All Forum Posts by: Xavier Y.

Thanks for the bump @Jaren Barnes!

@Lee Smith & @Shara Carlton, what I would like to do is get some of those details before I sign the contract with the seller and have the title company pull title. Can you request the title company to pull title for a property you have not purchased? I've never actually done that.

Thank you @Mark Ainley! That was very helpful. I spoke with sellers and they are confused as the status of the property. They said they went to court and had an extension for a second court date in which they paid a fine. That is as far as they know. They are unsure as to whether the city is still continuing with the demolition (they haven't heard anything or received any notice since Dec 2013, when they paid the fine). I'm assuming that the case is closed and done with after the paid fine, but I would like to make sure because the sellers don;t even know.

@Ray Wicker, thanks for the very helpful links. I will look into them. I did check the property for liens and who's on the deed. I also went to the treasurers website for taxes and the building violations website. I would like to speak with someone from the city that could look at the property's actual citations/records and tell me that it's not pending a demolition and the citations/cases are all closed. With the sellers confused and the fear of looking at outdated records (I've heard that Cook county is a little slow at updating their records websites, especially the building code violations one) makes me want to confirm and not just commit to the purchase.

I will keep digging. Thank you everyone for all the help!!

Hello BPers,

I have question regarding a property we are looking at and need help as to how to navigate through this issue. The property has been vacant for a while. The sellers had some building violations regarding maintenance (they had to clean it up and make it safe for the community). Basically, maintain it up to a certain level required by Cook county for vacant properties. Well, they failed to do that multiple times and the city fined them. When they were not paying the fines the city of Chicago issued a notice that they were going to take over the property and demolish the building. I believe at that point the sellers went to court and paid the fines, but they don't know the current status of the property: is the city going through with the demolition and/or does the city actually own the property? I pulled up the record of deed and the sellers' names are still on the deed.

I also pulled up the Building Violations records online for the particular property and below are the inspection/violation dates. As you can see they are "closed" and the sellers have not heard from the city about any other incident.

01/03/2013	CLOSED	DEMO COURT
09/19/2012	CLOSED	DEMO COURT
03/22/2012	CLOSED	CHECKLIST INSPECTION

What we want to make sure is that there are no other incidents pending and that the city of Chicago doesn't own the property and are not planning on going through with the demolition. I have heard that Chicago is slow to get through building processes like permits and violations. So, could there be a pending incident that has not made it to the Building Violation records online? Also, does anyone out there know who we could contact from the city of Chicago that would have information regarding the status of the demolition and/or updates of ownership? Any insight would greatly help us out. We just want to get more information on these incidents and make sure it's a good deal before we tie up this property.

Thanks @George Foster I just emailed you.

Sorry by buggy, I meant bugging. It's late and I've been reading a ton of posts. Can't seem to just my brain down about real estate :)

Anyway, I'm also excited to finally meet some of you at tomorrows meet up at The Ram in Schaumburg! See you there!

Thanks @Jonathan Pliszka and @Brie Schmidt for all the insights. I researched some more and looked at where you took yours Brianna. Your help made me feel more at ease and enough to make an education decision with my brother. He works full-time, as well so he will most likely do it all online except for the tests of course.

I will be buggy you guys in the near future (hopefully he passes the tests the first time...haha) to ask about, which brokers to hang his license with. From what I gather you guys prefer a local one as opposed to the big name ones due to the flexibility and cost, correct?

I was doing some research on Chicago RE schools and stumbled onto this forum. Great info @Brie Schmidt!

My brother wants to get his RE license and has researched a few schools, namely the Chicago Association of Realtors and the Illinois Association of Realtors. Brianna and/or @Joe Scott, do you have any experience or heard about either of these? I found online that the Illinois Association of Realtors is part of the "Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation" as an approved real estate school. Is there such thing as "approved" real estate schools to get your license? Does it really matter which school you go through if you plan on doing real estate in Chicago and surrounding areas for the most part? Thanks!

@Joseph Montes, thanks for starting this post. Helped me out too!

Originally posted by @Joshua Burke:

Hi again Louis,

You may not be able to immediately find the returns you're looking for, you have to CREATE the returns you want. How to do that? HERE is a blog post I wrote recently about a deal we did last year.

RRR

Rehab

Rerent

Refinance

Do it the right way and you can pull out most, if not all, of you original capital. You could then have little skin in the game and still have positive cash flow.

This is what some investors consider Infinite Returns.

Good luck!

JB

I like the framework you have going. I read your blog post, as well. Very informative and I definitely appreciate you including the numbers. It helps a lot to visualize the deal.

Welcome @Adam G! I'm always happy to see Chicago investors pop up here in the BP community. It means Chicago is a great place to invest and we are growing. There are a great number of knowledgeable investors in the forums that live and invest here. If interested there are several meetups locally where you can meet other investors. Contact @Brie Schmidt for details.

Congrats on your first investment and for finally introducing yourself to the BP community! Good luck and much success!

Originally posted by @John Hauser:

@Xavier Y. I have partnered with someone in-state and we are managing ourselves, so my example may not be typical. If you're interested in buy and hold out of state, you might want to follow @Ali Boone 's posts. She has a lot of experience with turnkey investing from her home in Los Angeles. For out of state flipping, @Larry Smet is the one I know personally who has had a lot of success doing that in Chicago. Out of curiosity, is there a reason why you want to invest out of state?

John, thanks for the recommendations and referrals. I appreciate it!

About investing out of state...I'm curious about what it takes to invest out of state. I think that buy and hold is more common out of state than flipping. So, I would lean towards renting out of state. I believe Chicago is a great city to invest with any strategy, but I'm also not opposed to buy and holds in Indiana (proximity) and Florida (personal contacts/family), for example.

@John Hauser I'm interested in renting out of state, as well. Do you have any pointers, advice, and/or recommendations to novice investor trying to rent out properties out of state? If you have properties in multiple states do you have a would you recommend a national or local property manager? Thanks in advance.