All Forum Posts by: Troy Gandee

@Eli Fazzo The 6% rate is a bit of a misnomer. That's the starting rate and then there are millage rates that bring it down to the actual tax rate. The 4% and 6% rates are just the names given to differentiate commercial and owner-occupied.

The 6% rate is obviously significantly high, but it's fairly average nationally. It would likely be comparable to what you pay in the NE.

Just google "Lexington County tax estimator" or whatever county you're interested in and you'll usually find a web tool from the County you can use to estimate the tax bill based on the previous year's assessments.

There is also a law called the ATI tax exemption that can potentially lower than 6% rate by 25%. Just look that up. There are conditions that must be met.

Also, I believe the taxes are higher in Richland County than Lexington County, but I don't like there, so I don't have personal experience with that. I've just heard that from many people over the years.

In general, SC is experiencing an economic renaissance, so it is a good time to invest here. 

@Mark Hamilton Feel free to check out REI Central. We have the most activity and most frequent groups (1 main meetup and 3 subgroups each month). Our annual pass is stupid cheap for what we offer.

I will say that while we do have a whole lot of sub2 investors that attend these groups, we don't put an emphasis on that strategy. It's a pretty murky niche and everyone does it a little differently, so we don't want to give platform to anyone that may give risky advice. There's a glut of sub2 education/information out there these days, so you certainly won't lack in that regard.

Some of our members have done hundreds of them without issue, so just seek those people out at the meetings and talk to them.

Hi @Constantinos Zavos. @Patrick Roberts is correct. ATI is only applicable for 6% (commercial properties). If this is a primary residence, it does not apply. That's mostly because we already get the 4% residence tax rate for your primary residence, which is a very low tax rate.

As long as what you purchased is commercial, you can apply for it. The exemption is either the previous assessment amount or 25% less of the new assessed value, whichever is higher. It's not really worth doing if you don't have enough of an assessment difference to actually get a 25% reduction. A lot of properties don't enough spread to even meet that minimum, so it just ends up being the new assessment ratio.

It's actually really easy to fill out the application and submit, but they will not respond and tell you whether or not it's been approved. You basically don't know until you get the bill. Bills are already out for the year, so it may be difficult to get them to adjust it for this cycle. The bill is due in about 45 days.

I'm not sure what county you're in, but here's a link to Charleston County's form. I have also heard that they will not take these retroactively for the previous year, but it's still pretty vague.

https://www.charlestoncounty.org/files/forms/tax/ATI-Exempti...

@Kyle McShea Like @Sarah Kozlik said, you should definitely join us at REI Central if you plan to get more involved in the investing space. We meet monthly and have 3 sub-group meetings the rest of the month for our annual members.

@Jacob D Adamczak has helped a lot of people purchase house hacks. He's a fountain of knowledge with this strategy if you need more assistance.

This could be the case in some market, but as other have mentioned, certain markets are experiencing the opposite. I'm in Charleston and our market has hardly slowed despite rates. Our inventory is low. It has been too low even prior to covid. We have about 1/2 the homes on market we should have. It's legitimately a supply and demand issue. 

I've been hearing about this impending "crash" for about 5 years now. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it. 

@Chris Seveney Correct. An attorney who is on the board with the REC was in the room during most of these conversations. His name is Gary Pickren. He recused himself in many conversations/votes because he closes a lot of these types of deals, but he was there for the conversations. It's not a mystery that the intention was to essentially stop wholesaling. The legislators wrote this bill in a way to cut it off at multiple angles. You can still use the legal instrument of an assignment of contract, but not as a wide spread business practice. These closing attorneys do not want to be accessory to what the REC would consider unlawful practices. They're not willing to face the SC Supreme Court and put their law licenses on the line over these deals.

You can find Gary talking about this in a couple of different videos now. He's been meeting with different REI groups and explaining this bill.

@Vinny Patel You can read it however you want, but every single closing attorney I've spoken to in the Charleston market will no longer be closing assignments or double closings, so it is effectively done. The intention of the REC was to stop the practice of wholesaling as we know it.

@Account Closed They're adopting the definition from the new bill. Basically, any use of public marketing to secure the end buyer is what the law defines as "wholesaling". The attorneys wouldn't really be able to prove whether or not these deals came to fruition through public marketing or not, so they're just going to avoid them. The "public marketing" of these will probably be triggered the minute someone mentions an off-market property for assignment, whether that's online, email, phone call, etc. At least, that's how NAR treats it with the Clear Cooperation rules they put in place a couple of years ago. The second the property is mentioned in any capacity, it has been publicly marketed.

We had a Zoom call this week with a couple of the heavy hitting closing attorneys in SC. They both said they will not be closing "wholesale deals" any longer. I've reached out to 2 others who say they also will not close them and have heard through the grapevine of a few more who will not be closing them. I've only heard rumor of 1 attorney in Charleston that will still handle those deals and I'm very doubtful they will do it for long. 

@Edward Eustace Contact Weeks & Irvine or Florence Law Firm and ask them to assist with the documents. Those are the 2 firms I use regularly. The standard contract that all attorneys in the state recognize is called the SCAR 301 Agreement to Purchase. I believe you can Google that, but you may as well just have the attorneys assist with the drafting. Either of them can do a remote or mail closing for you. It's much easier to close remote as the seller than the buyer.