Countdown to a quad closing!

Today was a happy day! Not a closing day yet, but the next best thing. Signed contract day! The second quad deal that I've been toying with for a while now is officially under contract as a totally "Subject to the Existing Mortgage" deal. Yippee!!! I'm just a title search away from owning a nice cashflowing quad!

Actually, I'll be owning 50% of a nice cashflowing quad. I was in the unfortunate circumstance of having already put some of my small amount of cash into the first REO quad I found (which is still under contract and up-in-the-air about closing), when this second Sub2 deal, the deal I really had been looking for, came along. So with very little cash left in my account and the seller's sob story of how impossible it was to keep the place rented, I hesitated to put the building under contract immediately. Sometimes he who hesitates is lost, but I knew that I would have a hard time buying two quads at the same time with my very limited funds. But lucky me, I happened to had met a local fellow investor in my social networking earlier in the year, and it turns out that she was looking for this exact same type of deal too! So now I only have to put up half of the title, closing, back payments and holding cost money, which takes a huge burden off me and gives me the confidence to move forward in the deal. It also helps that she has a great method for keeping her units rented!!! =)

So today we met the seller at the property (for the thrid time!) and he readily signed the contract, showed us copies of his leases (three units are rented, for the moment), and gave us authorization to contact his mortgage company so we can start the Sub2 process. Title search was ordered today and we're going to get an inspector out there in the next day or two just to give it a once over and know if there's any structural issues. Then, within a few days or so, we'll have ourselves a closing! Did I say "Yippee" yet???!!!???

The nice thing about Sub2 transactions is that it really is a winning situation for everyone. We get a property that will cashflow and, eventually, build good equity (there's not much equity in it now, but that's not what I'm after), the seller gets his back payments caught up, avoids foreclosure, his credit score improves over time and he gets rid of the headache that he just didn't want to deal with in his retirement. Oh, and the bank gets to keep getting payments on their nice lucrative loan, but with banks being such whiners and tightwads right now I really don't care what's in their best interest.

Happy day! I'm so excited about this quad that I sometimes forget the trouble I'm having on the other one I have under contract! But not for long... sigh. More on that in another post, right now I just want to revel in the fact that I have very nearly achieved what many people told me was impossible/extremely unlikely. Now I wonder what is the appropriate amount of nose-rubbing I can do without being unlikeable at investor groups? ;-)

One small goal at a time!

For the first time in over a month I feel like I had a good week!

I really do struggle with time management, goals and priorities, so meeting one of my goals this week feels like an incredible accomplishment, even if it is a somewhat small goal in the grand scheme of things. This week I set a goal of getting a website up on my domain that actually works and can capture lead information for me while I'm out of town for almost two weeks. It's a wonderful feeling to have accomplished that goal!

I did have to let some of the other things I have going on slide a bit. Just based on this week though, I think I've found a good formula to work with when it comes to my own schedule. Setting daily goals and making daily schedules and to-do lists just leave me feeling overwhelmed and unproductive.

This week I set one major goal: Design website and get it up and working. Then I had a couple secondary goals: Go to my "problem" rental to mow the grass and remove all the staging items to get it ready for the new tenant, and to attend a meeting for Local Real Estate Deals Magazine to go over some new and exciting things we're working on. I also had to make time for the kids and took them to the pool and park a few days. So all in all it was a very successful week! Several of my "bottom" goals did not even get touched, but perhaps they will one day have their turn being the top goal of the week.

The working website was a primary goal for me because I am aiming to capture as many leads as I can over the internet. Taking tons of phone calls all day long is not feasible for my life, and paying a phone service is not yet in the budget (but I know the value of them having used one in my previous REI company). So my new marketing and mailers are all going to be driving sellers to my site to capture their information. Cross your fingers that it works for me!

So if I didn't email you back or take your call or meet with you this week, I hope you'll forgive me for putting on my blinders and working diligently on meeting my first of many weekly goals to come. Obviously I don't want to ignore the world every week, but think of everything I could accomplish if I could!

My problem property gets a tenant... finally.

I have this rental property that's been a thorn in my side pretty much since the day we first acquired it. I bought it late last fall with my then partner, intending it to be our first minor rehab and then to rent it out after the fix up. We got seller financing and used a credit line for the simple rehab materials, and decided to do all the fix-up ourselves. Ideally we were hoping we'd be able to lease-option it to a first time lower-income buyer and give that person the chance to become a home owner, but it seemed like it was in a great rental area and so we were fine with straight renting it if we didn't find a tenant-buyer.

I can not begin to describe here all the things that went wrong with this property, both because of the house itself, because of the time frame we bought in and because of my partner's and my various shortcomings (lack of time, lack of agreement, lack of a pickup truck, etc.). Perhaps one day I will be able to share the grueling details with you all, but I think I need a little more time to heal first. I can say that lease-optioning didn't work at all, and finding a tenant has been a difficult puzzle to solve. The neighborhood was full of rented properties, the rent was right, and the phone rang consistently, but for some unknown reason I could not get a prospective tenant to move into the house. Its shameful to say this, but the property has been vacant all this time, and carrying costs are eating us alive!

So now we have a tenant ready to move in on the first of the month. Please praise the God or Goddess of your choosing for us. I find it interesting, though, that the longer this property sat around and did nothing for us but drain our bank account, the less and less I was interested in dealing with it. I know that logic dictates that I should have become more desperate to get it rented and therefore worked even harder, but the exact opposite is what actually happened. And it wasn't just me, my partner actually "lost interest" long before I even did, and only thought of this house when he wrote the check for the mortgage and called to ask me if I'd found a tenant yet.

How did we finally get it rented if we'd nearly mentally written it off, you may ask? We finally decided to hire a property manager. Sad, but the decision had to be made. We opted to have the management company only handle finding the tenant, I will still be managing the property after she moves in. Its a big blow to my pride that I could not get a tenant in the house myself, but at least now I do not have to duck the question at my REI meetings of "So did you get that house rented yet?" Ummm, no, hey what's that shiny thing over there?

I think its important to realize when you are not performing as well as you'd like to be and to know when its time to delegate things to someone who will get the job done and/or clean up your mess. Granted we probably should have delegated a lot sooner, but at least we made the decision to do it now before it got any later in the year. I had nightmares of crossing the one year mark of holding this house with no tenant!

So as of the first we will have no vacancies, hooray! Now I can concentrate on finding more properties without feeling guilty that I still have one sitting unrented and semi-forgotten. I think I'll skip looking in the same area as this particular house for a while though!