hey community, a friend's father had a business that failed massively in the last 3 months. he just stopped paying the mortgage on his house. some of the business partners have liens against the property. my understanding is that if this were to just follow its natural course, the bank will reclaim the property, and it will go to REO. as a side note, the dad's strategy was to spend his remaining emergency fund on a trailer and to move out into the country, basically so that when whoever comes after him for money, he can show he has nothing left in any of his accounts. if it were just a matter of the mortgage payments, i would be very tempted to start paying them and pick up the house subject-to. the property is in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in all of asheville, and it's a nice home. however,  the liens present factors / challenges i just don't understand. i don't plan on doing anything with this necessarily, but with this particular bit of inside knowledge about the property, it seemed worth sharing to see what experienced investors here thought of it. 

I’m also a bit of numbers geek naturally so I try to break down things to the basic arithmetic most of the time.What I have found is that there is an abundance of talk in real estate investing forums or in REI clubs about certain aspects of REI (50% rule, construction discussions, LLC vs.

And as mentioned already, you will get a real estate bias here given the nature of the site.I'm as biased as anybody here.  

As I mentioned above, there is limited data available here in which to frame the numbers you did provide (the water/sewer alone could be another $5K/yr) and we know nothing of the economic vacancy, tenant population, asset condition/obsolescence, level of performance or room for improvement.You should be underwriting a property like this to (M)IRR (with a time horizon to your exit) and weight the cash component of the return based upon the nature of the property and its location.   

Was a challenge to live through this procedure with a 3 year old and newborn! 

The nature of our business makes it imperative that we have happy, satisfied clients who will bring us repeat business and referrals.

These tanks, and direct vent gas furnaces/boilers, can be plumbed directly through the side of the building (foundation wall, sill plate, etc) provide the exhaust exists the required distance from an operable window, door, or other air intake.From an energy efficiency stand-point, direct vented fixtures are preferable as they are not taking their supply of combustion air from the conditioned space of the building (are you have already heated), causing colder, external air to be drawn into the building.Additionally, as Pat has pointed out, direct vented fixtures reduce the risk of natural gas/propane or CO being drawn back into the conditioned space of the home. 

This has become standard procedure for me, but it has never been a problem removing the tenants.

This business is a little like professional sports in that some people just have natural talent for it and others don't.  

I am a natural problem solver and would love to help those who can give me advice.