All Forum Posts by: Robert Fountain

Where is your company located?  My accountant does payroll services.  He's right outside of PA/MD border and handles businesses in PA

@David Zheng.  Thanks for the reply .  When the title company called it sounded like they were sued by the sellers.  I'm not 100% sure.  Either way I'm working on resolving this.

Thank you

Thanks for the replies everyone.  I'm a little skeptical when someone calls me asking me to send them a large check :).  I'll check my closing documents when I get home and run the calculations.  Once I figure that out I'll contact the title company .

@John Thedford. Thanks for the reply.  I'm not sure I'm following you.  The sellers claimed that the title company shorted them at closing.  The title company wrote a check to the sellers for the "shorted amount" and now the Title company wants me to pay them back for that money. 

Hi Everyone

  I'm looking for some advice on what I need to do regarding this issue:

I bought a rental property on August 7, 2017.  Today I received a call from my title company stating that the sellers hired an attorney because they felt that the property tax prorations were not calculated correctly.  The attorney calculated that they were shorted $1346.60 and sent a letter to the Title company. The title company wrote a check to the sellers and then called me and said that I need to send them a check for that amount.

They sent me the letter from the seller's attorney as proof.  I don't feel that I should just blindly write them a check based upon what the seller's attorney said they were shorted. I have no idea if this calculation is correct.  Should I be taking this to my attorney and have them deal with the title company?  

Anyone ever had this happen?  What would you do?

@Jason Zhang welcome to BP.  As others have stated, you won't get any DC commuters renting a multi-family in Hagerstown.  There are  few things to consider when looking in Hagerstown

1.  Stay away from anything that's not in the North End.  You'll be hard pressed to find a quality place and quality tenants in any other parts.  You'll get C class units and C-D class tenants in any other area.

2.  The City is against you.  The city has been trying to crack down on slumlords in the past few years so they're really strict.  You'll have to pay a yearly $75 license fee per unit.  If the unit is built before 1979 you'll need to pay for lead paint certificates and inspections.  The city will inspect your unit every 3 years or at every tenant turnover after that and they ALWAYS find something wrong that you'll need to fix.  If the police are called to your units, the city will fine YOU.  If trash is on the sidewalk, the city will fine YOU.  You really need to screen your tenants well and make sure to have a good management company

That being said, you can find some good deals in the north end if you know what you're looking for. Hope this helps

I use Advantage Property Management 

@Amad. I use a property management company 

I currently have 2 units in Hagerstown and working on closing on a third.  The market is good but you have to be very careful about where in Hagerstown you invest.  There are literally hundreds of available units but I would only ever go after maybe 1% or less of those.  I stick mainly to the North End of Hagerstown.  You're taking a risk in the other parts.  

Hagerstown also has some pretty strict laws around rentals and they hold landlords responsible for many tenant actions.  You need to be very careful in Hagerstown and have a rock solid tenant screening policy

I'm interested as well