All Forum Posts by: Troy Gandee

@Christopher Smith Myself and my company specifically help investors. It's about 50% of our total production. The biggest advice I can give you is to BE AN INVESTOR. Too many agents try to jump on this investing bandwagon, but have no practical working knowledge of how any of it actually works. They may know the formulas and generics, but they've never had to evict a tenant or get a 3am phone call about the brand new HVAC system being stolen from a flip. Start investing yourself. That's the best way to prove to investor clients that you know what you're doing. 

Secondly, BP used to be a phenomenal place for getting yourself out there. IMO, it's become very watered down over the last few years. I just don't get the same value I used to out of the forums as an investor or service provider. There's much less activity than there once was. Something mechanically changed when the company was sold a couple of years ago. BP was doing a marketing package for vendors for a time, but the leads really trickled down. I just stopped getting them. I believe they overcrowded the market.

Otherwise, find your local REIAs and start plugging in. That's the best way to meet real investors in your market. They're not your out of state investors, but they're the real players in your space. Get to know them ASAP. It took me 3 or 4 years of investing myself to start to build a name as an expert. Now we're the primary investment focused brokerage in our market. We'll do about 250 side amongst 40 agents this year. Well over 100 of those would be investment properties.

@Jocelyn Canfield @Jeff Copeland is exactly right. The 6% commercial tax rate is the default rate. The 4% owner-occupied rate is an exception that the owner-occupant must apply for in order to be granted. It isn't a higher rate for the investor, but a lower rate for the owner-occupant. The 4% rate makes SC one of the cheapest in the country as far as property taxes are concerned. The 6% is frustrating, but it still lands us pretty low in the tax affordability category.

More importantly, taxes collected for the 6% rate are largely used to fund our schools, which need all the help they can get. Without the 6% rate properties, our education system would be even worse off than it already is.

I'm an investor and broker, so I welcome investments from out of state owners, but our metro areas have become borderline unaffordable for low-middle income residents. The 4% exemption does also help affordability for in-state residents more than most people realize.

@Letrae Hudgens It's a good market. It's firmly part of the greater Charleston metro area. It's a little North of the "city", but it's close to some good employers. There are a lot of Air Force and Naval personnel that live in that area due to the proximity to both the Charleston Joint AFB, the Naval Weapons Station and the Spawar facilities. It's a fairly mixed back of older, more suburban homes and quite a good number of newer construction homes now. Like everything else here, the prices have skyrocketed over the last couple of years, but it's generally a good market for buy and holds. Shoot me a message if you need help from an agent's perspective.

@Antonio Simmons Come to the REI Central meetups. There's on tonight, actually. 6-8pm at Palmetto Brewing Co downtown. We usually have up to 100 people in the room. Many of them are wholesalers and flippers.

@Joseph A Michel I'm not in that market, but I'm sure the REI Live folks have some referrals for you. That's a great meetup to attend, if you haven't yet.

@Leah Rapley It's probably too far away for you, but we have a strong meetup in Charleston. The group is called REI Central. We meet the 1st Thursday of every month.

I have never seen a property assessed higher than the sales price of any property in SC. Usually, the new point of sale value used by the County assessor is what's on the deed they receive to record when the property closes. From there on, the assessed value typically lags behind the fair market value. In SC, you can not be assessed more than a 15% increase YOY from the previous year's assessed value.

Also, the only distinction in tax rates are 4% (owner occupied homes) and 6% (commercial rate). The actual tax rate is not 4% or 6%. That's the starting value before millage and credits are applied. For commercial properties, the tax bill typically ends up around 1% of the sale price. That's a generic rule, but relatively close. The 6% rate applies to everything from a single family rental to an industrial warehouse. The county knows the difference because a homeowner must submit an application for the 4% rate in order to get it. That 4% rate is amongst the lowest property tax rate in the country. The 6% rate is roughly 2-3x the 4% rate, so it is a significant jump when you do not occupy the property.

You can also get a tax exemption to reduce the new tax bill by 25% if there's a significant enough increase in value from the previous assessed value and the new point of sale value. That law is called the ATI tax exemption. It's a little vague, but can be extremely helpful if you can qualify for it.

@Matt Hogge It's a recipe for disagreement with a residential property. It's just too complicated for most residential renters. Especially with 4 different parties to have to share the burden and come to an agreement if a repair is needed that affects more than 1 tenant.

I've done similar with lease option agreements, but that's a much different agreement. In that case, the tenant is more similar to a mortgagee than a tenant, so it works out better than a tenant being liable for the insurance, taxes, maintenance and repairs of the home.

@Carol Burns When they're abundant, you'll see them make it to the MLS. If you want a direct source, you'll have to forge some relationships with asset managers with the banks. However, there really aren't a lot of REOs at the moment. There have been shockingly few the last few years. We'll likely see a spike in them over the next few months given the economic climate, but I wouldn't focus on them specifically. There's no indication that there will be a surplus of them. We had an inordinate amount following the Great Recession, but it was not typical.

@Lauren Hutchinson Hi, Lauren! You should come to our next REI Central Meetup. We usually have close to 100 investors in the room the 1st Thursday of each month from 6-8pm at Palmetto Brewing Co Downtown. Plenty of people in that room are doing deals with creative financing.