All Forum Posts by: Troy Gandee

Hi @Ken Miller. I wish you the best of luck with the move. The Charleston is a great market. It's very competitive at the moment, but it's growing quite quickly, which is creating a lot of new opportunities. I'm a Realtor and investor in the area. I would be more than happy to help you find something that would fit your needs. Live in flips and house hacking are great ways to get rolling. 

Hi @Jeffrey Salacinski. I would also recommend reaching out to @Russ Scheider. @Jay Hinrichs is also very active in our market and knows most of us at this point. I'm a Realtor and investor in the area. I would be more than happy to help you with any properties that are on the market. @Russ Scheider has a talent for facilitating off market properties that may fit your needs. 

Hey @Joe Nolan. @Josh Caldwell is right to say that you should visit a REIA if you're looking for a mentor. Keep in mind that many of the folks are REAIs are newer investors and may be looking for the same thing. Find some way to differentiate yourself and always try to provide value to the mentor. You'd be shocked at how many people ask for hep and never offer any in return. It's nice to see people come straight out and offer help.

I agree with what all of these other folks are saying. I will reduce my rate some if the rehabber is doing a lot of volume and they understand the process because that means less explaining and ushering for me. 

That's where my rentals are located. The neighborhood isn't as bad as it seems, but you will need someone who is a little brave to hang in there. I would be interested for sure, but I'm a little tapped at the moment. @Russ Scheider and his partner are a great resource if you're trying to sell anything in that area. They've gotten very familiar with those areas.

We are an attorney state. There aren't a ton of attorneys that are very comfortable doing assignments over double closings.  I would go ahead and call around to start asking some folks if they're comfortable doing assignments. Most of the larger firms are familiar with them and don't mind.

This is something I face all the time with distressed properties for rehabs. I just had to drop one last week that looked like a great deal. The seller had bought the property in '06. Then they re-recorded the mortgage with his daughter as a co-borrower and he transferred half the ownership rights to her. She moved away. The owner then filed forbearance and never got caught up entirely. All the while, he was falling behind on taxes. He dies in '14. The daughter decides to sell the property and assumed that she now had 100% of the title. Unfortunately, they never set up an estate, so the remainder of the property had not made it to her. To make things harder, the foreclosure was still pending and the tax liens were still present. Plus, the daughter had her own tax liens and there were a few other private liens that may have been hers (though, it may have been the wrong person, but we never got that far). This was a property that was listed by a Realtor and even mentioned the foreclosure under the title issues section of the PCDS. Because of the nature of these sellers and circumstances with distressed properties, it's pretty safe to assume that there's something funky going on and just let your attorney or title company (attorney here) do their job. That's my thought, at least. I will search through tax documents and mortgage/title docs to try to find chain of title, as well as liens, but that's about as far as I want to go. Both @Peter Vekselman and @Jay Hinrichs are far more experienced than I and probably have a lock on a lot of this, but Jay is right that it's tough here in the South. A lot of these properties have been recorded (to varying success) for a really long time and a lot of things go sideways after enough time.

I completely agree that house hacking is probably your best bet. It will also help you to learn how to manage properties, deal with tenants and routine maintenance. I lived in my first two rentals and fixed them as I went. Then I moved out and got them rented. That's really one of the best ways for a younger investor without much income or any other assets to get started.

Hi @David Buckley. I'm also a Realtor and investor in the area. FHAs can be a touchy loan. I have a preferred lender at Prospect Mortgage in Mount Pleasant that has a great track record with FHAs. She's helped me close a few. Shoot me a DM and I'll send you her info. 

I've used TurboTenant and like it. It's free for the landlord. Their hope is that you make it part of the application process for your tenants and they end up paying for it. Most of the results are going to be public knowledge or pretty easy information to access, so the results will usually be very close. There are some providers that will only charge you a monthly fee and you can pull unlimited reports, but it's not worth it if you only have a few properties.