All Forum Posts by: Rene Owczarski

Originally posted by @Adam Gamboa:

Thank you for the response @Rene Owczarski . It seems as though they are leaving it up to me whether or not to get one. In your experience, is it valuable?

It can be useful, but it really depends on the property and what data you have access to in your area.

Are the improvements (shed, house, garage, barn, etc.) of the property you're buying close to the property lines?
Are your neighbors improvements close to the property lines?
Do you have a shared driveway with the neighboring property owners?

Also if your county recorder has recordings online, you can also do a search of the abutting parcels, to your proposed parcel. To see if any of them have had a survey done in the past.
Or if your county assessor has parcel data online, they’ll typically give you an aerial photo of the parcel with the boundary lines of the parcel in the photo as a guide.
And that’ll give you a clue, if you or your neighbors are encroaching the property lines, and if they are, then I would get a survey to confirm.

Basically all the list tells you, who's not paying on their mortgage. And depending on the state, and what information is on the list, how much they owe and when the foreclosure sale is scheduled to take place.

After that, it's on you to analysis each property, to see if you can make a deal out of it.

@Sarah Brown I would agree with Sarah on this. In that if you tried to apply for another Owner Occupied loan within a year of the TX purchase, that you'll get flagged for occupancy discrepancies on the application.

@Mike Stevens So then you're kind of in a gray area. Because the seller is disclosing to you no knowledge, but it also sounds like you haven't gotten a lead test done. So then you're under the assumption that it's doesn't have lead paint.

And if I remember right, the EPA has a guide on it's website, regarding lead certified contractors, and the rules around disturbance of know lead paint. You might want to check that out. Because I know the rules around that have changed a couple of times over the last few years.

@Douglas Mason I live in Des Moines, but tried investing in Newton. And it was easy to find tenants in small towns. But the tough part for me was finding a property management company to manage the rental for me in a smaller town. Since if they didn't have any other properties to manage in that town, it wasn't worth their while to take on one property to manage.

@Adam Gamboa Sometimes a survey is ordered with the appraisal by the lender. But it depends on the state where the property is located and the lender requirements.

@Ian Gilligan This is a tough one, because when it goes to underwriting, they'll more than likely want to see some kind of proof of a job transfer to TX to approve it as owner occupied. Otherwise it'll more than likely be treated as a second home/Investment property for qualifying.

@Mike Stevens I guess first off, how do you know it's lead paint?

@Sarah Martin

As a cya for you, send the itemized letter and keep a copy (scanned or paper) for your own records.

Originally posted by @Ryan Hall:

Thanks for asking Rene. I am talking about the salesperson.

Unfortunately some sales people don't know the underwriting guidelines for the products they sell. Since typically you'll be qualified with either 2 or 3 yrs of taxes. So that the lender can see the trend on your taxes (either declining income, or increasing income), and then taking an average to smooth it out.

What it sounds like they're trying to do is give you an implied denial without sending it to underwriting. Where the underwriter would give you either a conditional approval  (pending additional docs), or a hard decline (and then you'd get a letter with the decline reason).