Holidays are comin'

This is the first holiday in a long time I have not been completely beside myself with fear on "how are we going to handle the holidays financially?". My husband gets laid off from November through March'ish, it's a yearly thing. Although I enjoy him being home because it takes a lot of pressure off me, it is an obvious strain on the pocket book. And even though we don't have a ton of money in the bank I know we'll make it just fine. Our bills are being paid off slowly and we just are not arguing as much about money. I guess what I'm trying to get at is this real estate "thing" is getting our family where we need to be. As I stated before I still have to do my goals for next year but I've been thinking about them a lot. I'll sit down one day soon and write them out.

Okay, on to business. We are set to close on the condos December 12th. I got a call from my buyers lender and it looks like everything is good to go. I really hope it doesn't fizzle at the last moment. My buyers told me their bank knows EXACTLY what the situation is so I am not expecting any bumps (famous last words).

We got an accepted offer on the 2nd set of condos also. I am paying a bit more per condo ($70k) but the spread is so great I just had to pick them up. With these I am going to do one of two things. But first I am going to talk to my loan officer and see if their bank accepts down payment assistance programs for down payments (i.e. Hart or Nehemiah). If they do I am going to advertise a lease/purchase with 20% down payment assistance. Hopefully this should get my phone ringing. If the bank does NOT accept this form of payment I am going to call around. If I can't find a bank I will just advertise a lease purchase at a lower price. My initial intent with these properties was to lease them anyway to have monthly income. We'll have to see how it goes...

We also got an accpeted offer on another property. I'm not crazy about it and haven't faxed in the addendum. I'm not sure why? The numbers are great and it's in a nice area (the same neighborhood where I had several people wanting to purchase one of my other properties). It has kind of a weird lay out and it is only 2 bedrooms. I'm going to hold off on faxing the addendum until Monday or Tuesday and see what they say. Maybe I'll try to get it cheaper?

The numbers:
ARV: $99k
Repairs: $15k
PP: $40k

It is a Fannie property so I can only resell at $48k. Another reason I am a bit apprehensive is b/c if I cannot find a buyer I'm not sure I'll be able to get a loan with my mortgage gal. She is pretty adament (sp?) about only doing one property at a time.

Oh well, a good problem to have I suppose. I won't know anything until next week.

Soooo, everyone have a great Thanksgiving!!

Condo Offer/Closing

We lowered the price on the condos to $79k/condo due to the association (or lack thereof) issues. The original buyer was still interested and faxed over an offer. I faxed back a counter just clarifying some things so hopefully we'll have a deal. We're set to close with the bank this Friday and our buyers want to close December 12th. Cross the fingers that this goes through. IF we close with them we'll be able to pay off another credit card and that will leave us with just one left! Of course we still have a car loan, a HELOC and our mortgage. I would like to pay them off in that order but we'll see how that goes.

We have an offer on another set of condos in this complex. Usually the bank comes back the next day with a yes/no answer but we've been waiting about a week for an answer. Weird? I kinda think the listing agent is up to something. Maybe he knows the buyer or he's trying to push through their contract? Don't know but I want these b/c I want to keep them for rentals. Hopefully we'll find out soon.

I've been putting a bunch of other offers in but nothing has come through yet. Banks in my neck of the woods are not discounting anywhere near the amount of Steph's properties. BUT, we'll keep at it until we get a more consistant flow of properties.

In the next couple of weeks I need to sit down and write out my goals for next year. This year my goal was 4 properties and I think I am at 6. I would like to get one more under contract before the end of the year. Initially my goal for next year was 6 but I am going to up that to 8 properties.

More glitches

It doesn't look like re-zoning the condo to a zero lot line duplex is possible. I sent an email out to my buyers list updating them of the "issues" and an original interested party said they were no longer interested. The other buyer said he was still interested but would get back to me - who knows. I was thinking of backing out and losing my EMD but have changed my mind. I am definately closing and may even hold these on land contract or something. They should cash flow nicely. Initially I was worried about having to hold on to the high interest down payment LOC. Then I thought about refinancing but apparently Fannie and Freddie changed the rules to 1 year seasoning for refi. So I called my gal at the bank and she told me they would do a HELOC (4%) on one of the units to pay off the high interest LOC - sold!

We'll see what happens. I have not really been making too many offers but have been watching daily. The same reo's are still out there and have not been reduced recently.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out...

Condos - the good, the bad, the ugly...

So I mentioned in the last post that we had 2 condos under contract. The appraisals came back at $129k each and the loan is good to go. I sent an email out to my buyers list and had a contract in 2 days for full asking price ($89.9k/condo). However, they did not enter an amount for earnest money. Yeah, I'm going to put a property under contract with no EMD?! What the hell?! Anyway, we're submitting a counter offer changing terms.

We also found out that there is no association. The idiot that built the complex never put by-laws in place and never formed an association. This is throwing a wrench into the whole process. Having no association in place makes the complex/units non-warrantable. I don't know the exact definition but it would make it very difficult for people to get a mortgage without 20% down. Who the hell has 20% to put down on a property!? Okay, so we create by-laws to get things going, right? Well, who is going to be on the board? Not me. Is a new owner going to want to be the only board member or part of a board at all? For arguments sake let's say they would consider being on the board, here is the other problem. All but 2 units (out of 12) are going into foreclosure. In order to get a warrantable loan, 80% of the units need to be owner occupied. Because almost all are going into foreclosure they are obviously not owner occupied so we still have the same problem. My loan officer told me to check into changing the condo in to a 'zero lot line duplex'. We would alleviate the condo association/by laws AND the owner occupy problem.

All of this just came up yesterday so we haven't fully looked into the 'zero lot line duplex' possibility but I hope we get something in place soon. If this is a true issue my buyer will back out and understandably so. I would like to get this done and closed (which would be mid-December) and have another credit card paid off. I can't WAIT to be able to put some cash in the bank. We're gettin' there! AND, as I said before, there are 2 more units up for sale with another 2 coming down the pipe. I want to have a resolution on place so if/when we get the next 2 we'll know what to do.

Gotta run...