Monthly Archives: May 2016

Buyouts & Commission

After the death of my Mother, I received a 1/8th share in a commercial property that she owned with her siblings (my aunts/uncles). A year ago, the remaining partners and I decided to put the property on the market rather than continue to split the rent and deal with the headaches that come along with joint ownership. We received a full asking price on the building, but we declined the offer after my aunts and uncles expressed that they wanted to buy my sister and I out of our shares and take full ownership. While I wanted to take the money, I wanted what was best for all of us and to not step on any toes.

Fast forward to today when I received the offer to buy out my share from my aunts. The offer is for the agreed upon amount but factors in a hypothetical commission of 5% based on what we would have paid a broker in the event of a sale (they have no plans to sell in the near future). They are asking my sister and I (the sellers) to pay our share of 5% commission that may or may not ever happen. I do not think that this is reasonable, but also do not want to jeopardize my family relationships over this and push back too hard. Am I in the wrong here? Any ideas on how to approach this would be much appreciated.

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Dont like the company that my mortgage broker placed me with, can I ask for another company?

I've apperantely been placed with Carrington Mortgage services. For some reason i had the urge to look online and look at their reviews. They are horrible! Everyone seems to have the same problems with them. Their website is broken and seems very outdated and they will not accept any payments besides the full amount. I was planning on paying biweekly. This company just seems like a nightmare that I'm not sure I willingly want to deal with. I havent made any payments to them for appraisals or anything just filled out some paperwork.

Can i ask my broker to move me to a different company?

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Slumlord help in Detroit, MI: No idea where to start

I am currently living in a building that does not have a certificate of occupancy, nor is up to city code. There is 1 kitchen, 2 half bathrooms, 12 bedrooms and a few other common spaces.

Some of the tenants have lived here for over 1 year without being able to obtain a written lease. No tenant has been able to obtain anything but a verbal lease and the landlord will only accept cash for payments without giving receipts. We have a contract draft that has been going back and forth but very little has ever been signed by anyone.

The building is in shambles. It was partially burned down and has yet to be restored. There are live wires in the hallways and bedrooms that tenants have repeatedly been shocked. The roof is leaking in dozens of places and some so bad the floor has rotted away. There is a huge "lake" on the roof that is constantly leaking over and onto the main breaker box. This box regularly starts small electrical fires. Many of the tenants have fallen through the floor. There is also mold in over 3/4ths of the building. Some residents have moved out due to health issues.

My landlord has recently been threatening eviction to all the tenants after talks began about holding our rent in escrow until he improves the conditions of our building. He will come over unannounced often and when he does, he will hangout in our kitchen and living room common spaces. He will sometimes drink and has also fought with our guests.

We aren't sure what to do at this point. He was here today on a warpath. He was being very loud, agressive and argumentative in our kitchen. Things got heated with one of the tenants.

What can we do? Should we just call the police and say we're being intimidated by our Landlord? Should we start recording all interactions?

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Offer Price question

Hi Everyone, I really appreciate this sub and all the contributors and hoping to get some guidance. My wife and I are under contract on our current (and first) home and scheduled to close in less than 4 weeks. We've finally found a new home we both like and are taking a second look at it tomorrow with our families to get some additional input. The place is great and hits every check box for us…price, location, features, etc. The ask price is in the upper end of what we're looking for…530k. We have up to 120k in money down, fantastic credit and really no financing concerns.

The questions gets to this…the home is in the high end of the comps we rec'd from our agent, but not way out of line. The fit and finish of the place is exactly what we want, just gorgeous! If tomorrow goes as well as we'd hope we're looking to make an offer. How do we decide how much to offer? We will need to pick a number, but 505 vs 515 are both in my mind as ok, but really are they? Maybe it should be 525, maybe 495? It's a big swing from either end! The home has been on the market since early March with no price adjustments. We looked up the seller on LinkedIn to do some incognito research and are under the assumption he's not hurting for cash and certainly not in the business of losing money, so he's not an incredibly motivated seller. That being said the selling season is starting to be on the back end of things, so maybe he is. It's driving me nuts and our agent (who I love and she was awesome on the sale s negotiation of our house) isn't really pegging a number as ideal. What should I be looking at here? It's my second go around on house buying and I'm getting into the bigger money for us now so I'm dwelling (no pun..I'm a homeowners adjuster!) a bit more now Thank you!

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Neighbor on shared driveway wants to develop – Louisville, Kentucky

I live on a shared driveway with two other households. One household is an older lady who doesn't want to go anywhere and wants to give the place to her son once she passes (she's in her mid 60's).

The other household is at the top of our shared driveway. It's an older couple – he's 82 and she's 79 – that has 10.5 acres with a crappy little house. The lot is GORGEOUS. Some rolling hills with a pond and enormous pole barn. Really is beautiful.

Anyway, the old man at the top of the hill uses our driveway, located entirely on my property and my other neighor's property, with an easement and apparently has rights to widen the easement to 60 feet if needed in order to bring in a neighborhood.

I have spoken with him about my wish to purchase the land without him speaking with any developers. The land is tax appraised at $375,000. He said he wants $550,000 from a developer or he would sell it to me for $500,000.

My questions are:

1) I have spoken with three neighbors (plus myself) that would be interested in parceling the land out. 2 acres to one neighbor, the house / barn and 2 acres for another, one acre for my neighbor, and everything else for me. Howevever I believe the neighbor that wants to develop is asking more per acre (ultimately) than people could get financed for. How can I tell how much a bank will loan for the land if divided up?

2) I would LOVE to purchase the whole lot for myself for $375,000 since I can get a loan on that. I don't have the extra $125,000 cash to make that loan work at $500,000. Is a developer going to offer tax appraised price, more, or less? What is the norm here?

Any answers are greatly appreciated. I will be back on shortly

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[NC] When a due diligence period is extended, is the earnest money deposit due date extended as well or does that need to be independently extended as well?

I noticed on my state's form used to extend due diligence periods, known as the "Agreement to Amend Contract," there is a separate space for extending the date of the (Additional) Earnest Money deposit.

It makes sense that, if the due diligence alone is extended, the earnest money due date is extended as well even if you don't explicitly state so in the form, but I want to clarify this.

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Adverse Possession?

Has anyone had experience with adverse possession? I was looking at a property awhile back and was almost to the transaction when a neighbor came by and informed me that she owned part of the land that I was trying to buy. She even showed me her survey.

She was wrong, in my view. The current owner had possessed the land for 50 years, peacefully, with a road for a boundary. Her survey, claiming that she owned a strip on his side of the road, was only a couple of years old.

Still, I wouldn't touch the property. Who wants to climb into a fight like that unless there is a whole lot of profit involved.

I advised the owner to put up a fence and dare the neighboring woman to enter his property.

Anybody experienced something like this or know the law on it?

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Just for fun, help me price out my first offer using this scenario.

I'm going to place an offer on a home that was recently purchased as sheriff sale/flip in southern NJ. 1400 sq ft. 3 bed 1.5 bath. Single car garage, no basement. 60 by 140 lot. asking 180k

The place was purchased in the beginning of March 2016 for 66k. From what I can tell, the flippers replaced the carpets on the steps and second floor with builder grade beige carpet. Kitchen has 32 sq ft of granite counters, a stainless dish washer and stove but NO FRIDGE. (Checking brands when I go on a 2nd showing tomorrow. Guessing cheapo brand) Very old washer and dryer. HVAC and Hot water heater are at end of life. The roof looks original (from '94). It is in good shape but I'm factoring in replacement cost.

The backyard has a hot tub that is no longer operational. Removing it would be on me. Vinyl fence needs a new gate. There is some damage to the hardwood flooring on the first floor but it is not a complete loss. I can refinish them myself.

I have a number in my head for a first offer as well as my max but, as a fun conversation starter I would love to hear the hive mind's opinion. Assume a cash sale.

Listing all of the things I just did come up with your first offer as well as your highest offer. With what I explained about what the flippers did can you come up with a total cost of their flip? I want to make this a good deal on both sides. I recognize that they need to make a profit but at the same time I feel like their current asking is slightly high for the area.

Did I leave out any important facts?

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Looking for some specific advice for first time home buyers, house will need work but has huge potential.

Trying to figure out if this house could be an amazing deal or if we should be running away from it. Note, the house is being sold AS IS. The house we are looking at WOULD be an amazing house but a lot of things just haven’t been kept up with as the owner is a single old lady. Big things that I noticed that need repair were water damage around skylights (repair/replace skylights and drywall) and the deck was not cared for in years and probably just needs to be replaced. Other than that the house is mostly just dirty and packed with years of accumulation of things. Needs flooring replaced, wallpaper removed, paint, stuff like that.

Major things like appliances have all been updated, including new AC. No problems with water in the house or anything, and the house is fairly new (1989).

The market value for this home if it was in good condition is probably around 250-280k. Possibly even higher in the right circumstance but it is (potentially) the nicest house in the neighborhood. Last house on a dead end street with no chance of any new construction going up in the back or to the side. Definitely the biggest, 3 car garage etc. Initially it was listed at 229k, and over the course of a month it’s dropped to 215k. I’m thinking of offering 200k and just seeing what happens.

This will be our first home (been renting for.. 13 years now) and we look forward to learning how to do all the things we would need to do to fix the house up. Everything that I saw (admittedly we are novices) would be doable ourselves given enough time and money, neither of which would be a problem. I’d have a professional do the skylights but that was definitely the biggest thing we found. BUT we are very nervous as we’ve never attempted anything like this before.

Our other options are smaller house, needs less work, spend around 200k. Or buy an older WWII era home for low 100s, probably need some work, more worries about dealing with stuff like flooding (big in our area), lead/asbestos, general older house problems. Our annual income is around 120k so I think even if we spent up to 250k on a house we would be ok and able to afford it without compromising our saving plans.

So just looking for some reasons basically to not go through with this. Tell me what things could go wrong and why this is a bad idea. Also this post is worded terrible probably, so just ask if there’s any more relevant info I can provide.

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