Investment Property Expert

Foreclosure Rates Stay Steady, but Serious Delinquencies Decline

Scott Ficek — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:02:47 +0000

We have not seen the bottom of this foreclosure market yet. This is especially true in the winter season and an uncertain political climate. While there is a bright note that the FHA has once again waived the Anti-Flipping rule to allow people to rehab homes and sell them quickly there are other gloomy stats.

CoreLogic’s Home Price Index shows a 4th straight month of housing price declines for November. Prices fell 1.4% from October and are down 4.3% year over year. Most of this decline is being driven by dropping prices on distressed properties (foreclosures and short sales), but ...

Rental Inspections Challenged in Court

Scott Ficek — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:27:55 +0000

The Minnesota Supreme court overturned a lower court ruling this week that could hurt the many cities that are now requiring rental inspections. The case involves a Red Wing city ordinance that requires that all rental properties have on-site inspections performed by the city. Any landlord that was unwilling to allow the inspection was issued an adminstrative warrant (like a fine).

According to the Court’s decision, the law as overreaching. It could be used to violate residential privacy rights and “could become the tool of choice for governments to enter people’e homes ...

Investment Property 101

Scott Ficek — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:16:40 +0000

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Three Interesting Housing Articles

Scott Ficek — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:40:37 +0000

I found these very interesting housing articles recently published.

BofA developing foreclosure rental programs to deal with distressed properties-BOA, Fannie and Freddie are trying to figure out how to move some of these non-performing mortgages or worse these REO properties that they own. Banks have an estimated $50 billion worth of REOs on the books right now. The thought is that banks may rent the house back to the people that lost it to foreclosure. They would do a short sale on them to an investor and rent it back to the previously owner. Interesting, but I think some of these people ...

Low Ball Offers on Foreclosures-Revisited

Scott Ficek — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:02:18 +0000

I wrote a post about how to write a low ball offer on bank owned foreclosure properties in September 2010. You can review that low ball REO post here. I think that all of my original thoughts remain. Surprisingly though, I get many questions about this process. One example is that there are 74 comments on that post! Lots of people are still confused by how much they can offer on a foreclosure. Let’s review.

Many of my customers and people that comment on the above post want to talk about tax assessed value, previous mortgage amount, how much work it needs, etc. The number one ...

How to Buy a HUD Home

Scott Ficek — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:46:09 +0000

In the past 12 months, I have been showing and selling many more HUD properties. I would estimate that 1 in 10 are HUD listings up from 1 in 100 just 2 years ago. The process is much different than buying a typical REO and you need an experienced agent that can help you navigate through the differences in the process.

I thought I would try to outline some of the unique aspects of the HUD home buying process. HUD (which is the Department of Housing and Urban Development) has foreclosed homes all around the United States.

What is a HUD Home?
Many of these houses were originally purchased with ...

Twin City Home Market Becoming More Balanced

Scott Ficek — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:50:46 +0000

August numbers show that the Twin Cities housing market is slowly becoming more balanced, a realtor group said Tuesday. But it’s not there yet — Twin Cities home prices dropped again in August. Read the full article at the Mpls/St. Paul Business Journal.

A Terrible Bedfellow

Scott Ficek — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:21:43 +0000

I have had two different customers call me in the last 6 months saying that their tenants have found bedbugs in their units. Unfortunately, both of these calls were from customers that owned 4-plexes. It turns out that bedbugs have become an increasing problem in the last couple years. More international travel and the bedbugs increasing resistance to long-used pesticides is causing an increase in reports.

It has become so bad that some municipalities across the US have put new regulations in place. In Maine, landlords must inspect a unit within 5 days or being notified of a possible infestation ...

PO Boxes & Landlords

Scott Ficek — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 14:58:58 +0000

I am not sure where this came from or who starting teaching it. I have heard many old-school landlords say that they use a PO Box for their rent checks. I guess the theory was that you don’t want your tenants to know where you live. I suppose in case of a zombie apocalypse that would be a problem or if you are a real jerk landlord I can see why you want to hide. Now days, using a PO Box to hide your location really doesn’t work. Using the Internet and Google, you can find out a lot about a person. Plus, the county typically has your address on your tax statements and those ...

Minneapolis Occupancy Limits

Scott Ficek — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:55:59 +0000

For as long as I have owned properties in Minneapolis, I have always been confused by the occupancy limits per unit. The official language of the housing rules and standards for occupancy is:

The maximum occupancy for a dwelling unit located in in these zoning districts [R1, R1A, R2, R2B, R3] is one (1) family plus up to two (2) unrelated persons living together as a permanent household, provided the family plus unrelated persons shall not exceed a total of five (5) persons.

Ok. Seems straight forward enough. So what does this mean?

Family is defined as: An individual or two (2) or more ...