send docs by mail for you to sign, it's just a tiny bit of added costs to do so, but not much.

The law is very clear and straightforward for this.  In CA, you have two options to properly serve this type of notice (a "notice of entry"): you can serve it personally to them or or mail it.  Do not call or text.  Do everything correctly and you will save yourself from legal/financial headaches in the future.

Serving/posting is best if the contractor is scheduled to go over there in the next few days, because you only need a reasonable amount of time of notice, and the actual code says 24 hour notice is presumed to be reasonable.  You try to give it to them personally, or an adult at the property, and if nobody is there you can post it on the door.  I recommend doing this more than 24 hours in advance, maybe a couple days before if you can.  Keep copies of everything you serve/post for your own records too.

You can also mail it, but there needs to be 6 days notice (6 days from the day of mailing that is).  So if your contractor isn't scheduled to go for another week or two, mailing is a good option.  Use a certified mail or something including a receipt as proof that you mailed it, and of course keep copies of everything you mail for your own records.

See CA Civil Code Section 1954 for specific details.