Update on 17 properties

Justin received my email to place contracts on 17 properties. One is already under contract. So now there are 16. To avoid me from having to write 16 earnest money checks and 16 option fee checks, I took pix of two blank checks with my signature only. Justin will make 16 photocopies of the blank checks and then he can fill in payee and amount for each contract. He uses docusign so I could electronically sign 16 contracts. But I would prefer Justin add my initials and signature to the contracts so I don't have to. But docusign works through my email address. I could give Justin access to my email address password so he could email me the contracts then go into my email account, sign them, then sign out. But i dont want him accessing my personal email account. Instead I set up a new gmail account to be used specifically for these transactions and gave Justin the password. Now he can send the docusign dox to that account, then he can go into the account and sign them for me, and then receive them back. I'll still have copies of the contracts in my personal docusign account. Justin has 2 HUD contracts to submit before midnight tonight. We'll get to the others this weekend. Christmas? Busy. Merry Christmas to all of you!

Shenandoah update, BofA, New Strategy

Shenandoah-the lender didnt like my offer, and the stated that there was an offer pending. Christie - is a BofA property. Note: BofA requires all bidders to he prequalified by BofA. Even though I'm an investor and paying cash, they want to pull my credit, see my paystubs, and complete a 1003. I asked the LO if she could waive the pQ based on my information. She said no. I told my realtor to submit my offer anyway with an explanation re the missing BofA PQ letter. We'll wait and see.
Justin sent me a list of 34 properties from the Richardson/plano/McKinney/farmers branch area. I cruised through and selected 17. But I decided to take a different approach. On a spreadsheet I put all 17 properties with asking price, then Zillow estimated market value. Then I added a column toff the tax value then another column for my market value per a market evaluator I use on InvestorBlock. Then I determined an offer price, property unseen. I sent the spreadsheet to Justin and told him to write up 17 offers (only one was a HUD property. The rest were individual owned or bank owned). Then I'll see what comes back. Probably counter offers. Then I'll visit those properties and determine the status of the counter offer. That way I don't visit 17 properties (gas and time) and I'll see who's serious. And I can use my option period to back out if I want to, or to amend my offer based on my inspection of the house. Yes, I may miss some good deals. But I will have a better chance of making a good deal on a good property. And I'm only trying to get one house right now anyway.
Any comments, let me know. Questions? Maschellhammer@yahoo.com. And please be sure to let a y of your friends or acquaintances that might be interested in real estate to subscribe by email to my blog and watch me as I go through the process of finding, buying, rehabbing and renting/selling a property. The more people we have involved, the better.
Mark

House Hunting

I looked at 4 houses this evening with Justin Miller with Keller Williams.  First house on W Spring Creek in Plano was a dog, too many foundation issues.  The second house on Shenandoah in Plano was a really nice house.  Occupied, it's a short sale.  I normally don't like those, too much paperwork.  But I told Jason if he'd do the paperwork we could put in an offer.  Market Value is around $125-$130.  Asking price is $106.  To get to 70% I need to be at $91,000.  Not a bad offer compared to $106 asking price.  I offered $60,000.  I can always come up to a counter offer.  And, being a short sale, it will probably take months.  We'll see.
Third house was on Spring St in Allen.  Bigger house, 2,273 sf, two-story, but a 4-bedroom.  Minor foundation problems, inside was nice.  New flooring and paint.  A few patch areas in the drywall, and a leaking bathtub upstairs causing an issue on the ceiling downstairs.  And speaking of ceiling, popcorn.  Biggest issues are redoing the ceiling, all new windows (all have lost their seal) and exterior siding replacement.  All is MDF board, not that good for long term.  I might consider redoing the whole exterior in hardiboard.  Expensive.  But the numbers.  ARV on this house could be $190-$200.  Asking price right now is $99k...already at 50%.  I'll offer $75k.  If I get it for that I'll put around $35k into the house and should flip this one for a profit of around $50-$60k.  If I rent it I would cash flow around $700/month.  But this house I would probably flip and get my cash out now.  It's owned by Bank of Oklahoma so, being a small bank (meaning, not BofA or Wells, etc) they may be willing to part with it quicker. We'll see what happens.
The last house was in far north allen, and was not worth the drive.  Small wooden house, 1,500 sf, reworked duplex, window a/c's, gas jet heaters (i.e. no central heating or air), two kitchens, a mess inside.  A total gut and redo, which I'm not into right now.  Also, not in a great part of town.  I passed on this one.
So house 2 and 3 get offers.
Tomorrow I look at two more houses with Vance, in Carrollton.  I'm working the initial numbers now, but will finalize them by tomorrow night and possibly submit offers on them.  Anyone who wants to accompany me to these two houses is welcome to join me.
With Christmas looming this weekend, I'll work this until maybe Thursday, then chill until next week on my return to Dallas on Wednesday.  Please be sure and call or email me if you have any questions.
I will try and take some pix in the future of the houses I'm looking at so you can get a better idea of what I'm looking at.

Princeton House

I went Friday night to view a house in Princeton.  Nice house, good price, but way out there. North of Rockwall. The address is 1200 N. 6th Street.  It's a HUD home.  Asking price is $46,000.  My realtor says HUD automatically considers any offer that's 92% of it's asking price (this house is open to investors at this time).  I offered $42,320 (92%). The bid deadline was midnight Friday night. We had it in around 11pm.  We'll wait until Monday to see if my offer/bid won.  House needs foundation work.  And 6th street is a fairly busy road.  The house is not in a subdivision.  And it has a church two doors down and a commercial property around the corner.  But for a rental property I think it will get around $950 a month.  The numbers weren't exciting on this property, but they were right at the basics.  Around $400 a month cash flow and $0 out of pocket with a $15,000 rehab budget.  Of course no utilities turned on so I couldn't tell about water/gas/electricity.
We also looked at the house in McKinney on Kentucky.  I didn't like this house that much. Minor foundation, so no big deal. But the house had no garage...just a two car carport, with a hodge-podge shed in the back yard. And the ceiling was popcorn that had enamel sprayed over it.  If it had been regular popcorn, I could accept that.  But the enamel over it meant that I couldn't match it in areas where I had to redo the ceilings because of the foundation issues.  So that meant having to redo the entire ceiling in the house.  And the kitchen would need revamping.  The house was "uninsurable" but we couldn't really see why.  HUD stated plumbing issues.  We couldn't see any visible plumbing issues, but, again, we didn't have utilities on.  It's across the street from a nice subdivision, so we can't really pull comps from that neighborhood because it's newer and nicer.  I'm not too confident about this house.
I also have another realtor pulling some houses in Plano for me that I'll be reviewing this weekend.  If I get the chance I may go look at some of them this next week and see what they look like.