All Forum Posts by: Mariah Jeffery

Not true. I've been married since before I bought my first property and all of our FNMA backed loans are in either his name or mine. We both have more than 4. The key to this is to make enough income individually and have a good enough credit score that you both qualify.

No, these sellers move slowly but we close on 7/15! Everything is going well so far. I also have my parents lined up to partner with me in case the sellers want to make another deal in 6 months.

I'm constantly getting those 0% interest balance transfer checks from my credit card company. Most of the time they have a balance transfer fee of 3%, but my husband and I just each received a targeted offer with no fee.

Our highest mortgage rate is 6.75% and it's a simple interest mortgage, meaning interest is calculated daily. The mortgages are through a credit union so we have a lot of flexibility with paying early.

Between my husband and myself, we can take out about $45K on 0% interest and have to pay it back in 1 year. Our mortgage payments with this credit union are about $4K/month. Here is what I'm thinking we'll do.

1. Write the balance transfer checks to ourselves and cash them in our checking account with the credit union.
2. Have the credit union apply $44K, which is 11 months of mortgage payments at $4K/month, to our mortgage and have them suspend payments for the next 11 months.
3. Use the money we would have paid toward our mortgage to pay off the 0% credit card balance.
4. Profit. $44K * 6.75% * 11/12 = $2,722.50 in interest saved.

After coming up with this plan, I realized we could still profit from the offers with the 3% balance transfer fee given that our interest rate is 6.75%. The downside is our credit scores might take a temporary hit, but they're in the 790's now so we should be ok. We're about to buy 8 houses so I don't think we'll buy any more for at least 6 months.

Am I missing anything?

Yes, still working out the details but we're planning to close in July. Thanks!

At the end of the month I'm going to close on 8 properties on the same day. The title companies charge $318 per property each to the buyer and seller. I haven't asked yet if they will discount this fee. If they say no, would there be any benefit to going with a real estate attorney for closing? I assume the title co. still needs to be involved to issue the title insurance, but they charge separately for that, so maybe we could find an RE attorney to handle the signing of the paperwork separately?

I just heard from the daughter. Sellers will not go for 5% down; 20% is the lowest they'll go for. However, they proposed a smaller package deal of 8 single family homes with a combined tax assessed value of $473K and total rents of $5,250/month for a price of $375K, financed at 5% interest w/ 20% down, 25 year am. I told her this offer looks good on paper and if due diligence checks out, we'll have a deal.

Thanks everyone for your help! I'd love to own all 52 but I think this is a safer option, and just as good of a deal on a smaller subset. The daughter also mentioned that if things go well and we establish a good payment history, we may be able to talk the parents into a lower down payment on another batch in 6 months. Plus it will give us some practice with the seller financing thing. I'm excited now!

I have 23 units already so it would be a huge increase but better than going from 0.

These properties are all paid off so at least that won't be an issue.

The main reason I want no due on sale clause is because I like this 5% interest rate so much, I'd like to have the option to invest funds received from a sale in other properties, but also the option to pay down the debt as well. Plus, it would complicate things to pay part of the debt off. I'm not sure how the sellers feel about this.

Thanks for the referral to Angelo Russo. I'll contact him and go from there.

I'd like to find a good informative book to educate myself on the subject, even though a lawyer will draw up the paperwork. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I'm about to make an offer on a multiple-property deal with seller financing and I have some questions. I assume if the deal gets accepted, I'll need to get a real estate lawyer but in the mean time, I'm thinking of things I want to include in the terms of my offer. Besides the usual down payment, amortization period, and interest rate, here are some things I've thought of:

- No prepayment penalty
- Seller will report interest as taxable income and issue the appropriate tax forms
- I may try to sneak in no due on sale clause
- Fixed interest rate

What am I missing?

How will I track what's been paid to principle and interest? Is there a software I can buy, or do I simply use Excel's payment functions, and then get the seller to sign off on a statement each year (I know they should be the ones sending me a statement but they're very unsophisticated).

We would probably close on the 44 separate properties in 4 batches of 11 properties. What if I want to sell just 1 out of 11 in a batch?

Thanks!

Jeff, you bring up a good point. I happen to know a little bit about these sellers because they've been my father-in-law's landlord for the last 20 years. There are a few quirks I've picked here:

- They live very cheaply. They obviously are worth millions with these properties being paid off for decades, but drive a beat-up 15 year old truck and eat at McDonald's every day (so I doubt they'd blow $2M in their lifetimes, or even the $100K down payment).
- Their son already has 50+ rentals and daughter has 12, so neither wants any more. The daughter is 64 and is their property manager. She wants to retire at 65 and told them they better have them all sold in a year.
- They HATE to pay taxes. Not that anyone likes to, but they complain about the taxes they had to pay when we bought their other properties every time I talk to them. (This is why I think owner financing would be great - because they wouldn't make a $2M profit in one year).
- They're emotional, and also fickle. They'll be dead set on one thing and there's no changing their minds, and 6 months later they're dead set on the opposite.

Hopefully I can use all of this info in my strategy. And strangely, I'm not even very excited about this deal. I know it could be the deal of a lifetime, but it would also be a lot of hassle and I feel like I could take it or leave it. I think they want to sell to us bad enough that if we don't work something out right away, 6 months later they'll come calling again. In fact, that's what happened with the first property we bought from them, only it was 2 years later.

No mention of purchase price yet. The elderly couple gets overwhelmed easily. I figured it may be better to get them to agree on terms before I get them up with an offer $1M less than they want.