randian

Until the lender completes their foreclosure, the owner still owns the property post-discharge even if the BK filing indicates they're abandoning the property to the lender. Many debtors (and all too many BK lawyers, who should know better) mistakenly believe that after their BK discharge they no longer own the property. The problem for us is that the debtor has no right to sell the property until the trustee formally abandons it pre-discharge or discharge is granted without action by the trustee.

Since agreements for deed still require judicial foreclosure (at 8-10 months on average right now they're running way behind the statutory 5-month timeframe) in Florida, how are you selling that to the owner and getting their notarized signature on the necessary documents?

Jack Miller advocated doing that. When I pressed him on whether he'd actually done it, and whether it passed muster with a judge when the inevitable lawsuit by the borrower occurred, he refused to give an answer. That was good enough for me to avoid it. When the borrower sues, and claims your UCC foreclosure was an illegal end run around the Florida requirement that one must perform a judicial foreclosure when the secured property is real property, how do you expect the judge to rule? A Florida judge isn't going to ignore function over form.

Is 3.5% realistic in an expensive market like California? I'm thinking of doing some marketing there, but in markets like the SF Bay Area where $500k is median price (and that's a townhouse not a full-size SFH), 3.5% is a cool $17,500. That's a lot of money for the T/B to put up.

Do you have to wait for an actual response from the lienholder? And what address do you use, the payment address probably isn't the right one. Also, what about 5.085-b-3?

How does SearchTempest help? Most FSBO/FRBO ads are disguised realtor listings and they cannot be eliminated by manipulating search terms since they do not have the legally mandated disclosure. If one in ten ads are from homeowners you'd be lucky. You still have to go through every ad by hand, one by one. I can eliminate some by the wording of the headline, since real homeowners don't use hokey realtor-speak, but not all.

In some states HOA fees, like property taxes, come before the first mortgage if the HOA docs so provide. They could be responsible whether or not they foreclose.

Are you a licensed agent? If not, never ever claim to be representing anyone other than yourself.

I've tried offering agents that deal. They are remarkably resistant. I wish I knew what I'm doing wrong, it seems like a good deal for the agent.

It looks like the only thing that affects the contract itself are the required disclosures and covenants for 5.085, though I'm not sure how you get actual consent from the lienholder to verify the loan for, or accept payments directly from, the TB under 5.085-b-3-C-ii. It's also not clear if you can lease/option a home that has been refinanced or has a home improvement loan on it, given the requirement in 5.085-b-3 that the loan was "placed on the property by the seller prior to the execution of the contract in exchange for a loan used only to purchase the property". Obviously, refinance or home improvement loans were not used "only to purchase the property". It looks like lease/optioning such a property would be a per se violation of Texas Deceptive Practices statute according to 5.085-c, which contains extremely stiff penalties (refund of all payments of any kind, anybody?).

Wow! The required disclosures are 5x as long as the contract. How much of a hindrance to getting the seller's buyin is all that verbiage?

I used to bother reminding agents they shouldn't post ads without disclosing they're an agent, until I realized a) agents are never sanctioned for it b ) not one agent has ever stopped because I told them they should c) they'll keep doing it until somebody with real clout (not a mere citizen like me) makes a complaint, because the Board of Realtors doesn't care d) they rationalize their ethics violations by saying "I'm just helping a friend/co-worker/girlfriend/you-name-it" I've also bothered marking agent ads in the FSBO section using Craiglist's complaint feature, but that also accomplished nothing. Craiglist lets Realtors get away with spammy behavior that they wouldn't tolerate when done by us ordinary citizens. I've concluded that Craigslist doesn't really care what Realtors do even though CL specifically created the FSBO boards to confine Realtors to their own boards.

I believe I read it. Nothing specific on how to avoid your contract being characterized under TX law as non-executory. Having read the law, it's clear that neither separating the contracts nor signing them at different times are effective as avoidance mechanisms (TX Property Code 5.062(a)(2)). Neither is restricting the exercise period, according to one lawyer I read: signing an option today whose exercise period doesn't start for 6 months isn't effective at getting you under the 180 day "no hassle" window, because the law requires delivery of a deed 180 days after signing ("180 days after final execution", TX Property Code 5.062-c), not 180 days after the first day you are eligible to purchase. No comments on my proposed workarounds?

I'm curious what other investors are doing for workarounds in their contracts. I have a few ideas, but I'm not sure they're workable. 1) Don't give the T/B an option, give them a Right of First Refusal. LeaseOptionKing likes this strategy. The issue I see is that the T/B doesn't actually have any enforceable right to buy, and failure to disclose that could be construed as a Deceptive Business Practice, which in Texas is a horrible set of laws you don't want to run afoul of. Naturally, disclosing that is hardly likely to get your T/B to say yes to the deal. Your ROFR could specify that the owner must sell on a date certain, thus allowing you to exercise the ROFR at that time, but other than not having control over the timing of acquisition there's no real difference between that and a proper option, and intelligent opposing counsel will claim exactly that. 2) Rather than giving the T/B an option to buy real estate up front, give them an option to acquire a 60- or 90-day option to purchase real estate upon payment of some nominal fee. Therefore at no time during the lease, except during the 60 or 90 days after the "option to acquire option" is exercised, does the T/B have an option to acquire real property, and the transaction does not technically qualify as an executory contract according to Texas Property Code 5.062(a)(2). Even then, since the period of the executory contract is less than 180 days the onerous disclosure requirements of the TPC are avoided. I say "technically", because a judge could decide that the right to acquire an option is the same as actually having one for purposes of this section of the TPC.

You should pay close attention to geography too. I lost a nice chunk of change on a deal where the comps matched all those things except the part I didn't notice: the comps were only a block over, but literally on the other side of railroad tracks. The comps were for houses 20-30k more valuable than the house I bought. Had I lived in that area I would have known that. Ouch! On a lease-option deal you might not care, but if you're buying outright look out.

Why does Facebook even care if an account is "fake"? This is the internet, nobody knows you're secretly a banana slug.

"If banks don't know about all the deals involved, then a flopper is committing fraud. That's the bottom line." No, you moron, that's absolutely wrong. Disclosing your plans for a property is not one of the duties you owe either the seller or the lienholder, and therefore failure to disclose them is not fraud. Zwillinger should give up his license for being so stupid.

If there is I hope it's back in Dallas.

Assuming it's the same interview, look up the Lease Option Classes podcast on iTunes. Only 3 entries though.

Nolo Press has some self-help books on forming and running LLCs that have sample operating agreements.

Then demand to see the original receipt. If they won't do that, I'd pay a hundred or so bucks for a "wake up" letter on official letterhead from the nastiest shark of an attorney you can find. There a lot of people who hate businesses right now, I'd hate to be the defendant on a civil fraud case. The jury will be itching to hang you.

What sort of daily volume does landvoice produce? Are they as comprehensive in their coverage of FSBO websites as their tagline implies?

Unless the mortgage has specific restrictions against renting (as some government subsidized mortgages do) why would the mortgage company do anything upon learning the insurance has been changed to a rental policy, so long as the policy limits are sufficient and the payments are current?

Is generic business liability insurance sufficient for the LP business, or are there specialized coverages that I might need and should consider?

So you aren't mailing to MLS-listed properties per-se, that's just a side effect of the fact that most properties for sale are MLS listed?