All Forum Posts by: Timothy A.

Thank you all for your expert guidance. She has been a good tenant the previous year but has suffered a recent job loss. She has assured me rent will be brought current with her new employment, but I am skeptical there is enough time.

I will be restarting the process with a new 3 day notice and setting expectations for full payment by next week. Feb is right around the corner though, so I suspect I will have to initiate this process once more. 

@Mike Bryant - Thanks for the advice. It sounds like the partial payment amount is the determining factor of whether or not to start over. This makes sense. The $4500 due is for both Dec and Jan rent. My mistake for not starting the eviction process earlier as she promised to make payment. Lesson learned. 

@Deena Jones - I believe the dispossessory process provides the tenant 7 days to respond to the official eviction notice, but the GA landlord tenant handbook doesn't mention any specific time requirements for the "pay or quit notice." I gave a written 3 day notice to pay or quit prior to filing the official dispossessory with the court. 

If I decide to restart the process, am I able to request/collect payment of the court fees for the original eviction? I assume not given it would be my choice to stop proceedings, but I would like to confirm. Thanks again everyone. 

Hi team, 

I could use some eviction advice. Tenant in Georgia owes $4500 of late rent. 3 day notice is passed and I filed the dispossessory with the court. She has since deposited $2k directly into my bank account and promised to pay the rest by month end. I know accepting partial payment essentially means I have to start the eviction process over. But she deposited the funds directly into my bank. I would have refused otherwise as I would only accept full payment. 

Do I give this money back somehow in order for the current eviction to proceed? Do I demand the rest before the 7 days are up? Should I keep the $2k and start a new eviction? If so, she'll probably deposit partial funds again and I'm back at square one. Thoughts? 

Hello everyone!

I could use some help on my first FSBO opportunity. I was contacted by a seller who has a property in southern california who wants to get rid of the house quick. It's originally a 4bed/2ba but at some point had the garage converted into a studio space with it's own address. I'm not sure if this was a permitted change, but I assume so if it has it's own address. Both are currently used as rentals.

Comps are around the $130-140k range. The house as a 1st mortgage of $65k and 2nd mortgage of $15k to the previous owner. His initial asking price is $50k to get rid of the property. I'm not sure if he means he wants $50k on top of the money needed to close out the other mortgages, or if he just wants $50k total to close the deal. I'll ask him tomorrow during my walkthrough of the property. 

As it's my first FSBO deal, I'm not sure what steps are needed to close given the 2 mortgages in place. Do I need to pay out these mortgages myself upon closing? Do I need to contact each mortgager and have them inside the initial contract? Or is the seller responsible for this? Thanks for the guidance!

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to give a quick update on my situation. I ended up finding a home inspector for the property and the strangest thing happened. He calls me up a couple days before the scheduled inspection and tells me he's been to this house before. He completed a partial inspection 2 months prior, identified significant issues including a failing foundation, at which time the buyers walked away from the deal. Mortar between the blocks were turning into sand and he could see light through many of them. 70% failure was his estimate and said a repairs would likely be at least $50k ballpark. I was shocked. One, at the fact that I was even considering NOT getting an inspection, and two, that out of the hundreds of home inspectors in my area, I find the one that's actually been to the same property. He gave me the heads up, and didn't charge me a dime. A true stand up guy.

What bothers me the most is that the sellers and the listing agent received a copy of the original inspection report 2 months ago and they intentionally withheld this info from me! I received signed disclosures from the sellers and nothing about the foundation was noted. If not criminal, this is completely unethical and downright deceitful. It is clear that their intention was to offload the problem house to an unsuspecting homebuyer with an inexperienced inspector who would then close the deal. Not only would it have been a financial disaster, it would have been a huge safety concern for my family if not identified at all.

When approached with our findings, the listing agent denied knowing anything about a foundation issue. He said we're more than welcome to re-negotiate if we wanted to, but then added there are other all cash offers on the table. I was steamed. It's sad to know that there are sellers and even agents like this who exist and still do business. No way am I going to support such business practices and I do not plan to continue dealing with these scumbags. As such, I'm in the process of backing out of the deal.

So in conclusion, I am now officially a believer in always getting an inspection. My FIL is no foundation expert and missed a huge problem. Also, I really don't know how wide spread this type of behavior is in the real estate business, but what the sellers and the listing agent tried to do was outright disgusting and really discredits the whole profession. I do pray this is not common place in the field.

Big thanks to everyone and the awesome advice! This really does make the decision clear and I am going to book the inspector for next week. I already talked to a few and the good ones are in the $400-450 range and said they would spend between 3 to 5 hours on the house given the age and size. Already sounds like a more thorough job than the FIL would do.

@Jean Bolger - Yes, the fiance and I were able to compromise, lol. She wanted to live in an old vintage home with lots of character and I wanted investment property. So we found this charmer and it's the best of both worlds :)

Would you folks recommend my father-in-law be there during the home inspection? Or should I just review the report with him afterwards? I feel it would be most beneficial if he was there taking in all of the info, but I'm just wondering if he'd be annoyed at the 5 hour inspection process, especially after he gave me his opinion. Thoughts are much appreciated!

Hi everyone!

I just opened escrow on my first property! It's a 3 unit, single building home and I am super excited about it. It's an old 1910 California craftsman style home with 2700 sqft in a historic neighborhood. It was previously used solely for rentals, but I plan to live in the downstairs unit and will rent out the 2 upstairs units. Unfortunately, this property needs a lot of work. It's in pretty bad shape cosmetically and my father-in-law (general contractor) estimated ~$50k-$60k in repairs from his quick walk through of the house (mainly cost of materials since he's family).

My question is, would it still be a good idea to get a home inspection performed? My father-in-law seems to think it's a waste of money since we'll be doing extensive renovations to the home anyway. But I figure a professional home inspector going through every facet of the house may catch some things that my father-in-law wouldn't have caught upon his initial walk through. Any particular thoughts on the matter?

Thanks for all the responses! I have spoke to her and she really wants the nice family house, but will settle if I really want to go with option 2. I have looked at many multi family properties, but given my budget in socal, they are far from the dream house that my fiance wants. So I would have to settle for a run down 4 plex in a shady area, or get a nice single family in a nice area to raise a family. As a compromise, I am also looking for a single family residence with a detached mother-in-law unit in the back that might help with the mortgage. This is all still considered as option 1, where I won't be able to jump around every 6 months to acquire new properties at 5 percent for owner occupied.

Hi BP!

I have a decision to make and could use some advice from the community. I am getting married this year and my fiance wants us to buy a nice home to start our family in here in socal. But I also want to start my buy and hold business ASAP. Here's what I believe my options are:

1. If we buy our dream home, it will be owner occupied at probably 5% down, then I'd look to buy 3 more small investment properties over the next year using 20-25% down on each. This way wife will be happy and we will have gotten our dream home while the market is still low, but then I can't pick up investment properties using owner occupied rates and low down payments.

2. If we don't buy our dream home, I can buy a cheap starter home @ 5% down owner occupied, and then upgrade/buy an additional property @ 5% down every 6 months (and move-in of course), and so on until I get to 4 properties. This way I can pick up properties with low down payments, but we will need to move frequently which upsets the wife. And when it comes time to buy our dream home, it'll be at a higher market price than today.

Any advice on how I should proceed? I feel like option 1 would be great for the family, but limit my investment possibilities. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi all!

I have a quick question. As many socal folks know, hedgefunds such as Blackstone have stopped being so active because the numbers no longer work. My buddy who was working there just quit because his transactions went from 5-6 purchases a day to maybe 1 per week. With this change, I would imagine that inventory should start to increase again, and folks will no longer be competing with hedgefunds for listings. Would this indicate a slower pace of appreciation than we've seen in the past year or so? Can we still expect to see property prices rising so quickly? Or do we expect to see prices start to drop now that the big guy just left? Any thoughts?