All Forum Posts by: Lam N.

My husband and I started our REI business together. We've been doing better than I had imagined. Along the way, we've had other investors with money coming out of their ears willing to partner up with us. Sure, it was always very tempting, considering we've never had that much cash to begin with. But we always said no. Even now it's just him and me. To be honest, we cannot even imagine ever letting anyone else in. I know that we could make a lot more money by letting other people in. But it just doesn't feel right.

You think it's a trust issue we're having?

We recently ran across a large Victorian house that was foreclosed last month.  We went through the house and concluded it would probably take $2K to renovate to where we can rent it out and $5K if we want to make it super nice.  The house is in remarkably good shape.  I'm a structural engineer and inspector, so I checked for hidden problems and couldn't find any.  We did find a hate note from the previous owner saying she will haunt this place if anyone dare to buy it.

The house is only a mile away from a large university with 20-some thousand students.  

I sent in an offer completely lowballing them.  As is, the house is worth probably 10 times what we offered.  We didn't expect them to actually accept our offer.  We weren't really serious about it, but thought we'd try.  

Holy cow, they came back accepting our offer.  We're paying cash for it.  The property with the price they accepted is a steal.  

Before we signed the contract, we wanted to double check to see if there's something wrong with it.  We went back there and thoroughly checked it again.  Again, we couldn't find anything.  We told our realtor about the note and the realtor representing the bank had someone remove the note right away.

This isn't our first rodeo.  We have bought worse properties and rehabbed them.  

Why do you think they're willing to let this property go for so little?  I'm a structural engineer and an inspector so I know what to look for.  I even climbed into places looking for problems.  Nothing.  We will make it into student housing.

The only thing we could think of is it's haunted? 

I should also add that we have become cash buyers ourselves. Trust me, you'll get there one day. Then you will look back and wonder how you even lofted off the ground without being a cash buyer. We certainly couldn't imagine ourselves being cash buyers when we only had 2-3 properties. 

I think it is like an initiation thing that every investor has to go thru first. 

 Find another bank. Don't go with this. It has disaster written all over it. 

 Brent, my husband and I ran into the same problem when we first started out. You can't compete with a cash buyer because cash is King no matter who says what. 

We dealt with it by started looking at places where other investors aren't. Don't limit yourself to any particular area. We now own 8 properties and they are wherever in the greater metropolitan area we could find them. Working great for us. 

Hope that helps. 

Should have included in the purchase agreement for the seller to empty out the place before closing. Otherwise, DO NOT go thru with the deal. 

Trust me, as a newbie you do not want to deal with this. They will eat you alive. 

edit. 

Since you have signed the contract, add in an addendum to it. Get on top of it TODAY. 

Husband and I currently have 5 properties with tenants.  Just bought 3 more.  So, we are very active at acquiring income generating rental properties.  Between the two of us, I'm in charge of the rehabbing and maintenance while he's in charge of the people aspect.  We manage our own properties. 

We have a diverse group of tenants.  Elderly couple, family of 4, young couple with a kid, etc.  But one thing that they all have in common so far is they have all commented to my husband that he's a little young to be a landlord.  He's mid to late 20s but he's one of those guys with a baby face so everybody always thinks he's 18-20.

I kinda know what they mean.  We have rented before and all our landlords have always been middle age to older.  You think because of he looks so young people might have a problem with answering to a younger landlord/property manager?

 My husband and I set things up for the tenants to succeed.  So we allow them to pick their due date when they sign the lease. We have found that the late ones are almost always because of their pay date. So we tell them if they change jobs or they need a different due date, tell us. 

Or not excluding heteros but advertise the space as lgbt? Decorate the place as such. 

 What do you mean about security purposes?