All Forum Posts by: Ronald Stanley

@Ronald Stanley

This is my last piece of advice. A realtor’s contract is set up to protect you against lawsuits. If you don’t want to use a realtor for any other reason, this is why I would use one. You don’t want to use a contract off of Google. You expose yourself to a lot of Unnecessary risk. For sale by owner transactions were originally created when grandma is selling her home to grandson. There’s less legal things you have to worry about in this situation. If you’re selling your home to a stranger, have a solid contract that has been tested in the courts.

@Ronald Stanley

I forgot to add. If you end up taking a cash offer, you can always pin the cash offer up against the highest financed offer that you have. The more leverage you have the better.

Get a Realtor. In this market, they will pay for themselves. The buyers realtor will be essentially working for you and convincing the buyer to waive every contingency known to man and get you the highest price so that they don’t have to show the buyer another eight homes before they get paid. Just my thoughts

@Alex Guerrero

I listed my house for sale by owner a few years back. I received 15 or 20 offers and most of them were from investors who scouted websites like Zillow, realtor.com, and redfin. I ended up selling for more than I anticipated. In hindsight, I should have listed it with a realtor. I would've gotten a lot more. The reason I say that is because when you list a home with a realtor, you get exposed to who I call "desperate homebuyers."  Most realtors who are representing buyers are only going to show them homes that are listed on the MLS.  The buyer like most buyers will submit seven or eight offers and get outbid by cash buyers. At a certain point, they will get desperate and begin to offer 50,000 or 60,000 above the asking price just to get a home. They will waive contingencies and find a lender that can close in 15 days or less. In my opinion, this is when having a realtor comes in handy. These offers will essentially pay for their fee and get you to have a better return on investment. That's what you need to think about. Will the 6% you agree to pay a Realtor be a good return on investment versus the Buyer pool that you get exposed to. 80% of buyers will use a realtor.

Lastly, a few years back I had an agent approach me to list my home and he was willing to take a 2% commission.  He was a newer realtor and I had experience reviewing offers because I’m a full-time loan officer. I don’t suggest this but it all worked out and I got exposed to the Buyer pool I was looking for.

@James S Tomaszewski

There may be a 6 month seasoning requirement to do a cash out refinance. You may be able to refinance before that but you will only be able refinance the purchase price. This is all conventional refinance rules by the way. Non conforming may be different. Also, ask how the underwriter treats STR income.

Shop with a couple lenders before you pull the trigger. If he can lock that rate in for 30 years, it doesn’t seem that bad for the trade-of of being able to write of most of your income and not have to pay thousands of dollars in taxes like the rest of us. Good luck with everything

@Alex Wise

Hey Alex, thanks for asking this. I’m gonna throw in a additional twist. I’m in the process of purchasing a four bedroom 2 1/2 bath property in Atlanta Georgia. I’m converting it into an eight bedroom three bathroom property. If I were to put a single family in here I can probably get $1600 a month. My Gross revenue is going to be upwards of $5000 a month because I intend to rent it out by the room. $150 Per week for every room except for the master which will be $199 a week. Yes, there are expenses involved in and a little bit more headache but somebody will always need a room regardless of the economy. My target demographic is Single men who make less than $30,000 a year. I’m using a company in Atlanta called Padsplit to acquire, screen, and place the tenants. This may be something to consider if you’re looking for something in between. You may not have a Pad split in your town but you can always learn how to rent out by room or look at student housing.

Royce, search craigslist for lease purchase and owner financing options if you choose to go that route.There are many retirees that own real estate free and clear. If they write you a mortgage and collect $1000 a month from that, you’re doing them a favor by creating an additional source of income.

Hey Roy, I would recommend googling "bank statement loans to buy a house" There are lenders out there that can use 12 to 24 months of bank statements to qualify you. In the past I have heard that they require a 740 credit score and 20% down. I am not sure what the requirements are now post Covid. There's also a great program called NACA that I used to buy my house. I'm pretty sure they may need two years of tax returns as well but you can double check. Just Google Naca.com.

Worse comes to worse. You could look at a lease purchase option so that some of your payment actually goes towards the purchase of the home. You could also look at owner financing. There are some people out there that will sell you the house and create a mortgage for you to pay off when you are able to get qualified. I’ve had some self-employed people do this and then come back to me two years later and refinance to pay off the owner financing note. Just make sure you’re on title if you choose to go the owner financing route. Lastly, you can always ask somebody to cosign for you to provide the additional income. After two years or once you can show sufficient income, you can refinance and take them off the mortgage.

@Mark Oliver

Hey Mark, I agree with the rest. You may consider doing a cash out refinance on your investment property. You may run into the fact that most lenders will only allow you to borrow up to 75% of the appraised value on an investment property so do you numbers and make sure it makes sense. I know someone who had 3 rental properties like yourself. He sold all three and used the profits to pay off the mortgage on his primary residence. Afterwards, he was able to get a home equity line of credit for $150,000 on his primary. He used that money as a down payment on a 15 unit property. He later refinanced the15 unit and was able to pay off the HELOC he took out on his primary residence and have a commercial loan on the 15 unit. Now he's looking at using his HELOC to do it again. I'm not sure if this helps but this may be an option for you.

@Eric James

Erik, if you can’t be positive and give constructive feedback. Why comment?

Hey Family,

I plan on spending this week and next week getting ready to bid in June’s auction. I am focusing on two counties. Dekalb and Floyd County in GA. Both of them seem to have the largest list of tax sales. Here is the issue I am running into that I would like to get advice on. Actually, its two issues.

#1. As of today, one of the counties list has 291 properties for sale and the second county has 284. In the last six days, the number has not changed. I was hoping the list would grow smaller and smaller the closer we get to the auction, but that’s not been the case. I gathered from my last post that I should complete most of my research the week before sale.

Do I need to go through all 575 properties? Mostly everyone on the list is past due by $5000 or less which falls within my budget. I want to focus on single family homes since I don’t know enough about land at this point.

If not, is there a way to pick the ones that are least likely to redeem so I don’t have to look at all 575 homes. i.e. look for deceased owners, people in jail, large amount of taxes due…????

It seems overwhelming to look at 575 homes and only have 7 days to do it. I understand from the last post that I will look at homes that end of getting pulled of the list the day of the auction, but I want to be as efficient as I can.

#2. All the Youtubers I have listened to encourage their subscribers to learn to complete their own title searches. I spoke with a real estate attorney last week and he told me that best practice is to pay for a title search before buying a tax deed. He specified that I might be able to get a title examiner to complete a one owner title search or a quick mortgage or lien search covering the last ten years. He said it would cost $150 to $200. I’m am not opposed to doing this, but I can see how this can get really expensive quickly. Especially if it may take going to 4 or 6 auctions before I actually win a bid. I paid for a premium membership to the GA superior clerks’ authority’s website so I can research liens. I spoke to one of the clerks who gave me a quick lesson on liens, releases, and nulla bonas. I am writing all this to say that I will not be very confident that I am running a complete and correct title search before this sale, but I will know the basics. Here are my questions.

1. 1. Should I pay for a title search for my first auction if I am not confidant on my title searching skills?
2. 2. Should I skip this auction and learn to complete my own title search before I bid? If so, can you recommend any training courses for this or how you learned to do it yourself and how long it took you?

I am confident I can learn to do it myself, but I suspect that I may have to pay 20 to 50k to win a bid in the areas I am looking at. At least that was the average cost of land that sold at the first auction that I attended. I would hate to make an expensive mistake because I didn’t dish out a couple hundred dollars for a title search.

Sorry for the long post. I am just trying to wrap my head around how I should be allocating my time and resources.

Thanks in advance