All Forum Posts by: Scott Meredith

In some states you can simply send a letter to the tenant telling them they have a reasonable amount of time (usually 2 weeks) to come get their stuff or it will be put out on the street. Of course make sure the letter is trackable and able to be proven they received it. Double check your state though.

I just finished a rehab on my personal residence that will become a rental; I added two bedrooms and a bath. My question is I got the final inspection done yesterday and was wondering how long I have to wait before I can refinance conventionally. I know that municipalities (specifically Los Angeles City) don't move quickly, and in fact the inspector said I would get some documentation in the mail in 4-6 weeks. What has been everyone else's experience in getting a lender to lend on my property now as a 4/2 instead of a 2/1? Would showing them the final inspection being completed work, or do I have to wait for the final documentation to come in the mail?

Ruben Valladolid Jr. I am also a new investor, but have done a lot of the local mentoring (paid) here in LA and Orange counties. There is a local wholesaler I know and used that has an intern program if you are interested, she is based in Anaheim. I worked with her for a while and she taught me great things, I just didn't have the time to continue with her as I got a new assignment in my job. Contact me if you are interested and I can give you her information. Good luck.

Adam K even if you couldn't get financing through your LLC you can still put the property into a trust and use the same strategy, or quick claim it into your LLC after you get your financing in place.

Tom, the property in Long Beach will most likely sell for that price....that is a good price for most of long beach...that said, Long Beach is one of the largest cities in socal and has really bad areas to areas that are over a million dollars. Without more info it is hard to say. Use a site like redfin if you don't have any other resource to find comps to determine value. As for my markets I am looking for it basically is anything in socal I can make money on and get the money lined up for. Like I said I am still also just starting and just finishing renovating my personal residence to rent out once I get the final inspection done and refinanced. I can cash flow really well on this property because of my W2 job I got the house through a special program from HUD and look to cash flow nearly $1000/month. You can find cash flow in socal if you go into the harder neighborhoods, which for me is not a big deal. Other markets I am looking into is through my job I will soon have unlimited free access to probate and eviction leads.

Tom Wingert depending on how involved you want to get as a full time investor you could adopt a similar plan to what I plan to do (I am still new also) I plan to rehab here in socal, but buy rentals in other markets for the passive income. This will generate the large amounts of capital from CA fix-n-flip that you don't get the same profit margins on in other markets while producing larger safer cash flows when you invest in another market. With the profits from the flips you could buy one sometimes two free and clear properties elsewhere for cash, or leverage the money and get even more.

I agree with Joe B. a land trust is much easier/cheaper to create and maintain while still giving asset protection. LLC's have a recurring tax or fee each year (in CA it is $800/yr) and you have to file a separate tax return. With the trust it flows through to your taxes and if you ever want to have an LLC later when you get more properties all you do is simply change the beneficial interest to the LLC and you add an extra layer of protection. If you do decide to go the LLC route, many online services will do it for very cheap, no real reason to pay an attorney to do what you really could do for yourself IMO.

If you use a PM what is to stop you as the owner to send a survey to your tenants. You obviously have the address, and even get the email address of tenants, they will be more likely to fill it out online than mail it back. I managed properties for Marriott for years and we did this. Sent a survey to each person who stayed. Even if you only get a sampling back you would have an idea of how your PM is on the other side of the business. You could make it part of your contract in the beginning to achieve a certain score to continue the contract, or decrease the % paid to the PM, all sorts of ways to set it up. As I get enough properties to justify hiring an employee, I will be starting a property management company and plan to implement this feature.

Los Angeles is the same way...the only way is to find a service that you can pay, or do what the services do....send someone to the court and query every case number. The clerk can tell you the current case number and you can go backwards from that....very time consuming.

I had one more tip I wanted to put into my earlier post that I forgot as I was writing, but finally remembered. The other way to potentially get a police report with it being a civil issue is to ask the cop for one because you need it for insurance purposes. Again, it may not always work, but it is worth a shot.