All Forum Posts by: Raquel D.

I was thinking the same thing as @Greg H... if Texas is a community property state the answer may not be so clear. You may want to look for an estate litigator, or at least an estates and trust firm that does trust litigation too. Attorneys who only handle estate administration may not have the experience to efficiently deal with these kinds of situations. Sorry and best of luck.

This makes me think about the “smoking gun” against Clay Davis in season 5 of The Wire... I’m not a lawyer or tax professional. It seems there is a tax filing requirement for gifts exceeding a certain amount, but I’m not sure how applicable that could be to your situation.

Sometimes making an offer before seeing the property is the only way to get a shot. As everyone is saying, get an inspection contingency and be there for it. (More seasoned owners may not go to inspections or they may rely on PMs/brokers/etc for this — but as a very inexperienced person myself, I’ve decided I will be at every inspection until I’m very comfortable with the process. Besides, I’ve found I get more info from the inspector talking to me than the physical report!)

I can’t speak to an investment property, but I know two people with simplisafe and they both speak highly of it. Neither of them are great with setting up technology “hardware” but they both did it themselves and were very complimentary about how easy it was. They both said customer support is great and like the no contract method. The only negative was that one of them had an issue with the motion detector malfunctioning after a few months. It was going off when no one was home (although she DOES have cats — but she insisted it was set up so that cats wouldn’t trigger it, and it was a little odd that it wasn’t a problem until it had been set up awhile). Her solution was to returned the motion detector and get a few more window alarms. She reasoned that since she had alarms on all doors and windows big enough for a person to climb into, the motion detector was overkill anyway.

Off the top of my head I might try this: 1) Check the probate court in the county where the decedent lived at the time of death and see if a probate proceeding has been opened 2) Depending on your state, check the probate court to see if a will has been lodged/deposited (which would name executors — and may have attorney info too) 3) Google the decedent’s name and “obituary” to see if there’s any family info. (That’s also a good way to determine where s/he lived at death.) 4) Check where property tax statements are being mailed. It’s a long shot but if the decedent was ill or very elderly it’s possibly someone was helping as a power of attorney before death. Seems unlikely based on the scenario though. (Really I was thinking you could send a letter to the “Estate of ____” c/o that address...) Hope you find what you need!

Anything that’s a concern should be in writing. (It’s negotiating so the seller could say no, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.) A house I bought last year was in the process of getting a few repairs and one of them didn’t get done before closing. Luckily my agent had put it in writing, so after we closed the seller just cut me a check for $500, which more than covered the repair. (This may not be “right” but it wasn’t an investment property so I wasn’t too worried about it.) I should add that my agent didn’t remember he put it in one of the addendum though—if I hadn’t reminded him, he wouldn’t have checked and I would’ve just been unhappy about it, lol. Even though the agent had tons of experience, it was going to be my house so I had to be the one to pay attention to those details!

I was thinking the same thing as Marian Smith — sounds like it might be sleep apnea. I live with someone with sleep apnea and without the c-pap machine, I could easily hear the snoring from a bedroom upstairs with the door closed while I’m sitting in the living room downstairs. It seriously makes me understand why people call snoring “cutting a log.” If the snoring is indeed that volume, it’s not really a reasonable amount of nighttime noise — you wouldn’t insulate/soundproof walls so well that neighbors couldn’t hear each other vacuuming or using a drill or something. It’s excessively loud noise for nighttime hours. From a landlord perspective, is it appropriate to address a medical issue with a tenant though? It seems like a tricky area because on one hand, snoring tenant’s medical conditions are private and he shouldn’t /have/ to do anything about it. And it definitely feels like it would fall into some kind of murky area to cite snoring tenant for excessive noise if it’s for something like a sleep disorder. But similarly, the other tenant should also have the right to enjoy peace and quiet during quiet hours. Is there some kind of sound proofing that could be purchased to hang over the wall or something like that? (I’m not describing this well, but instead of putting more insulation in the wall, is there something that could go on the exterior of the wall? In the complaining tenant’s unit, since he’s the one who is being bothered. Like I’m sure there must be something people use when they need to record in areas that aren’t recording studios.) To be clear, I don’t know what the answer is — I’m just laying out some of my reasoning. Curious to hear how the experienced landlords respond to this!

Jarrett Coggin neighborhoods are generally categorized as A-D class, with A being most expensive/low crime/relatively new and D class being more like “war zones.” A lot of books cover this but I really like the ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy — or Rod Khleif’s new book has great info on this topic. I forget the name. Anyway a lot of investment real estate books will cover it! So I live in the east bay and I worked in downtown and uptown Oakland for about 8 years. One thing I’m curious about is how C class Oakland compares to C class in cities that DON’T often make the “highest crime rate in the US” top ten lists. Is it apples to apples and there are just more D class neighborhoods there? Or would a C class Oakland property be pretty rough — but “pretty good” compared to other run down neighborhoods in Oakland? I say this because the dramatic differences from block to block in certain areas of Oakland are something that I frequently see in the Bay Area — but Oakland definitely has some incredibly rough spots in comparison to it’s upscale spots!

I keep an eye on the twin cities area and I’ve noticed that too! So many SFHs and multi families are 100+ years old. I was interested in a duplex in old Shakope listed last summer, but my dad drove by it and told me it needed a ton of repairs, just from what he could see from the outside. (He’s a retired carpenter so I just took his word on it and didn’t look into it any further — it was definitely overpriced.) I’m definitely following this thread — great insights so far. I hope you post when you buy something, too!

It sounds like you’re doing a really great job keeping expenses low. You’re working hard and it must be frustrating to feel like you aren’t making a dent. A few things that come to mind are... What’s the interest rate on your student loans? If it’s low, could you pay the minimum and instead divert excess money to investments with a higher rate of return? If the interest rate is high, could you refinance them? Is increasing your income by working overtime, working a second job, or starting a side hustle possible? You may want to check out the Clark Howard show — he has some good tips for paying down tips and also has a free call line to tackle questions like this.