All Forum Posts by: Tom C

If it is actually trusses and not stick built, have you considered not taking off the roof and cutting the nails on each truss and raising it with jacks? You would need to make sure that you raise all 4 corners at the same time, but this is something that I would consider doing before even looking at taking a perfectly fine roof off. Not sure what part of the country you are in, but you may have to contend with straps too if you are in the south. Or another option is to open the ceiling up.

Thanks I found them at Home Depot.. Sure beats spending an hour per windows replacing that cord.

Thanks

Has anyone ever heard of something called Butterfly? It is used to fix windows with broken sash cords. I have several of them and appearently instead of replacing the cords, you can use something called a Butterfly. I have searched the net and cannot find anything about them.

Thanks

That really sucks. Sorry to hear that. I'd start praying for a fire or some other freak accident that could distroy the place.

You could possibly be thinking about a tax sale. Some people have gotten into this business. Basically they purchase a home or property that is far behind in taxes, then they let it go to a sale rolling the dice that it will bring more at the sale then what is owed on it. They then get notified about the surpluse and they go and get their check.

My wife and I were talking about this the other night. Both our grand parents rented all their lives and raised our parents in those homes. One set of grand parents rented one side of an old duplex in Shaker Heights near Cleveland and they lived there until they died. My other grandparents did the same in a small town. They raised their kids in these homes and treated the property like they owned it. It never occurred to us as kids that our grand parents did not own the home they lived in all their lives. Our grand fathers had work shops in the basements and our grandmothers planted flowers in the front yard. They were perfectly capable of getting loans to purchase a house, but maybe their generation just felt more comfortable with renting. I can't answer that, because they are all dead now, but I can say I don't believe that all renters are people with bad credit and like to party; perhaps that was just a different generation and we just don't find people like this any more.

Sorry I missed that part. It sounds like the same type of properties that look for. If you can get it for 12 and only dump another 10 to 12 into it I would say its a good one. I am sure Mike will come along soon enough to straighten us both out. :) I do think that you will find a much higher rate on a HELOC though.

From my experince which isn't a whole lot, as long as you have a preapproval letter earnest money should never be a requirement, unless you are buying from HUD, then 500 to 1000 is required down when you bid is submitted.

I'd give the preapproval letter, a five dollar bill and a signed contract.

"32K at 7% is $213/month which still allows about $150/month cash flow"

You are not counting Taxes and Insurance or other operating expense in your numbers. Also does each unit have its own furnace, water heater and meters? If not then you are going to also get stuck with paying utilities unless you convert. As far as getting a loan on this, that is going to be difficult unless you pull money from something else.

Rents= 725.00 / 2 = 362
PITI = 330.00

Cash flow = $32

If you pay any utilities you are hosed and don't forget your holding cost. I wouldn't do the deal if you have to finance 32K to make it rentable. The most I would pay is 20 total and that's if the renters pay all utilities.

I looked at a duplex the other night in the hood. As I was walking around the place a gangster walked up to me and asked if I was going to buy the place. I told him that I was thinking about it. He said to me "Can you please paint it a different color, it makes my auntie's house look bad" Now all around this place houses are boarded up or burnt out and he was worried about the color of this place. So even if its in the hood, a few still care about their neighborhoods.

Another point that I want to make about buying these low income properties that I am finding is that most of these properties haven't had one lick of work done to them since the current scam lord purchased them years ago. All they did was suck the money out of them and they are in horrible condition. This duplex had current renters and the one lady in the downstairs unit made a playroom in the basement for her grandchildren. The basements walls were covered with black mold and she was trying to clean it up with stuff that she bought at the Dollar Store. Everything in her 2 Brm needed updating and she was paying 375.00 a month. It's criminal what these scam lords have done in some of these neighborhoods.

A recent problem that I have ran into is Sec 8. We did a recent rehab project on a HUD and a tenant comes along. A single working father of 4 kids. He is on Sec 8. His youngest kid is 4 years old. This house has an old garage out back that I wasn't intending on making it usable for the tenants. It needed a paint job real bad, but I didn't want to get into it right away. When I talked to the Section 8 inspector and even though the garage wasn't part of the lease, we still couldn't have any flaking paint. So I had to scrape and repaint the garage. Then she found a cracked window pane 6" x 6" in the front door, that either needed to be replaced or silicone. All of the new 3 pronged outlets that I just put in had to pass the ground test. Most did not because they are not grounded. I had to go back and replace with 2 prong, because I couldn't get the ground to work on the box. All paint flakes on the ground, either had to be picked up or covered up with mulch. Absolutely no slow drains during inspection. I had a list of little items that I was going to take care of before the renter moved in, nope, those items had to be taken care of before the inspector would pass the property.

Granted all of these required fixes did not cost much, but the time was incredible and we never accounted for it. Now we are scrambling at the last minute to get every little thing done so I can get him in there by Aug 1st.

So when you are evaluating these low income properties, keep in mind all of the little things that its going to take to make it rentable for Section 8 and little kids. This even includes windows that stay up by themselves. A stick in the window will not cut it and inspection time.