Follow up on my first purchase
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Hello
It has been awhile since I posted a blog update. We closed on a 3 family at the end of January and spent the last few months renovating the units. We were able to keep 1 of the tenants but the others were worried that the deal would fall through so they moved on.
We started with the 3rd floor unit. Being our first time we did more than we should of and it took us longer than expected, but we finished it and had it rented with in a couple weeks of finishing.
We... continue reading >>
Continued Story of a 1st timer - Under Contract
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I haven't posted much lately because the news had been rather depressing. My wife Wendy and I had looked at close to 30 properties, put offers in on 9 of them and had lost them for many reasons. Also with the economy in trouble our financing took a hit and we lost the 90% LTV loan we were planning on using because as of today PMI companies will not insure loans to investors regardless of credit score. No PMI no loans over 80%. Also our mortgage broker said the points would be 3.75 on an... continue reading >>
Go Vote
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Well it Nov 4th here on the east coast of the US. Voting should be opening in the next 5 hours or so in most major cities and in little Dixville Notch NH all 21 people have already voted. Sorry Ralph Nader you didn't get any votes this time.
Regardless of your choice make sure you find time to go and vote today. The media can only guess at what will happen today, but you can actually have an impact. Don't think that because you favor the popular canidate that he will win so... continue reading >>
Contined Story of a 1st timer - Offer number 3 - Banks are insane.
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As many of you know my third offer was accepted by the owner and the listing real estate agent told my broker and I that the foreclosing bank has postponed the auction.
Well she lied. The auction is happening today at 3pm and my current offer isn't worth the ink I burned up on my printer. My offer was for $143,100 on an asking price of $159,000. I asked the listing agent if the bank had ok'd the asking price and she said they had. Well according to her, the bank had a "drive-by" appraisal... continue reading >>
Contined Story of a 1st timer - Offer number 3 - Accepted
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Heard back today that our short-sale offer on a duplex was accepted. Both my lender and the foreclosing lender are ordering independent appraisals to determine if my offer of $143,100 is in range for the property. The current owner paid $375,000 for the property in 2004 so he must still owe close to that amount to the bank.
This is not a traditional short-sale in that I didn't work with the owner and didn't negotiate directly with the bank. The property was listed with an agent and we pursued this as a conventional purchase.
Based on the... continue reading >>
House defeats bailout plan... Let the chaos continue.
So earlier today the house defeated the 700b bailout by 228 against to 205 for. Both Democrats and Republicans alike voted against the bailout. Regardless of how you felt about it you can expect a chaotic week as the markets tumble and the media preaches doom and gloom.
Also the chaos is spreading. Great Britian announced that they have taken over Bradford & Bingley a national mortgage lender and Fortis NV a Belgian-Dutch lender was also nationalized.
Contined Story of a 1st timer - Offer number 3
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Offer 1 died at the inspection.
Offer 2 was on a Fannie Mae property and it has been 7 days with not a peep out of them so we are letting that one expire.
We did submit an new offer on another duplex. This one is a true mirror duplex. 7 rooms each side. Upstairs each unit has 3 large bedrooms, full bath and a small extra rooms upstairs. Downstairs living room, dining room with french doors and built-in china cabinet, and huge eat-in kitchen with a pantry. Building has over 3150 square feet GLA plus a completely... continue reading >>Contined Story of a 1st timer - Inspection
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As some of you know, we submitted our first offer on a multi-family property. Sunday we had an inspection done. The inspector flagged a lot of items and we took over 3 pages worth of notes. Most weren't deal breakers. There were dead roaches (my pest control guy said he could deal with that), broken windows (again not something I was worried about), soft wood under toilets etc etc etc.
The one thing we were uncomfortable with was the small split in a heating pipe we found behind a drop ceiling. Due to finding one... continue reading >>
Contined Story of a 1st timer - offer accepted
Late last night IndyMac accepted our offer. We now have 7 days to complete our inspections. Closing is scheduled for Oct 3rd.
Finally closed
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Well we finally closed on our 3 unit building. Now comes the fun part of getting it updated and rented.It was quite a learning process. We had to reschedule the closing from Dec 30th to Jan 23rd due to title issues. You would think Countrywide would have foreclosures down to a science by now, but nope they didn't do the paperwork right so the title wasn't clear. Also we had survey issues to deal with.
So here how the numbers worked out. 5556 sq ft - 3 story building. $108,000 with... continue reading >>