All Forum Posts by: Paul Granneman

I received an invite to attend an REI meet-up in Colorado Springs. The name of the group is ICOR - Investment Community of the Rockies.

Just soliciting feedback from any BP members who may have information on these meet-ups.  Is it worth my time to attend or is it all sales and motivation?

Thanks,

Paul Granneman

From reading these posts and my own observations it seems that allowing pets is going to get you a larger pool of tenants to choose from and possibly a longer term one as well.
I think vetting the pet and owner interaction is another great idea. We always charge a pet deposit and make it according to the results of our interview with owner and pet. You can get a general vibe of who is going to be a better tenant and pet owner.

I just bought a house last week. I was concerned about the same things. My realtor said that I could change the utilities any time since we had an accepted offer. It was about four days ahead of closing and I went ahead and did it no problems.

I am inclined to believe much the same way as @J V. Most of what you would want an LLC to protect you from, it will not. The things that it will protect you from are so remote most of the time that you have to balance risk vs reward.

Most people here are imagining that an LLC provides this teflon coating against money seekers in every shape and form. If you look at the history of the typical Real Estate based LLC, you will see that it is not very effective at sheltering the owner from litigation of this type.

Your best course of action DJ is to do exactly as you are: sit down and talk with everyone in your group and then consult several professionals as to available courses of action. Good Lcuk!

One thing that has not been addressed in the comments so far is the fact that you said that you have or will form a "partnership" with your wife, her cousin and his wife.

If that is what you are planning, then at the same time you form your partnership and the agreement to run it you can get advice whether or not to form an LLC also or to incorporate, etc. from the same person who is forming your partnership agreement.

Haha - looks like I was one post too slow.

Henry,

Have you tried obtaining your credit score?  You should know what your credit report says, even if it says nothing.  The Credit Reporting Bureaus are not known for their accuracy or fairness.  You might in-fact have a credit history that you know nothing about because someone else used it.

If you are a member of a local Credit Union, go through them to obtain a copy of your credit report.  It should be free.  Since you do not have any credit cards you cannot check your report on-line.

I was in the same situation. I had several large"ish" 401k's from different companies that were performing only in a mediocre manner. For a long time I just let them ride. Then like you, I received the notice that several of my 401k's took a huge nose dive. At that point I decided to educate myself on the ins and outs of 401k's. For me the most logical step was to roll-over the ones that I could into a 401k that I had more control over and that had more depth and breadth of investment selections than just the standard mutual funds and bond funds. That is what I did. I rolled them all into a Schwab One account and then was able to choose what I wanted to invest in. For me the biggest worry was losing the company stock that I had built up over the years. Most of the things that I had learned said that if I do a roll over that I have to sell the company stock and that would not be a good thing for me. The guys at Schwab arranged to transfer all of the company stock into my new 401k for me, which I was pleasantly surprised about. I also had several other "personal" IRA's (both traditional and Roth) just sitting around. I am in the process of rolling all of those into a Self-Directed IRA for use in Real Estate investing. I will keep my Schwab 401k because I enjoy the investment aspect and since directing my own portfolio I have done much better as far as returns go than the old systems.
Here are two of my favorite Warren Buffet quotes:
“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.”
“Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.”
If you talk to financial planners, they will tell you to diversify as a way to “not lose money”. That is just faulty reasoning from my perspective. You (Dawn) seem to know quite a bit about Real Estate and investing. I would encourage you to concentrate on that and not worry about diversification.

I just bought a property in Colorado Springs. My inspector did a Radon test and the results came back slightly higher than the "acceptable" limit. There was no Radon mitigation system in place. I learned all I could about Radon and asked the seller to pay for half of the Radon mitigation system. My son will be living there full time and I want to know that he is living in a safe environment.

Ron has it correct. If the issue comes up, make sure potential buyers are educated on the risks and mitigation. It was not a show stopper for me once I had all the facts.

Sounds like the perfect bureaucratic storm. One company buys the condemned trailers and overhauls them and then sells them to a wholesaler who knows about the damange and they turnaround and sell them to retailers and fail to disclose the flood issue and the consumers are hung out to dry because they are never told.

You know the saying... If it sounds to good to be true - BEWARE.