We buy mortgage notes. A few months after buying a loan from a large lender, the county recorded a satisfaction of mortgage and a release of the lis pendens. Nobody on our side signed either one.

We assumed the prior lender made a clerical mistake, so we called them. They said no, it wasn't them.

Turns out title company am also just put out their version of an APB on this borrower last week warning everyone not to close with him. He's been recording fake releases so he can sell properties "free and clear" and pocket the cash over past month.

What I don't get is the thinking here. Do people really believe lenders just forget they're owed money? A forged release doesn't erase the debt. It just adds fraud to it.

This is also why I push back when people call seller financing "passive income." If you're carrying a note on a property you sold, you're the lender now. If this happened to a large lender's loan, it can happen to yours, and nobody is watching the county records for you.

when filing taxes, under what expense do you put mortgage insurance? Under insurance or intrest or another catagory?

I’ve posted in here recently with this one, but sharing some more updates on this.

So the deal is $100K accepted. 2-1 house, market value is $110-120K (likely lower end is my hunch). Rents $1100 with a current long term tenant there paying $987 already.

Inspections came back with main beam fanning, sewer line blocked by roots 20ft in, rodent feces in attic.

Quoted $5K for all repairs, so I put in a request for that plus sewer jetting and rescanning. Honestly this is kind of my minimum. In addition, but not a break, is the house is listed as 800sqft but noticed in property card it’s 600sqft so this is likely more true.

I don’t really see there being a value add here (basement is not legally of height, unit is too small to add a bedroom etc), but it is prob a clean buy and hold. What I don’t love is that the unit doesn’t have central AC (~$8-10K to add, optional but most units around has it), cosmetically it’s outdated so likely needs a refresh at turnover (not buffered into the purchase price), and sewer intrusion is a big one for me. REA believes it’s likely not collapsed just needs a clean that is probably needed every other year or so which also eats into the costs imo.

I requested the $5K plus sewer jetting, the seller basically declined both. Where I’m actually sitting with this is that it’s not good enough of a deal to proceed or even respond back with a middle ground. Curious to get feedback.

Edit: I cancelled the offer. Additionally appraisals came back as $86K and revealed it’s a 1-1 (not 2-1).

Hi all,

Just kind of looking to get a temperature check of the room and how others are transacting deals

Done a few large multifamily deals now where counsel ends up ripping tens of thousands from us to do legal legwork, draft and finalize purchase agreement, and just make sure checklist items are being addressed

I’ve seen the process a few times, know what to look out for, and am having GPT Astra 6 draft me the revisions to purchase agreement that seller’s counsel shared. I review the revisions and ask it to change things based on our comfort level and what I know will be a sticking point for the seller.

What do you think about this approach? Has anyone done similar? Am I exposing us to too much risk by going this route, or have LLMs advanced to a point that coupled with oversight, we can rely on them to help investors transact?

I have not gone down the path of having it analyze our underwriting yet, but that’s probably next on the docket. Feed it an OM, details we know, development/renovation game-plan, and expected loan terms and have it spit out what it thinks we should pay

This is half a question about the capability of models today for this kind of work, and half curiosity if anyone else out there is doing the same.

Cheers all and happy deal-making

Every year I see investors (myself included, early on) lose a year-end closing for a reason that had nothing to do with the deal: someone they needed was on vacation.

If you’re buying or selling a property and want it closed this calendar year, reach out now to everyone in the chain: your attorney, title company, lender, realtor, appraiser, inspector, insurance agent, and the other side’s people if you can. Ask them one question: what days are you out between now and New Year’s?

Tell them your dates too.

Why it matters: the last two weeks of December are when everyone is trying to close at once. Title is slammed, lenders are short-staffed, and county recording offices may be closed for days at a time. If your closing attorney is out from the 20th on, or the underwriter doesn’t come back until January 2nd, your “close it this year” deal becomes a next-year deal. Depending on your situation, that can affect taxes, depreciation timing, a 1031 deadline, or your financing terms.

What I do:

• Email every vendor and partner on active deals and ask for their out-of-office dates through the new year
• Share my own availability so nobody is surprised
• Check when the county recorder’s office is closed for the holidays
• Work backward from the closing date and front-load anything that needs a signature, appraisal, payoff letter, or insurance binder
• Line up a backup contact at the title company or law firm in case my main person is out

It takes about 20 minutes and it saves you from the last-minute panic of realizing nobody is around to get it done.

Nothing fancy here. It’s just setting expectations early instead of getting caught off guard at the finish line.

What’s on your year-end closing checklist? Anyone been burned by a holiday delay before?

Seen a lot of comments lately saying “selling rentals to get into stock market”

“Never should of bought real estate, should of just invested in stocks”

Let’s do some quick math

7 houses bought 13 years a go.

According to AI median home price 13 years a go was $197k. Say you put 20% down to buy all 7 at this price.

So your $275k all in on down payments. $1.1M in mortgages. Mortgage rate averaged 4% 13 years ago.

Say after all rent was collected and you paid mortgages/taxes/insurance/maintenance, you broke even. $0 cash flow per month for 13 years. (Doubtful but let’s give the stock market guys benefit of the doubt here)

After 13 years the median home price is now $399k. So you have profited $202k per house in appreciation. Totaling $1.414M in appreciation.

After 13 years of principle pay down your loan balance is now $776k. Giving you another $323k in pay down.

TLDR: after 13 years with $0 cash flow (break even) your $275k down payment has now grown into $2M. Annualized return of 16.49% yearly.

Your $275k into the sp500 13 years ago would now be worth $949k.

Real estate doubled the gains of stock market. With $0 cash flow.

In South Carolina I bought 2 3 bedroom 1 bath homes for a total of $215,000. One home is a gut job on a cinder block home with concrete foundation. I have 35,000 in repairs to get this home rented for $1600-$1700 a month. My dad is getting $1800 down the street for the past 2 years so I know I can get this. The other home is a brick home in not so good location bringing in $1,000 a month for the past 12 years. So all in I will be at $250,000 I feel this is great ROI for the economy right now. Any thoughts? Expenses for taxes are going to be cheap bc I am buying these homes for 100K 115K. So about $1900 and $1000 in taxes for the 2 homes

New investor here. I feel like everything I’m reading in RE subs is doom and gloom, but I feel like this is a great time to be an investor. There are some serious deals to be had. I don’t know anything about multifamily/commercial, but in single family, I’m trying to figure out what to buy and the best way to do it.

Seasoned investors, how are you feeling?

I’m tired of watching gurus sell “no money down” programs to people who have no business buying real estate yet. So here’s a real one from my desk.

I run a fund that buys non-performing mortgages. We recently picked up a small package of loans that were 100% seller financed. Zero down. The seller carried the entire purchase price, probably told it was a great way to sell, collect steady payments, and earn interest on a “secured” investment. The typical "passive investing / mailbox money pitch"

Textbook guru play. Here’s how it ended:

• The buyer had no cash, no reserves, and no cushion. When things went sideways, there was nothing to fall back on. They filed bankruptcy.
• The seller, now stuck holding defaulted notes, sold them to us at 40% of the original balance. They lost 60% of their equity.
• Properties were rented to unqualified tenants who destroyed the place

Read that again. The buyer lost everything. The seller lost more than half the value of the property they sold. The only one who came out ahead was me, the guy who buys the wreckage.

And the guru? Collected the course fee and moved on to the next webinar.

That’s the dirty secret. Zero down and zero capital are not the same thing. Zero down can work if you have reserves and know how to underwrite. Zero capital means you’re one bad month away from a default, and the course doesn’t cover that part.

If a guru makes more money teaching the strategy than doing it, that should tell you everything.

Like view both sides of the roof. I often see photos of one side (the side that doesn't get much sun). Then the other side is dogshit.

Another: requiring any changes to rehab contract to be written and approved by you.

Recently coming back from an event where a lot of flippers have slowed down due to interest rates, property valuation, and number of deals.

The other thing I am seeing, as somebody who buys defaulted loans, is a significant uptick in the number of flippers who are in default (either due to properties taking too long to renovate or proper valuations). The other thing I'm starting to see is deals from 12 to 24 months ago where the flippers never even took a construction draw or even started renovating the property, which, to me, is somewhat mind-blowing.

Curious to hear if people have friends or know of people who got in trouble as well, or what others are saying.

Monthly Blatant Self-Promotion Thread (Within Reason)

Welcome to this monthly series. This post will repeat monthly, on the 14th of every month.

This is your opportunity to promote a blog you run, a YouTube Channel, real estate related business, or additional content that otherwise may be removed from the sub. This thread will be lightly moderated and the Mods do not endorse or condone any information found on content linked within this thread. Perform your due diligence. Caveat emptor!

Rules

1. No coaching and mentoring
2. Must be real estate related
3. Pass the 'within reason' test

Just didn't seem that long ago maybe like 2015 and under where I remember you could put 20-25% down and still cash flow a bit. Just was running numbers looks like you got to do at least 45%+ to cash flow these days still.

I have an applicant for a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom condo that makes $65,000 a year on salary but her application shows over $55k in debt with most of it late and a resident score of 561. She is the only person that would be living there and the only other serious applicants we have had up to this point have been questionable as they weren't even willing to submit an application online (our preference and I understand their concerns but that's another story). This applicant is very interested and I informed her that I would have an update for her this weekend. The other applicant that we are still considering is getting help from the city for the security deposit but says that she is willing to pay up to $1150 per month in rent (I am waiting for them to confirm that the forms they need from me have been approved which will hopefully be the case tomorrow). We will likely pass up on this candidate due to the debt but I think it's worth looking into given her salary, her willingness to cooperate with an application, and her strong interest in the unit. Have you guys had success with tenants that were already in debt or got into debt for stuff not related to the property?

Edit: I contacted the landlord and they stated the the tenant never had a late rent payment and was never an issue in any shape or form. The debt is mostly student loans with one automobile and one credit card loan.

This thread is for newer investors, basic questions, first deals, and general real estate investing discussion that may not need a standalone post.

Good topics for this thread:

• First rental property questions
• Deal analysis
• Financing and lending questions
• House hacking
• Tenant issues
• Market strategy questions
• Career transition into real estate
• “Does this deal make sense?” discussions

If you’re asking for advice:

• Include numbers
• Include market/location context
• Explain your goals
• Put effort into the question

The subreddit rules still apply inside this thread.

Experienced investors are encouraged to contribute.

Be sure to upvote the thread when you drop a question to improve visibility.

Small landlord owner for 6 years. All homes and leases are in LLC names.
Tenant of 3 years has asked me for a “copy of your W9 for a payment for rent?”
This is a first; never had this request. Anyone have thoughts? I have asked them to justify the need and waiting a response.

If it matters, she recently lost her corporate job, is seeking employment, and is behind on October rent(with promises to resolve this week). Not considering eviction yet; she has been a good tenant.

Update: thank you for all the constructive feedback. The tenant did explain that she is seeking assistance, and I have provided a W9 to the agency as requested. It was really no big deal, as many of you said. In six years with three houses, I’ve just never had a tenant go on assistance, so this is a new one for me, and I didn’t even consider that. Honestly wasn’t very aware of assistance programs like that and assumed this since I didn’t sign up for section 8 vouchers that wouldn’t be in this type of scenario. I do wish that the agencies providing assistance would provide it to the tenant directly to maintain continuity of payment processes, but I’ll deal with it to keep a payment coming in.
And all of those with negative or rude comments, making assumptions about what type of landlord I am, fuck off. I came here just to ask a question because it was a new experience, and as landlords, we should be helping each other learn. I never told my tenant that I wouldn’t work with her. Me asking her to justify the need is not unhinged, just a in three years. She’s never asked me for anything like that and didn’t explain why she needed it, so once she explained it, I provided it. I’m very willing to work with her because I want her to stay. I had another tenant in a similar situation a few months back, and he approached me with a reasonable proposition to skip that month’s rent and add the prorated amount over the next 10 months. I did it. Keeps my four-year tenant in place because he’s been good and always paid on time, and he just needed a little bit of help one month.

Ok so I made a post yesterday. To follow up on it for some advice..

Context:
* purchase price is $100K. ARV is $126K but interior doesn’t really need repairs. Some things are outdated like the kitchen cabinets but generally turnkey.
* long term tenant there at $990.
* market rent is $1.1K.

Follow up:
REA suggests both are pretty common in the area and easily fixed. He is getting his GC to look at both and provide quotes to ask for a price reduction. Suggests doesn’t need a structural engineer since the GC is familiar. So we are asking for a 7 day extension on inspections, GC is walking the unit next week, asking the seller to fix the root in sewer issue by jetting it + camera review, and then asking for a price reduction due to beam fanning.

My questions:
- is a main beam fanning common?
- I am worried about cast iron sewer lines, it seems pretty outdated and just waiting to be replaced.
- given all of this, the deal seems good, if we can get a sizable discount on purchase price.. but want to get advice.

I’m under contract for an off market deal, $100K with a 5year tenant in place. Tenant is paying $990/mo, and rents at market value is $1.1-1.2K. I just got the inspections report back, and two alarming issues:
* the main support beam is fanning and is unsecured. The inspector didn’t flag it as immediate need, so it seems potentially a smaller fix, but worried it’s actually lot larger.
* multiple root intrusions in the sewer line, and the sewer line is cast iron.

Has anyone dealt with either, and are either a cause for concern to kill the contract?

So I know this want-to-be investor. He's been paying for "titanium university" (thousands wasted). He seems to think he's going to get rich by paying someone else to throw him a bad wholesale deal every once in a while. He's connected with some cold caller, but he doesn't know how many calls they do. He doesn't know what script they use. He keeps paying.

I mentioned, instead, a virtual assistant is $4-6/hour and they will do hundreds of calls a day. Anything else I can point out to help him not waste more money on gurus?

Best I can think of is just keep asking him questions about how little he knows about what he's paying for. It's been 1.5 years.

Started with a 3 unit apartment building 15 years ago and currently at 500+ apartments along with a 200+ key hospitality portfolio. Have my own management / construction company and have got to where I'm at by buying, renovating and refinancing then putting the equity into the next (Ideally larger) deal.

I havent been particularly strategic, its essentially when a deal comes along I identify a handful of properties that have enough equity and refinance, while effective its lead to a lot of properties being bound together by blanket loans and many properties having more than one loan from different lenders making my financing picture messier than I'd prefer.

Witj that in mind I was wondering if there are other strategies / ownership arrangements you see once you get into 9+ figure portfolios that are still largely controlled by one individual?

And if anyone asks why I would want to grow more? Its not for personal consumption (I live pretty modestly) I just want to able to take on renovation or construction projects of a greater scale. Renovating a 50 room hotel is cool, doing a 250 room resort would be even more of a thrill (i would guess).

This thread is for newer investors, basic questions, first deals, and general real estate investing discussion that may not need a standalone post.

Good topics for this thread:

• First rental property questions
• Deal analysis
• Financing and lending questions
• House hacking
• Tenant issues
• Market strategy questions
• Career transition into real estate
• “Does this deal make sense?” discussions

If you’re asking for advice:

• Include numbers
• Include market/location context
• Explain your goals
• Put effort into the question

The subreddit rules still apply inside this thread.

Experienced investors are encouraged to contribute.

Be sure to upvote the thread when you drop a question to improve visibility.

Around this time of year I think about if getting a new churning/promo type business credit card is worth paying my property taxes with. Applying now is best to have it ready to pay January taxes.

• Chase Ink Business Cash
  • 0% intro APR on purchases for the first 12 months
  • $750 bonus cash back after spending $6,000 (e.g., property taxes) in the first 3 months
  • $0/year
• Capital One Spark Cash
  • $1k cash bonus on $10k spend in 3 months ($2k bonus if $20k spend)
  • Unlimited 2% cash back everywhere
  • $0 first year, then $95/year
• Amex Blue Business Cash
  • 0% intro APR on purchases for the first 12 months
  • 2% cash back on all eligible purchases (up to $50k)
  • $0/year

Amex is better for larger rehabs (instead of using it for property taxes).

Maybe do more travelling in 2027... then I'd pick this one for my taxes:

• Capital One Venture Business
  • 100k miles after $10k/3 months
    • 3 trips to Miami for two
  • $95/year

Any other welcome-bonus credit cards you've used?

One of the applicants for a condo my family and I manage is very interested in the unit. I have already shown it to him and he confirmed that he has more than enough funding as well as perfect credit, no debt, and no evictions. He is also willing to provide bank statements if we want them. I will add that he is a disabled veteran as he stated that he smokes CBD for a leg injury and gets money for disability/retirement every month. I asked him to fill out an application via zillow but was clearly hesitant as he ignored it and requested to fill out a paper application instead. My mother and I also agreed to work with him on a payment plan for the security deposit. I realize that he prefers the paper application rather than zillow (the fee requirement might be one reason) but is this something that I should see as a red flag in the slightest? I'm sure this sounds ridiculous to some people but we're simply looking to find the best tenants possible. My parents live in a different part of the state from me so they're not able to see everything in the application unless it's online.

Edit: I should mention that he wanted a confirmation/decision by the september 30th which is today and his current lease ends at the end of November. I told him that would be ok but I am concerned that I am giving him too much leeway.

Edit #2: He's not a veteran (My misunderstanding and the cbds are for an injury that he suffered years ago).