Virtual Real Estate Assistance

More and more home owners are becoming absentee owners, maybe they inherited a house or a tenant has abandoned the home or the for-sale-by-owner has for whatever reason had to vacate the property prior to renting or selling it. 

Many f.s.b.o.'s of vacant properties are already upside down on the property.  They have zero equity and can neither afford or are too busy or too far away to manage it themselves and wind up abandoning the home to foreclosure.

What is a Virtual Real Estate Assistant?  A V.A. is like being in two places at once.  For a very modest price, a Virtual Real Estate Assistant can provide the f.s.b.o. an affordable alternative to listing with a Realtor by continuing, in the owners' place, to handle any repairs, cleaning or yard maintainance necessary.  My Virtual Assistantance service is a one-stop operation.  For a modest flat fee I perform an inspection, take pictures of needed repairs and provide repair estimates.  For an additional sur-charge, based on the scope of the work, I will oversee to completion those authorized repairs and maintainance . While I am not opposed to working with the owners' contractors, I have worked with many real estate professionals over the years and have my own sub-contractors whose prices have proven to be very competitive due, in part, to the repeat work that I am able to provide and pass along.

As an Investor I am also available to offer assistance if the home owner needs help renting or selling but cannot afford to pay a huge commission.  As an Investor, I can offer a non-exclusive, flat fee service to help get the property sold.  Compensation for this service is paid at closing, there are no up front fees.  My clients can take advantage of my 20 years in real estate sales and management without paying those high real estate commissions.

Find a Virtual Real Estate Assistant in your area.

For more info visit: http://www.hasslefreedeals.com/Virtual_Assistance.html

When a Tenant Breaks the Lease

When a tenant breaks their lease in Georgia they not only lose their security deposit but remain responsible for the rent until the property is re-rented.

How is this accomplished? It depends on a lot of things. You should have some information regarding where they work and bank from their lease application, checks and pay stubs. When I can I try to collect post dated checks from the inception of the lease, no one wants to be charged with passing bad checks. I always get a parent to co-sign for a student because most of these kids are clueless and self-serving, the written agreement means nothing to them.

So, if you have banking info and know where they or their co-signer works you can take them to small claims court and if you win you will be able to freeze their bank account, garnish their wages etc.

It's a process that can take time.  The best advice is to keep the security deposit, move on and get that thing re-rented.  Sometimes it's just not worth the time & effort to legally pursue a breach of contract suit.

To each their own.

Foreclosure and Bankruptcy is Looming

Unable to sustain the payments on my little 2 bedroom bungalow, I couldn't sell it for what I owed, couldn't rent it for what I was paying and then my short sale was cut short, that was 3 months ago.

Still waiting to see my name in the foreclosure section of my local newspaper.  I can't figure out what the lender is waiting for.  The house is vacant and they are maintaining the yards but other than that nothing is happening.  The last communication was an email detailing short sale terms that neither I or my buyer could meet, since then my contract expired and my buyer has moved on.  I am left waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Bankruptcy seems inevitable, I just don't have the money for attorney fees yet.  Meantime, I've moved into one of my rental apartments and have had to stop paying on my credit cards in order to maintain. No one is hiring people in my age group so, I will have to rely on my wits to get through this.

Marketing Using Postcards

I am guilty of trying different methods of marketing for motivated sellers and qualified buyers.  Many of the "gurus" out there swear by direct marketing.  Beware however, due to its repetitive nature; direct marketing can be quite expensive.  You can go online and find different sources for lists; some are trash so you have to do your homework.  Almost six months ago I started a new direct mail campaign using yellow postcards I created at http://www.click2mail.com. I found http://www.listsource.com and purchased three different lists targeting both buyers and sellers and mailed them out.  The initial response is never what it's hyped up to be, so I was not thrown off by the fact that I received only a handful of responses.  The point I wanted to make here is that I am still getting calls on those postcards, six months later!  I just got a call from a guy who lives six hours away who has a vacant house here.  I'll look at some stats over the next couple of days and follow up with him.  I can't say that the postcards didn't work, but I could not afford to continue the mail outs.  Needless to say, one flip would more than justify the time and expense spent on the cards, but time is money and at present I need more of both.
Once you get the phone ringing what's next?  I have experimented with using two different approaches with sellers.  The first approach allows for full disclosure and uses a non-exclusive option
agreement for the A to B transaction and uses standard sales agreements for the B to C and then the A to C transaction.  As a former Realtor, full disclosure is important to me.  However, as an Investor I
find that the more I disclose the more confused the seller becomes.  The second approach is less direct but uses a one page purchase agreement between the seller and myself and an assignment agreement between me and the end buyer.  I am confounded by the fact that sellers do not appreciate that I can offer them the same services as a Realtor for less.  I have actually been accused of acting like a Realtor, as if there were something wrong with that!                                                                            
Since my intent is never again to have to close and take title, the first hurdle I face is finding motivated sellers that are not suspicious of that, secondly I need to negotiate the price down low enough to compete with foreclosure values and lastly I have to find the right end-buyer.  All these things have to align before you can cash out and believe me, when that happens, it's a true miracle.  That's not to say that it doesn't happen, it does, but it is a huge numbers game requiring patience and persistence and lots of luck.

We Don't Negotiate with Poor People

I had stopped making my mortgage payments at the beginning of the year. I knew that being three months behind would launch the foreclosure process. No surprise when I was notified of a foreclosure date scheduled for the first Tuesday in April. In the meantime, I found an investor/buyer that was willing to go through the nightmare of negotiating a short sale if I handled all the paperwork. So, at the end of March '10 I requested loan modification paperwork from my two lenders and was able to stall the foreclosure.  I knew that I didn't want a loan mod but that's where I had to start as far as the paperwork was concerned.  I filled out the request, provided my financials, a hardship letter, bank statements, my tax returns and an option to buy.  I submitted all this information to both lenders at the same time.

While I had no experience with short sales, I had been in real estate for over 20 years. I had heard about how hard it was to close a short sale and a lot of it has to do with the lenders involved.  After a lot of emails back and forth with the first lender I was told that their investor had a minimum requiring they net at least 85% of the appraised value, no problem. So, the first lender ordered an appraisal report. I met their appraiser and provided my own comps hoping to bring the value down to the offer amount. The appraisal came back in the range I had expected, no surprises. The fact that the value was close to 55% of what I owed, broke my heart.
Meanwhile, the second lender started shuffling my file around from department to
department where I started over each time and provided more and more
information each time. Every time I spoke with someone new, I submitted the same paperwork plus whatever else they wanted. To make a long story short, six months past before the 1st lender decided that they didn't want the 2nd lender to receive anything on the HUD statement! In order for that to happen I would first have to settle up with the 2nd lender before I could close with the 1st lender on any short sale. 
Well, that little distinction resulted in my file being transferred to yet another
department within the second lenders maze.  It wasn't just departments that changed, the criteria by which they could negotiate with me changed. At first, when we thought we could settle with both lenders on the same HUD at the same time, the minimum acceptable bid the 2nd would consider was 5% of the sales price due at closing, which I was able to get the investor to agree to pay.  When the departments changed and they realized that I couldn't close without settling with them first, the minimum bid became 35% of the balanced owed and it was due whether we closed or not. That decision, to shut out the 2nd lender, effectively killed my deal. The buyer was not going to pay anything up front with no guarantee of reaching a settlement with the 1st lender and I certainly didn't have that kind of cash or credit or access to it from family and friends.
Communications with both lenders ended as far as I was concerned after more than six months of emails and telephone conversations culminated with the 1st lender denying the 2nd lender to be on the HUD, then they wanted an additional $25,000 be added to the sales price plus they wanted to order a 3rd appraisal since more than six months had passed, it was just their policy I was told. I wasted 8 months trying to avoid a foreclosure and minimize the lenders' loss, and my own, to no avail. It’s been more than two months since everything fell apart, both lenders continue to call me; I continue to reject their calls. Neither has contacted me by mail or email nor have I heard from the foreclosing attorney.  I don't know what to think except that my file is sitting on
someone's desk under a pile. I thought they would've foreclosed in August, then in September and now it's the end of November! I could've been living in the house or rented it out or something while going through all this, instead, fearing foreclosure was imminent, it stands vacant and abandoned. 
My experience with this makes me think that neither lender really wanted to negotiate with me. I wish they had just said "we don't negotiate with poor people" and spared me these last eight months of anguish and uncertainty.