All Forum Posts by: Steve McGovern

Here's my advice: GET your license. The education alone is not endemic to "sales" or "investment" or "leasing". Fact is, if you're an investor, you need to be all of those things. here's the scenario for me: After almost 10 years in legal real estate practice, after doing a ton of residential and commercial transactional, leasing, and development work, I was still lacking the other stuff. (After all, there's LOTS of stuff to consider...) The turning point for me was the discussion about bringing an urban Italian to lease a property in the quintessential and upscale Italian place in Boston, the North End. for the record, EVERYONE would love to be in the North End. It's beautiful, safe, and well travelled. But the fact is that Simply bringing an *enter ethnic group here* into a district where same tend to live, WITHOUT that party's EXPLICIT request, is "steering", highly illegal, and you can lose not just your license, but your empire. No matter what experience you may have....lots, none, and everywhere in between, you can always use more. The license coursework is a solid way to get all that, and every jurisdiction is different.

sure! but there's nothing really to revive... I fled, and suggest you do too, especially after a particular few postings here.

+1 on the estoppel letters.

Originally posted by @David Richmond:

I sincerely appreciate the detailed replies. Extremely educational for a beginner. Perhaps a few more details will help further. my wife finally completed her 15+ years of medical training and is a trauma surgeon making Really big girl money. But since we have been used to living on just my salary, we now have the ability to pay off her 300k in student loans and thr 300k left on our 500k rental propriety in three years. We dislike debt by nature  because we both grew up eating government cheese in families where money was always super tight, so our first instinct is to slay the debt. 

That’s said, I would love  to have 3-4 rental properties to suplement retirement income or just have a cash flow to allow less/different work, but don’t necessary want a rental empire given the time/other work interests. Were both right around 40 so don’t have forever to play around, but sounds like from the advice an alternate move might be to just be trefi the rental to increase cash flow and use some of the recent increased doc salary to buy a second rental. 

Again I really appreciate the insightful advice. 

 Congrats to you & your wife-- especially your wife.  I admire the work she dedicated to her passion and calling..  (I also wish my JD/MBA wife was making really big girl money!) :-) 

Again,  Student loans are bad debt.  FOCUS on that, absolutely.   Then, focus on... whatever the heck other debt you may have-- I think that living debt-free in your OWN home, is probably also advisable....  depending on what your tax adviser says about your situation and the interest deduction.  

HOWEVER, Leveraging assets, in the line of business,  is a way to diversify both your cash pile and your cash flow.   Let's work it out:  

Average investment properties in your area are...  $300K.   You have $300K to invest.  

would you rather have 1 income stream bringing in $1500 a month, or 2 income streams bringing in $3K a month, with a mere 50% each leveraged...  ok, That's a good visual, but don't answer yet. 

Now remember that the interest is a business expense... 

yeah, there it is.  Again CONSULT your (attorneys, consultants, Accountants, etc.)  first.   But if your goal is to AMASS real estate (as opposed to just buying Mom a place to live for a while, that you'll rent out later after the horrible inevitable happens) then you should use leverage until you don't need it any more.   

That said, one person above said something very intelligent about maybe not buying this very second based on the Market and the prevailing values...  @Hal Thompson  Yeah-- I might agree.  

Originally posted by @Michaela G.:

Originally posted by @Tom Gimer:

(with there being 10 change of hands between 2000 and 2009, I can't imagine that every title examiner screwed up.) 

 ...ok, so if this  true, this cinches it:  the Agent SHOULD have known, even if (s)he did not.  The Agent is Liable;  The Policy should pay, and then extract justice upon the Agent.  

Michaela,  this says nothing about the Agent proclaiming BK, of course.  Get a good lawyer, and compel the Policy to pay.  That's what you paid for, after all.   

@Tom Gimer sorry- New phone, New operating system... still adjusting to Android. double space doesn't even capitalize on my phone! Gotta be a setting for that.

ok... so the next question is would the liability under those circumstances run to the title co? My answer is: doesn't matter-- they'll seek to avoid the conflict and I bet for $2500... they'd pay.

now the real question in the OP's case is "is a search of water department's records USUAL AND CUSTOMARY prior to title policy writing and closing on her jurisdiction? SHOULD they have known?" It most assuredly is in my jurisdiction.

Furthermore and almost more importantly, any lender reviewing a Lender's policy after this would be pretty ticked off to see that a conveyancer hasn't taken full steps to assure a first lien position. This would knock him/her right off that Lender's list-- and fast!.

The responsibility lies with the guy writing the policy, who should be the same guy performing the DD.

@Tom Gimer Tom, I deeply respect your work-- I ran a Title insurance agency myself for a brief stretch. The point I'm making however is the one about the requisite level of due diligence that's necessary to underwrite that policy. Just for arguments sake, would you write a policy without having researched the TITLE at the RoD/Clerk's office? answer is, "of course not." If another provider did exactly that... would you call him liable? Also of course.

You were right to bring it to the title insurance company. My advice: find a kick (rear) real estate lawyer to investigate whether (s)he'd take it up as a case AGAINST THE TITLE CO for you. Here are my reasons/the facts that bring me to this conclusion: You purchased a property. you purchased a TITLE insurance policy. (owner's policy, yes? please confirm. this is important). the policy indicates that you are free and clear from " encumbrances and liens" that are in existence on or previous to the date that you took possession of the property. therefore, somebody missed it. Namely, somebody who is the agent for that title insurance company. as you said, every place is a little bit different. The laws vary, the requisite due diligence varies, Etc. If your area has public services that traditionally are in a position to put a lien on a property, then it seems to me that this due diligence should have been performed. On the other hand, if it's some private water company with no real public ties whatsoever and nobody ever searched their records for bits and pieces, then I could be dead off here. I'm also not saying you should spend you all your capital on litigation. However, the insurance company and or its agents are required to find this stuff for you. get someone qualified to make a phone call to them.

if you hate debt, then you should REALLY hate a HELOC. Higher rates, and adjustable? In this economic climate? Personally, I don't hate debt, but if I described myself like you described yourself...but assuming you can't buy with cash today, then I'd work to buy and leverage my assets up-to 40-60% of the value (even the high end is definitely low enough to cash flow securely with a significant cushion and room for vacancy and picking the RIGHT tenants). Furthermore, I would do this with only the the lowest, surest capital available on the market. This is a fixed rate mortgage loan, and absolutely not a HELOC. Save the HELOC for those lean times when you know you need a new roof but can't or shouldn't pay for it outright.

$20-50K, depending on distance an location, is a pretty common amount around here, @David Santore.  

Let's be fair:  think of everything your neighbor disposes-of by giving you that Easement:  the right to later install a below ground pool...  the right to install an ABOVE ground pool, because they'd have to move it if (god forbid) they need access to your gas main;  the right to do ANYTHING with any permanence whatsoever on that section of the property.  What might have been black top in his yard now has to be gravel, or he's installing it with the knowledge that you can come back through it any time.  (there goes the tennis court, basketball court , or even a patio in some cases.)   Forget building on it/expansion of a home later.  Heck, even certain tree species can't be planted there for feat that the roots may interfere with your fuel line.  All of this potential has a value and that value is typically pretty high.  

You could ask for it for nothing, but the neighbor would be crazy to submit.    Good luck.