All Forum Posts by: Mason V.

I have some questions about the city (any city) at large.

First, how would I go about discovering what a city government has planned for the future? The court house here has a great many offices.

In your experience how concrete are the plans set forth by the city? I would not be happy to buy some land expecting the government to extend the sewer system only to find out the canceled the project.

How much influence should we allow theses plans to have when making our own financial decisions?

not sure what the problem was but neither IE or Firefox would work correctly; Firefox is my main browser. With that said,I installed Chrome and the calculator has been working just fine so far.

thank you all very much.

W2 for the time being.

Truck stops are not exactly known for having great internet so I am not sure if the problem is me or the calculator. Anyhow, for the past couple weeks I have only been able to use the calculator once a day if I get lucky. Most of the time it will either freeze some time before step 3 or not even get past the intro screen.Is anyone else having this issue?

I would like to know how the more experienced members feel about cities which have chained very little in the past 20 years. If you would like a specific context, The Dalles Oregon.That’s the town I grew up in and am thinking of investing in. It’s a demographically old dirty city with almost no growth in both population and employment over the past 20 years. About 10 years ago one of the top employers closed down severely damaging the city financially.

With that being said it is still the primary city for about 80 miles in all directions. The primary things keeping it alive are the dam, the medical community (one of the top athletic doctors in the nation works there) and a Google research facility. I don’t see the city ever improving nor do I see it dwindling either.

I know I make it sound pretty bad. However, I do have reasons to invest there. First, I recently moved back and thus would be investing in a familiar area. Second, rentals here are expensive and if I can get some cheap properties I know I can make money providing low-income housing of which there is almost none. Third, have you seen the prices in Portland Oregon?

You could try REITs.

People like you and I are kind of up the creek without a paddle if we want to be successful. Like most high paying ventures real estate requires human interaction. My advice to you is to keep things as professional as possible.  That is, use lawyers, contractors, property managers and other people who have to be decent human beings if they want your money. If they choose to be rude for no reason, fire their butts!

I plan on talking to some of the local credit unions, small banks and mortgage brokers in the area prior to seriously finding my first deal(s). Before I go in though I would like to know how best to present myself and what information I should take in with me to increase my chances of success. The types of loans I will primarily be asking about are FHA and portfolio loans.

i am thinking of 2-4 unit properties. The ones in my area are all under 200k. Anything more than 4 seems way too daunting right now.

when contacting a seller, what information do I request from them? Thus far I know I need the propertie's rent history for 5 years, but what else do I need that can only be gotten from the seller?