All Forum Posts by: William Hochstedler

This article is pretty editorialized, but it shows the continuing issues surrounding emotional support animals.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/po...

I very much agree.  I would add, that in all my years of PM, we never had a tenant try to waive the pet rent or deposit for a comfort animal in a pet friendly rental.  But we have had to accommodate lots of them in units that don't allow pets.

So if there's a chance you might have an animal in there anyway, you might as well have some say in it and get compensated.

Ogden has blown up just like everywhere else in Utah.  That $50K piece of junk that @John Hill mentioned 5 years ago now sells for $150K.  Still a lot of deferred maintenance.  But the owner occupants with real jobs are moving in.  I'm still bullish...

@Brad Kroepfl

Some of the items you are looking for are court records and some are property (land) records.  They live in different places.  All of them are available at either your county recorder or at the courthouse.  I would suggest that by the time a bankruptcy, divorce, or lis pendens has a public record it's too late.

For pre-foreclosure, you will be looking for notices of default which formally starts the foreclosure process.  These records are recorded against title in respective county's recorders offices.  Certain counties have free online access and are searchable by instrument.  But this varies county to county.

You should look at paid aggregators that subscribe to all of these sources and aggregate the data into filterable lists.  ListSource is one of the big ones.  But I'm sure there are others.

If you're serious about starting a marketing campaign targeting motivated sellers, I'd recommend going to one of the REIA's (UtahREIA, SLREIA or UVREIA). They have a lot of resources for wholesalers who have been marketing this type of seller for years and have lots of ways to target them. You might also get a sense of what your competition is doing so you have a competitive edge.

The trick to this is to get on title either with a private money loan or seller financing.  Then season title and refinance based on appraisal.  All lenders do this but have different criteria.

All banks lend on the lower of the purchase price or appraisal.  If your purchase price is above appraisal, there have been programs that lend x% above appraisal to accommodate a higher purchase price.  But I haven't seen one of those in a while.

If you are trying to get a better LTV (and loan) based on buying something below appraisal, the strategy for doing this is the BRRRR method that is talked about here a lot. Here's the BP Guide on how to do it.

@Corby Goade Thanks for that link to the HUD guidelines. I wasn't aware that that was even a thing.

From what I hear, it's only a matter of time before IREC starts requiring PM's to have licenses.

The real problem is that it's really appealing politically to beat up landlords.  Communities hate deadbeat tenants and think that all landlords have no regard for anything but the mighty dollar at the expense of habitability and property upkeep.  The voting public doesn't understand that that's bad management, not a business model.  ....so they try to regulate.

Our only defense is to be part of the discussion and educate these legislators of the role of landlords: to provide housing for their constituents!  Thank you @Brian Stutzman and all you other engaged Idaho landlords for helping these politicians understand that we are providing a service at least as valuable to their communities as any other small businesses.

There's rent assistance in Utah.  Get your tenant signed up ASAP.

https://rentrelief.utah.gov/

These are questions for your lender.  She will have to be on both the loan and title to the property.  She will have to occupy it for a minimum of one year.

Welcome to BP!

They've already done the work for you.  Start here:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

You are using an abbreviation MIL for Mother-in-law.  This is the name for houses containing separate living quarters intended for a family member to live in.  To my knowledge, there is no jurisdiction in Utah that prohibits your live-in mother-in-law from having her own refrigerator, bathroom, and separate entrance.

That being said, the configuration you are exploring is called an accessory dwelling unit (ADU). An ADU is a separate living space in an owner occupied home that may be rented to unrelated tenants. It sounds like Clearfield does not allow this.

You will want to look at the occupancy laws and how the municipality defines a unit.  Some cities define a separate unit as one that has no communication with the other unit.  This can be solved with a door!  Others prohibit occupancy by more than a certain number (usually 3) unrelated adults.  So if you're just one or two persons and are intending to rent to a single person, you may not be in violation of any occupancy laws.

Finally, with the intense housing crunch that we're experiencing, it's only a matter of time before most cities adopt some sort of ADU provisions. City council members are so gun shy when it comes to adding more housing for renters that they find even this too politically risky and have been dragging their feet. Look at your demographics and voting maps. If you're looking in a neighborhood with an older community and high voter turn-out, your neighbors are probably the reason that ADU's haven't been adopted in Clearfield yet.

If the deal makes sense and you can afford it without tenant income, I'd say go for it. They've admitted that they are complaint driven. Utah is pushing for this at the state level. Places like Seattle are advocating and incentivizing the establishment of them. It's going to make less and less sense for cities to have hard lines against ADU's for much longer particularly in certain districts of many cities.