Oklahoma Is An Abstracting State

What this means is closing costs are higher than I am used to.Actually, I spoke with the escrow agent and got some more details. Oklahoma is one of the last states in the nation that uses Abstracts. An Abstract is a book that lists the original grant and all subsequent conveyances and encumbrances on the property. When you buy a property or get a lien on it, this book has to be updated and then run past a lawyer. You can image the extra costs that...

OK Property Purchase Moving Forward

My out of state property I mentioned earlier is located in Oklahoma and that purchase is moving forward smoothly. The contract has been signed and escrow has been opened. For the purchase of this property, I am buying it with one of my LLCs and using the second as a hard money lender to the first. This lets me get a cash price from the seller and then after escrow closes, I'll turn around and refinance it with a traditional lender. This means I'll...

AP Story About Fraud And Foreclosure Help

The Associated Press has a story about how rising foreclosure rates are leading to a rise in fraudulent foreclosure avoidance services. The story lists three of the most common scams. What caught my attention was the first one: A company loans or gives the property owner money in exchange for the owner signing over their house to them, money that comes from the built-up equity in their home. The former owners are now renters, but they get to stay...

PAQN Reverse Split Arbitrage Trade Completed

As mentioned in the comments of this post, I finally received some of my round up shares from the PAQC / PAQN reverse split arbitrage play. I received 100 shares in my Scottrade account on Friday. I am told I should receive another 100 shares in my Schwab account today or tomorrow.This morning, I sold the shares in my Scottrade account for $1.15 per share. If you recall, I purchased 30 shares at $0.30 each. My total cost was $16.05. I held the shares...

Next Property On The Way (Hopefully)

I've decide to get a jump on one of my goals for 2007 and am in the process of picking up a new rental property! This one will be out of state and I'll be using a property manager to manage it. The property is currently rented with a lease though November. I won't say anything else because there are no contracts yet, but I'm excited about the opportunity.I hadn't planned on investing out of state mainly because I didn't want the headaches that can...

PAQC / PAQN Round Up Shares Distributed

If you have been following the comments of this post, you'll know that another reverse arbitrage play I tried was Point Acquisition. The reverse split occurred back on December 12 and I and several other have been anxiously awaiting our round up shares (the shares needed to bring us up to a round lot of 100 shares post-split). I spoke to their transfer agent today and she tells me she received authorization to send out the round up shares and they...

Meeting With Live Free Investment Group

I met with Derek Jarr this afternoon to talk about his filled lease option properties that his company sells. Specifically, I wanted to address the questions that Kenric and some others raised in comments to a previous post about this. What all the questions really come down to is how does the investor cover his butt and prevent the former owner from raising legal issues a year or two down the road when their option and pre-paid rent run out?First...

TransUnion Credit Report

Another year has gone by and it is time to request my annual free credit report from TransUnion. Last year, I had a couple of corrections to make on my report and a few on my wife's. This year, I was pleased to see my report looked 100% correct. I also paid $7.95 and got my credit score. Normally, I don't do this since I know my credit is good and don't really care about an actual number. This time however, I was curious to see my score for a couple...

Filled Lease Option Properties Radio Show

Here is a link to the John Tarr radio show I was listening to last weekend that featured Derek Jarr talking about filled lease option properties. (Warning: this is a 73 MB file.) I'll be meeting with Derek tomorrow to talk about these deals in more deta...

The Importance Of Following Up

"Mind you own business" is always good advice. No one will ever care about your company or your finances as much as you will, so you need to be extra diligent in these matters and not assume people will get things correct, done on time, etc. A perfect example is my current issue with the Danbury Connecticut Tax Collector's office.Yesterday, I faxed over a copy of my 1998 Connecticut state income tax return. This was a Part Year Resident return and...

Who Says Mobile Homes Are A Bad Investment?

Mobile home owners in a Florida beachfront mobile home park agreed to sell their park to a developer for over $510 million in 2009. If the sale goes through, most owners will get over one million dollars. The full story is he...

Potential Credit Problem - Update

This morning, I tried calling the collection agency that sent me a letter yesterday that said I owed the City of Danbury over $400. I got voicemail again, so I called the Danbury Tax Collector's office directly. Turns out, the bill is for a tax on my old car for the period from Oct. 1998 to Sep. 1999. I moved out of Connecticut in January of 1998, so this obviously doesn't apply to me.The Tax Collector's office transferred me to the Tax Assessor's...

Blast From The Past - Potential Credit Problem

One thing I dislike about living in the West is that many times the companies I have to deal with a headquartered back East and by the time I get home and check my mail, their offices are closed. As someone who likes to jump on problems and get them resolved right away, it frustrates me to be forced to wait until the following day to respond to something I received in the mail. Today is a good example.I got a letter from a collection agency who claims...

The Next Investment

I've decided to get a head start on my New Year's resolution to buy at least one rental property this year for my personal investment portfolio. I think I may even be able to do it with no or very little money out of my pocket.Over the weekend, I heard an investor / businessman on a real estate investing radio program talk about filled lease option properties that his companies sells. Now, I've been aware of these for a while because I've been on...

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

It appears I've been tagged not once, not twice, but three times for this particular topic. Thanks, I suppose, to Building An Empire, Savvy Saver, and TheLandlordBlog for this dubious honor :-) Sorry about the delay - my day job company shuts down for the week between Christmas and New Years, so I fell behind in my blog reading for a while and just now found out about this. Wait, does that imply I only read blogs while at work? Umm.. That's not what...

MSNBC.com Story on HomeVestors

Newsweek spoke with John Hayes, CEO of HomeVestors in an msnbc.com exclusive interview. It's a bit of a fluff piece, but he does briefly address the real estate slowdown, TV shows like "Flip This House", and the misconceptions of people wanting to flip houses.The point I find interesting is that he says a franchise costs $49,000 plus an additional "couple hundred thousand" in capital to get started. Since this is a franchise, franchisees will also...