All Forum Posts by: Chris Martin

Glad I refreshed before posting. I agree with both prior posters. @Chris Seveney post was more succinct than mine.  

Anecdotally, the last rental (LTR) I sold was to an OO, Owner Occupant. Of the 50+ showings, no investors (there were maybe 2-3 at most) were interested. The numbers only appeal to OO, and for sure affordability is key. For the NOO "motivated buyers," some of them buying other people's properties in this market, will end up like the 2006-7 "FOMO investment" buyers who lost their property at the courthouse steps in 2010-12. 

I post this because, in my area, the numbers just don't work, and worse, rents are under increasing pricing pressure. Even unleveraged, 4-week T-bills have better return in most cases. So (directed at motivated buyers) be patient. Keep in mind, I'm a long-term rental operator and hold (typically) for a generation or more. I operate in a pretty solid market but remain on the sidelines, as I have for a while. 

Interestingly, to me at least, the 4-week T-bills didn't fall much in the last week or so while longer-term bills did.

(Chart goes right to left chronologically.)

This post is attempting to be constructive criticism. 

From your post, I don't see a well-defined problem. You're attempting to find a solution but haven't articulated the details of the problem. Regarding your comment "But here's the thing: I'm not an expert. I don't know what I'm doing." It's a tough ask for software productivity tools when the "spec" (or "problem statement") isn't well defined. 

I've built plenty of software tools for my own investment use. An example problem statement that I may have stated (and built the software for) in 2003, when I started investing full time: Build a tool for lead generation that collects county records from the county recorder's office (and property card data), finds the recent first mortgage defaults  from trustees websites or public filings for properties that are between 1000 and 1700 square feet, in a neighborhood of 90% like-kind properties with greater than 20 parcels, houses built after 1978, that can cash flow at current rates when fully leveraged. 

BTW, I am not a real estate agent so can't help you with agent-related stuff. 

My point is you need a well-defined problem statement. 

NC is a trustee state, so a mortgage default will trigger the "power of sale" process as spelled out in the recorded Deed of Trust. The legal details are in Article 2A, Sales Under Power of Sale in the NC General Statutes Chapter 45, Mortgages and Deeds of Trust. 

The earliest recorded legal action on a mortgage default is the substitute trustee filing. That is the document you will want to find in a county register of deeds search. The clerk's office will have a case file in their Special Proceeding office that corresponds to the Document Number on the substitute trustee filing. 

The S-TR filings, today, are sparce enough that you can process them by hand. When I was active at the courthouse steps, there were literally 50x the cases filed now in 2024. Back then I used an online service to filter my target areas. For example, @Dan Gabrielli has a good ePreforeclosure service for a number of NC counties. 

Tax foreclosures are a different beast. I've never bought a tax foreclosure and can't speak about that process. 

In today's market, with low foreclosure discount compared to past buyer's markets and a lot of "motivated buyers", the risk/reward ratio keeps me far away from the courthouse steps. 

Hope that helps.

Check with your local HA. Not all participate. Click on the HCV Homeownership Dashboard on the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) homeownership program to see how many participants there are in the Austin Housing Authority. Hint: it is 0, just like Raleigh. 

In the US, the blockchain represents a solution for a problem that does not exist. The blockchain technology has been around for a decade or more. As far as I know, no state legislature (via statutory action) or county recorder of deeds, in the US, has adopted blockchain as the "solution" for their chain of title. Let me know if I am wrong. 

County recorded documents are necessary and sufficient, IMO, and until blockchain technology can show a better, faster, cheaper alternative, it is a non-starter. 

I'm not anti-technology. But each technology needs to show why it should and will be adapted, just like wind and solar have, along with ESS (energy storage systems), in the US market. 

This is a US market centric post. Venezuela may think differently. 

The options contracts I've done in NC (only 4 or 5, me as seller, all post-GR) set the 'contract price' and terms. The option contract defines a "consideration" (money) paid to owner for the buyer's right to purchase per the terms of all the 9 items in the link I provided, including #7, the length of option time period. 

A "First Right of Refusal" is different and something I've not experienced, as buyer or seller. You might want to look at this NAR document: Right of First Refusal: A Guide for Real Estate Agents

Related: VIRGINIA TAKES FARM LAND | Local Government Condemns Farm Land for BIG TECH

I didn't realize the volume of water required for cooling of these data centers. 

The question becomes: is building of an Amazon or Meta data center, which is for enhancing the growth and profitability of an individual company, in the public interest? VA Code § 36-27. Eminent domain

I've only purchased foreclosures in NC, via trustee sales. It looks like the process in Miami-Dade County (MDC) is quite different, with apparently judicial foreclosures being the predominant method for power of sale enforcement. I would put every MDC Clerk of Court sales record (date, case number, address/PID, opening bid, winning bid, AV, etc.) into a spreadsheet, along with the names of the 3rd party bidders. (An Example, on 7/16/2024.) You will find out the answers to some of your questions. You will also get your finger on the pulse of the foreclosure market. 

In NC, and maybe where you are, foreclosures are 90% legal... and the other half has to do with property. I stand by the concepts in my 5/27/2020 post on this BP topic, Buying auction properties in Wake County, NC, that people serious about buying foreclosures should take a few law classes or at least know every detail in their state statutes regarding the process. 

Regarding "The comment that @Greg Scott made is intriguing, because his experience is that those two units make a big difference in how the deal is done, from the business plan onward." Well, yes, completely from a financing perspective. Look at any of your SFR loan documents. They are 1-4 family residential, government subsidized (through Fannie Mae) loans. All the apartments I bought were financed/refinanced through commercial lenders because they were >4 units. Yes, Fannie Mae does have a multi-family lending arm, starting at a lower limit of $1M for 80% LTV. But I dealt in cheap properties and in mid-2010s, couldn't pencil a $1M loan for an 18-plex. Today, I probably could.

Financing a 6-plex is a PITA. That's why there aren't many, compared to 4-plexes and duplexes.