All Forum Posts by: Michael Clanton

Hi Mark, if you're pulling the carpet out I would also apply a coat of the oil base primer on the subfloor, (especially if it is plywood) in addition to the ceilings and walls, to cover any odors that have permeated that surface.

  Hi @François Gauthier-Drouin, it's really hard to tell something like this from a photo, and also really risky for you to take too much advice from someone like myself who can't actually physically look at the issue; so take what I say as an educated guess, nothing more. 

The main pic that worries me is the last one looking at the vertical crack in the masonry. It looks as if the horizontal masonry grout lines "drop off" towards the outside corner of the building, indicating there could be some settling/shifting in the footings and walls below grade, which can be a pretty costly repair depending on the severity of the settlement. I know you said you were having trouble getting clear numbers from contractors, but I would definitely recommend getting a structural engineer or foundation repair specialist to check that out to get a cost estimate. If it is an optical illusion and there is little to no settling occurring, the repairs can cost a little as a few hundred dollars to point up the masonry. But if it needs extensive leveling or jacking up, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix. 

Good luck, hope you get a good report!

Hi James, you are going to need to install a backer board material as an underlayment before setting, or installing, your tile. Assuming that the glue you're describing is fully cured and bonded well to the subfloor, but just has a tacky feel to the touch, I would probably just install the backer board material over the glue, as long as there are no very high "peaks" in the glue that would cause uneven contact or bond between the plywood subfloor and the backer board. Get enough thinset material to apply under the backer board with at least a 3/8" notch trowel, and nail or screw the board down as instructed on the stickers found on the material. I doubt very seriously you will have any problems with that, as long as the glue is firmly bonded to the plywood, and the backer is installed correctly. 

Also, congrats on your first purchase! 

Hi Anthony, you can usually Google the tax assessors website for whatever county the property is in, and look it up by property address on there. County websites will vary, but most will let you search the property info this way. 

Hey Chad, as was suggested above, you're probably going to have to remove the top few inches of contaminated stone/dirt to rid the smell. Not saying concrete wouldn't block the smell, but I'd hate to pour it and find out later that it didn't completely stop it. Here's a link I found you might be interested in:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6469590_remove-urine-smell...

Good luck!

Appreciate your clearing that up for me @Jon Holdman. Thank you for your advice and sharing your knowledge.

Hi @Nilo Gabales Samson, welcome to the site! 

To estimate the ARV (After Repair Value) of a property, you must find the most recently sold comparable homes near the location of the property you are interested in. You must compare the home you are interested in with these recently sold homes that have the same amount of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size, etc. as your subject home. In my area, you can go to web sites such as realtor.com and zillow.com and search for "recently sold" homes, make the criteria (beds, baths, sq. footage, etc) the same as your subject home and narrow down your list of comparable homes pretty quickly. By doing this, you will know roughly what homes that are similar in size, build, and finish as your home are selling for. By the way, there is several pages dedicated to showing you how to estimate ARV in Brandon Turner's book, http://get.biggerpockets.com/nomoneydown/, I would suggest reading it.

When you've done that, the next big thing is knowing what repairs the home you are interested in is going to need, and how much they will cost. That is something that is different case by case, and if you are not very familiar or knowledgeable with construction/remodeling, you will need to have contractors come out and look at the homes with you and give you a cost estimate of the repairs needed. A very good, thorough book to read that will help you to understand construction repair costs is J. Scott's book http://get.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook/. 

Hope this helps you!

@Daniel Dietz, that was a good idea having a friend assign the property to your LLC once you got it set up. If we do this again we will surely form an LLC. And thanks for the attorney's website!

@Jon Holdman, we will definitely be setting up a checkbook IRA LLC if we do this again. We really weren't expecting our offer to get accepted, but when it did we didn't want to pass on the deal. We didn't quite have the funds to purchase the home in full from HUD, and at this time do not have relationships with any lenders to be able to acquire funding that short of a notice. This is a light cosmetic remodel, so we do have the funds available for that, or we may just try to wholesale the property. We are aware that we, nor the disqualified members of our family can do any work to, on, or for the property.

Regarding the UBIT, I was under the impression that was directed more for those who did several deals of this type per year. Or am I wrong on that? Thanks for your advice.

Thanks for your advice @Brian Eastman. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was a customer service rep that told us it shouldn't be a problem to do this. Hopefully we haven't made a bad move by doing this. We found a HUD deal, made a low ball offer, it got accepted to our surprise, and this was about the quickest way we could pull together available funds to make the purchase. We definitely want to make sure what we are doing complies with the IRA regulations, so we will also definitely have an attorney advise us as you suggested.

Thanks again.

Hi fellow BP members! This is my first posted question, so please bear with me!

My dad and I recently used our SD Roth IRA's for the first time to purchase an investment property in SC that we plan to flip. The property was purchased with funds from 2 of my dad's IRA accounts (25% and 50%), and my IRA makes up the other 25%. We did not have an LLC set up for this investment, mainly due to our timing. Our IRA's are with Equity Trust.

My question is, is there a way around having to have 3 checks written out (one for each account) for every expense? Maybe not necessarily on this property since we have already purchased, but I was wondering what would be the best way to avoid this going forward?

Thanks in advance for any input!