All Forum Posts by: Traci Lovelace

I realized that a personal project didn't belong on the investment board.  But, I am unable to delete the post.  

It is a wild world down here.  We are putting an addition on our house.  We pulled the permit and will be doing a lot of the work ourselves to hold down the costs, but hired a shell contractor to build the shell.  Because my background is in renovations, I was not familiar with that term and had many questions about what was and was not included.   After several months of back and forth we finally got a quote, very generic, on a piece of paper labeled "Estimate".  When I questioned this I was told that they didn't do contracts and that was their binding agreement to do the job.  Because this contractor has business relationships with our architect, and a large builder in the area, we went forward.  A check for 50% of the job was provided a month ago to "purchase materials".  That order was not placed until last week.  Additional expenses are popping up.    Site prep, surveyor, we even had to purchase our own doc box.  While in retrospect I can understand these things, they were not listed as additional expenses during the many many times I asked about the division of responsibility.  The contractor stated that they always told people to allow an additional 5%.  They did not mention this to us before taking our down payment and telling us their number was a binding agreement.  Now the contractor says that materials have gone up in costs and we are responsible for the delta.  This was not covered in the "estimate"/"Binding agreement".  Additionally, materials are not available and there will be more delays.   I have read that builders are including clauses in their contracts that allow them to pass on additional material costs, but we did not have this agreement.  Also, after receiving the deposit, the contractor has stated they are going to have a contract drawn up.  We are puzzled as to the timing of this and have told them that the contract should be materially the same as the information provided before payment of the down payment. 

There are so many buildings going up that it was difficult to find a shell contractor willing to take the job to begin with.  What would you do? 

Yes.  It is possible that he could claim adversarial possession if he has been using your property- I'm not an attorney so please do your own research.  This is what a quick google search revealed: 

In Michigan, possession must be actual, visible, open, notorious, exclusive, hostile, continuous, and uninterrupted for the statutory period of 15 years.

The laws in VA where I live are written the same way. Our house has a chain link fence running the property line that is actually 3 feet set back on my neighbor's property There are a variety of reasons for that, a huge tree, for one, but the point is the fence has been there for many years, effectively cutting the neighbor off from that portion of their property. That in itself is enough. Our neighbors are not difficult people so it's never really been an issue.

I hope the survey will help you get this settled.  Arguing with an attorney is generally a losing battle as they won't have the legal costs that you will.  Who knows, maybe they would be unable to prove the 15 year statue.  Good luck!

@Chris Masons- how did you do it? I'm facing a situation now where a corner of the house is 3 inches below the base flood elevation. The city stated I will have to raise the house 3 feet and fill in the basement. I don't care about the basement, but the cost to raise the house pushes this renovation to something the house will never sell for. (This requirement is because the renovation cost is more than 50% of the value of the building) The engineer I'm working with suggested that we add 4 inches of fill in that corner and fill in the basement and that will get the house out of the flood zone. In researching this I see the city will have to sign off on the application to FEMA for a LOMR-F revision. Did you run into any trouble with that?

Hi All,

This is our only rental property.  We have a tenant whose lease ends August 31st.  It is an annual lease and requires 60 days notice by the tenant if they aren't going to renew.  I reached out to them on July 3 (inside the 60 days) and asked if they wanted to renew the lease at the same terms.  They indicated yes.  Today I was contacted by someone looking for a reference for them as tenants.  We are 34 days from renewal.  I reached out to the tenant and asked what was going on and have not had a response.

The lease we used is Florida specific and actually contains sections of the state's landlord tenant act in it.  There is also a liquidated damages section that states the tenant can be liable for a maximum of 2 months rent if they breach the lease.  However, the state requires that I give notice : The statute requires the landlord provide notice to the tenant of the liquidated damages penalty, within 15 days before the notice period begins. And the landlord must list all fees, penalties and applicable charges in the notice, otherwise the landlord’s claim for liquidated
damages may be invalidated by the courts.

So it would appear that I did not hit that target.  Do I have any recourse at all?

There's not enough equity to pull what I need from the 2ndary residence and the cash out refi fees are prohibitive.  Margin loan it is.

So he advises me to do a margin loan if I don't want to do HELOC. I am going to see about a HELOC on a secondary residence since that seems to be the most popular suggestion.

Thank you for your input guys. 2 reasons not to use the Home equity LOC, 1: The investment required to renovate this property is in excess of the available funds. 2: I do not want to commingle personal and business funds. My husband has some personal items on the equity line, is a lazy bookkeeper and I don't have direct access to the account. Sorting out whose interest is what is more pain than I'm interested in.

So that aside, I honestly believe it would cost me less to liquidate some investments than use the bank loan.  I'm going to call my money guy now and see what he thinks.

I have a LLC owned house that I'm going to renovate and sell. I've been financing with an equity loan previously, we paid that off with the last sale and would prefer not to get into that again.

Our local bank is happy to lend the $150k at 5.5% interest only loan with a 12 month term.  I was happy with this until they pointed out that I'll have about 5k in closing costs. This includes a 1% origination fee, appraisal fee, flood certification, title services, title insurance and recording fees.  So the total cost to borrow the $ is $12,884.00 

Is this a reasonable offer to me?

Otherwise I have to liquidate some investments, which are earning more than 5.5% but I won't have the $5k in fees nor all this interest. 

I don't know what to do.  

What would you advise?

TIA

Just closed on a house in our neighborhood to renovate and sell.  Its waterfront, that is the big appeal. It was formerly owned by a hoarder and the basement, attic and garage are full of junk.  In addition, there's an abandoned john boat with a motor, and a separate large trailer for a substantial boat on the lot.  It has permanent trailer tags.

The seller was supposed to clear all personal property out prior to closing and we delayed for a week in order for them to do so.  However, they failed to take any action.  We got some cash back at closing instead, and a signed addendum that stated all personal property transferred to us at the time of sale.

My junk guy is going to do a cleanout, but we are thinking of selling the boat and trailer.  What do we need to do to get title? Anybody?