All Forum Posts by: M Marie M.

Hi @David Colvin. I'm in DC too and right now my one investment property is in Florida.

Care to share why West Palm Beach attracts you as a place you want to invest? Is it somewhere you visit often?

My FL place is about a mile from where my parents live, and they deal with the rental. But if I were to do it again, I'd find a property with a professional property manager in mind.

Hi @James Claiborne and welcome to BP, as I see this is your 1st post.

I'm looking into buying a 'buy and hold' in Baltimore, but where to look is really up to you. I picked the area based on the idea that it was sort of like the neighborhood I live in now, 10 years ago. But you should just start with a basic search on zillow or redfin or any of those sites and plug in all the properties $50K and under and see what pops up, so you'll have a sense of where those $50K properties are, then cross off all the ones in neighborhoods you think are uncomfortable with. Because if you don't feel comfortable in a neighborhood you probably shouldn't buy there.

My day job is in history, and I have an interest in economics, so I will take a small crack at your question.

I'm in Washington, DC so in the city and the surrounding counties (PG Co. in MD and east of the river DC maybe exceptions) for the most part we did very well. We have a strong economy based on services to deal with a growing government (consultants, lobbyists, lawyers, etc). When the crash happened I was in a 30 year mortgage, still renting out my room to educated people.  But I knew a guy who was a RE agent who went into another career, because before, properties were like crack, they sold themselves. Before being an agent he was a waiter. Before houses in the hood sold quickly despite having a half-butt reno job. Since the crash the quality I'm seeing has greatly improved. So the crash had a sort of cleansing effect, getting rid of some people who weren't great agents.

As an investor the crash provided an opportunity for me to buy my rental in Florida. I love, love, Marion County's willingness to put all sorts of property related info on the web. I bought a foreclosure and via one of the county's websites, I found out that the previous owner had taken a $144K mortgage out on something I bought later for less than $35K. The value of that property kept decreasing until just recently... It's provided cash flow so even if I sell it for what I bought it for, I'll say I made money.

But I'm small potatoes and fairly conservative. I and my spouse really like our day jobs (in the history field) which are super stable. We save. So we aren't exposed to too much short term risk. The downside, no big rewards. I'm okay with that.

@Dan that was a decade ago for me. I'm sure much has changed since then and this discount sale thing is a whole new ball of wax.

My local ANC sent me and my neighbors an email about the 2016 Real Property "Discount" Tax Sale. I only partcipated in the DC Tax sale once, had no clue what I was doing, bid angry, but managed to get a decent return on interest. Never did it again. But hey if someone is interested in bidding for tax deeds, knock yourself out here is the info below per the DC.Gov website (note phone numbers, emails, links and contact info are DC government) http://dc.gov/node/409122

This only applies to the District of Columbia.

There is a sorta-kinda interesting comment discussion on a popular local blog called Prince of Petworth (PoP) regarding TOPA "From the Forum – Assigning TOPA Rights". I write sorta-kinda because sometimes (a lot of times) the commenters on PoP can be uninformed and unhelpful. At about 90 comments one can get some insight from various opinions on this topic.

The original poster wrote:

@Nat C. I think plenty has been said about what led to this situation but I think the best lesson in this is knowing the law for yourself and that the police sometimes enforce what they want to enforce.

You mentioned that you went to lawyers and they told you that only they could help and it would take months, but here you go with the law in hand, going up the chain of command until you got satisfaction and better results than the professionals (lawyers). Yay you!

But this story also reminds me that local police, sadly, can be selective on how they enforce the law. If it doesn't fit in with how they use ComStat or other system to show what they are doing, there is no incentive to do anything.

Hopefully the criminal courts have linked their names with this incident, if not sue them in small claims court. Yes, you'll probably get nothing, except the satisfaction of putting some red flag on their names as a reward for the next landlord/property owner who bothers checking them out.

Good for you.

Will you be trying to replicate the same thing in the future?

Yeah, @Scott Schier, I'm afraid you're right that she and her new guy will try to hold on to the current set up. We'll see.

Several of you are right that she needs to admit that she can't stay and be up front with the landlord (well actually management company). We'll try to advise her so she won't get marked as a bad tenant, but sense so many landlords don't apparently check references or do a thorough tenant screening I don't know if this would be a real problem for her.

Not my tenant but my sister in law who needs to leave her rental.

This was a bad idea from the start. My SIL thought that she could care for my MIL (her mom) and a dozen other things and figured she could do it in a house, in a neighborhood beyond her income, using MIL's retirement money. Well this experiment failed, MIL is now in the hospital, and MIL should not return to the house SIL is renting.

SIL already violated the lease by moving in a new boyfriend, who I'm 100% sure is not on the lease.

So I'm trying to advise the spousal unit (because I'm just an in-law) on how to handle this drama.

SIL is a little over halfway into her lease. Rent is some crazy amount near $5K (this is a 3bdrm A class nab in San Jose, CA). SIL does not make enough to pay the rent on her own and before this experiment in eldercare, was in a 1 bedroom apt (C+ nab).

If SIL insists on staying there are going to be some months of non-payment and she was never the best house cleaner so she may will leave a mess if things don't go right.

So if she were your tenant, how would you want this to go?