All Forum Posts by: Robert Steele

I am about to ask the court for a default judgement on selling a house in Plano but I need to give them the name of a Realtor who will become the receiver of the property and perform the sale.

The people living there may not want to co-operate, even though they are getting 2/3rds of the sale proceeds. So I will need someone who can do an eviction. Just like all evictions that might include moving all the furniture out onto the lawn (but hopefully not), so I am looking for someone who has done this before. Once that's done you can list and sell the house.

I cannot do it myself because it needs to be at arms length.

The house is in good condition and worth about $250K. Standard 6% commission plus eviction costs.

@Neil Aggarwal Collin County appraisal district is the worst! They raise appraisals religiously and right up to market value. Dallas County is more lax. 

I recall back in 2010 I bought a foreclosure in Collin that had been on the market for 2 months and they raised the value on it. I brought them the HUD-1 showing the sales price from January but they said, you just got a good deal and didn't budge. If it was such a good deal why was it sitting on the market for 2 months? This was a year before they change the law in Texas stating that appraisal districts couldn't ignore foreclosures in their comps.

@Rich Weese Welcome back!

I have been wrestling with the same dilemma this week. I have decided to sell one of my SFH dogs as the equity buildup is too good to ignore anymore and I have to rehab it after an 8 year tenant left anyway. But I don't know whether to 1031 it into a nicer SFH or just take the tax hit and add it to the cash pile I've been building up.

By the way after our last conversation a few years ago I took your advice and retired rather than wait for the magic number.

Well damn. It's that time of the year again when the property tax appraisal letters arrive. Talk about sticker shock. I am really getting reamed by not having a homestead exemption (read 10% increase annual limit) on my rentals.

One rental in Richardson is up $37,950 or 26%! In one year! Another up $49,760 or 27%!

Further north in Frisco and McKinney it doesn't seem so bad, up only 5% to 10%.

I am having a hard time passing these tax increases on to my tenants. It appears that rents are no longer rising fast enough to absorb the costs. Is this a tell tale sign that the party might soon be over? If you recall, rents increases led price increases back in 2012. Might they do the same on the way back down?

In any case - please make it stop!

Plan on replacing your roof due to hail damage at least once if not more times. I've even heard of homes here getting new roofs only to get trashed a few weeks later by another hail storm.

@Albert Mayzeles Oh. I think I know what this is about. Some cities have programs to rehabilitate homes and then rent them out to low income tenants. If you did this you could accelerate the depreciation for the rehab costs.

@Albert Mayzeles I'm not a tax pro. I would assume past leases or perhaps the 1099's received from the housing authority would be sufficient proof of low income status.

What is this special 60 month depreciation you speak of?

I used to be able to find flips with some meat on the bones. Now it seems that every deal I look at has only a $10K profit margin which as you know can get eaten up in the blink of an eye. I went to one open house for a rehab deal and the Realtor actually got over 100 offers!

@Account Closed Actually one might argue that people rush out and buy when they think mortgage rates are going up. But otherwise I agree with you. It seems pretty late in the game.

Since 2012 or was it 2013 that things have been going nuts with appreciation I tell myself this year is the last.

At first I thought it was cool. Rents were going up and I was lining my pockets. Then house prices started playing catch up and every year that juicy rental increase disappeared into a black hole called property taxes.

As I'm sure you've all seen there is construction everywhere. Builders are doing their damnedest to meet the demand. However it seems to be mostly 400K+ houses and apartments. Nothing in the middle.

So do we overshoot on supply and prices/rents crash? Does this horse have a few more years left in her? Do we just sort of go sideways for several years? I wonder how this all pans out.