All Forum Posts by: Steve Babiak

This sounds like it’s in Philadelphia.

The certificate of rental suitability is obtained as a download from the L&I website. But that only works for landlords who have a rental license.

So, do you have a rental license in Philadelphia? That is basically step one. At the top of the Philadelphia Forum here on BP you should find a thread that covers what landlords need to provide to tenants.

Since Pennsylvania’s idea of a land trust is an instrument that is used to have land in a conservation status, any use of a trust for this will require the PA income tax to be filed as a business trust. Consult with your attorney and CPA before going down that path, so that you understand how this works.

And for trusts, the trustee is typically going to be named on the deed as the owner, see link;

https://www.nolo.com/technical-support-main/nolo-living-trust-transferring-real-estate-into-your-trust.html

You will have to pay another transfer tax.

Since this is not an arm’s length sale of the property, the transfer tax would be based on the value as determined by a formula that the PA Department of Revenue uses. That formula takes the property’s assessed value from the tax assessor, multiplies that by a factor that can be found at the PA Department of Revenue website, and then multiplies that value by the transfer tax percentage that is in effect for the property’s location, giving you the transfer tax that is due.

That method could result in you having to pay an even higher transfer tax if you bought a property well below market value.

I recently walked through a townhouse that somebody wanted to buy, with that prospective buyer seeking my input. In the basement, there were all sorts of signs of water infiltration on the perimeter of the subfloor, and this was a stucco house built in the day when bad practices were used to apply stucco over wood-based sheathing. With the adjoining townhouses also having stucco exterior walls.

My guess is that the stucco was failing and that was the way water got in, and that all of the houses with stucco in that community would at some point need stucco removal and replacement. That HOA would probably have to foot the bill for that, with a special assessment being passed along to all the owners.

That’s the sort of thing that you might get in a condo or townhouse community; if all of the houses were detached, then each owner has to foot their own bill for failed stucco.

If your rentals are located inside the City of Philadelphia, then I suggest you stick with local people who understand the way rentals are taxed by Philadelphia.

I think you missed the point Kevin was trying to make. No question that it has to be legal. But why do you want to convert from studio to 1BR in the first place? What benefit are you expecting to get?

And the bedroom window must be an egress window, which means it must be at least a certain size (and in practical terms even the minimum size depends on whether you have a slider, double hung, casement, etc.)

Since somebody just voted on my last post here, I noticed that the question in that post remains unanswered. So let’s try that question again to see if we get an answer.

@Albert Zheng - did you go to an auction with some preparation in advance and how did things go?

I agree with @Shari P. that there is some underlying issue that is causing this foundation to crack. Your engineer only estimated the cost of fixing the crack, but first you would need to fix that underlying issue so that it doesn’t come back to bite you later. And what that underlying issue is can be one or more of several different things; a French drain would typically come into play if the cause here is from water pressure of the surrounding soil.

Backing out might have been the right choice. 

Now, some of those cracks are really obvious; your first walk through by whomever you have doing that should have flagged them. Whoever it is that you use for your eyes on the prize should be instructed as to what noticeable issues you are willing to accept and what would be unacceptable, so that you don’t get into the cost of inspections on stuff you are going to walk away from.

I agree with @Wayne Brooks. I will add that ungrounded receptacles should be visible to any person since they will be two pronged instead of three; you might not get the seller to budge any on that issue unless they had three pronged receptacles that lacked a ground, which would be a code violation.