All Forum Posts by: Sean Cole

 We must not have any good OREO agents here where I am, then!  Just pushing paper in my neck of the woods.

In Ohio, there's a few things that we've learned over the years on mechanic's liens..

- contractor (and subs) can absolutely file without seeing a judge

- if they do file, you can force them to sue within 60 days or they lose the lien

- you can post a bond if you want to contest the lien but have a sale in process that you don't want to delay

- if you pay them in full, and you're worried about them because they demand even more money, you can record an afidavit with some specific information in it and if it records before they attempt to record the lien, they are prevented from doing so.

I'm not a lawyer, so check with one before you rely on this information.  Your state is probably different.

Every single new wholesaler finds the deals that only need $10k-$15k rehab while I've been doing this for years (and sold 100's of properties) have seen 2 of those in all of the thousands of houses I've been in.  What am I doing wrong? LOL

@Paul Gwilliam, unfortunately, this is expressly forbidden by the MLS and other governing bodies. If an agent gets caught doing this, they'd lose their MLS access.

I'd suggest building a "partnership" with an agent by utilizing them to buy property.  After all, providing comps and analysis of them is what agents get paid for!

Maybe the rules have changed on BP, but my understanding is that you can not post a property here that you don't own or have a listing agreement signed.  You could post that you have a contract for sale and be creative...

I'm SHOCKED that there's another new investor on BP wondering why experienced real estate agents won't submit low-ball offers on properties in an area that the investor admittedly knows little about. </sarcasm>

 As I understand it, the interest expense is traceable in that if it's used to acquire other property it is actually deductible.  As always, check with an accountant!

Check out Tower Federal Credit Union. They do 100% LTV HELOCs. You have to become a member of the credit union, which you can do by donating $25 to one of the causes they have.

You said you had 2 open houses... how many showings have you had?

In my experience, if you're not getting showings you have a price problem.
If you're getting showings but no offers, you have a house problem.

In other words, if you're getting people to come to the house because of the photos and price online and then they aren't writing an offer, there's something wrong with the house that's not apparent from the listing online.  It could be a weird layout, poor workmanship, funny smell, etc.

I wouldn't trust MY real estate investing business to any real estate agent.  If an investor wants their agent to do ALL of the work vetting a deal, the agent would be much better off finding some capital to do the deal themselves.  Lots of investors have come to me asking for this kind of arrangement, but they typically are looking to buy properties in the $20k-$60k range.  Maybe at a different point in life we'd chase that business, but many of these investors:

1.  are brand new to investing and they don't really know what their criteria is
2. don't have cash, so they're not even the decision maker. it's some other investor or HML or bank that is
3.  have unrealistic expectations for the margins that exist in the market (they want to pay 1/2 of what they should pay)
4.  are complete PITA and demand the agent drop whatever they're doing whenever the investor calls/texts/emails, while having no loyalty to the agent
5.  will likely NEVER do a single deal, but will spend plenty of time on BP complaining about how they can't find a good agent

...and they expect the agent to do all of this for essentially minimum wage.  

Here's the thing, those of us that have been in the business for more than a year or two have heard your pitch about "all of the business" you're going to send our way.  When we're new, we fall for that.  After a year, we start counting the number of people who have said that and delivered and the number always comes up 0.  It's not always intentional on the investor's side, it's usually the 5 things I listed above with a heavy emphasis on #1.