Update on my USA adventure

[Player]

Ange, if you go to one of ozperp's posts on the previous page and click on the name in the top left hand corner, several options will drop down. Click on the second one that indicates "send private message"

Compose your message and send.....the rest is fairly intuitive.

Welcome to the forum

 

[INVSTOR]

Wow! Good on you! Congratulations Tracey! I hope it all goes smoothly. I'm sure you'll reap huge rewards.

 

[angie10]

Hey, thanks Player will give it a go.
ange

 

[Cherry Pro]

Hi Tracey

Good to read ! So inspiring. Stuff that dreams are made of.

Some day when that book is published, I know I'll say "read that first
on Somersoft".

Am sure it will all work well. Keep us posted.

Amelia

 

[Perp]

Thank you all for your support and encouragement. It sure is a wild ride; I can hardly believe I'm on this path myself, sometimes! But when I have those moments of feeling slightly overwhelmed, I think: "Somebody is going to buy this property; why not me? I've done as much research or more than most. I have the financial backing. And Dazz has taken much scarier leaps."

Anyway, I'm now in the process of memorialising the nitty-gritty in a contract. One suggestion that my buyers' agent got from his principal (who's a very experienced commercial property agent and investor), was to try and keep the vendor involved during the rehab, and align his interests with my own. The vendor is a very large and well-known investor, well-connected in the industry. This is one of his very smallest properties, that he bought 30+ years ago, and he's only selling because his partner has advanced cancer and wants out, pronto.

So we're now proposing to the vendor that he stays on for the duration of the rehab as a consultant, and instead of being paid back his vendor finance plus interest, will receive a profit share (based on bank appraisal upon completion). So he'll get less if the project under-performs, and significantly more if the appraisal goes higher.

 

[NedKelly]

Hey ozperp, your venture all seems to have gone quiet on the USA front. Are you making any progress?

 

[Perp]

I got slowed down by the flood (if you missed the news, our home got 3 feet of water through it during the storms in Brisbane on May 20), but yes, the deal's still alive.

We're sending documents back and forth negotiating the nitty-gritty of how the profit sharing will work, and the timing/amounts of monetary flows between the parties. I think we'll get there eventually. Hopefully even a bit sooner than "eventually".

 

[karina]

This sounds just like the deals Robert Kiyosaki is doing at the moment, attended his seminar last month and the deal they presented as an example sounded just like this one except I think it was a 300 unit complex. Good on you for having a go.

 

[Perp]

This sounds just like the deals Robert Kiyosaki is doing at the moment, attended his seminar last month and the deal they presented as an example sounded just like this one except I think it was a 300 unit complex. Good on you for having a go.

Thanks, karina! I didn't go, but Player did, and he tells me that Kiyosaki's "real estate expert" was recommending as his absolute hottest tip for real estate, to buy multi-family property in the very city in which I'm looking. It may or may not hold up, of course, but serves to reinforce my confidence that I'm on the right track.

 

[Sunfish]

Hi Ozperp. I listen to Jim Puplava's netcasts every weekend and he comments on many things "economic" and this weekend he covered (among other things) some worrying legislation Obama may pass re the energy efficiency of homes.

Seems he wants existing homes brought up to the standards mandated for new ones before they can be resold. Sounds like something you'd better do some reading on.

It is covered in the first part of the fourth hour, I think:

http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html

 

[Perp]

Nothing exciting to report, alas. My US mortgage broker played phone tag with me for a couple of months, then went silent. I eventually found out, just last week, that he "gained control of his trust fund" and thus is in the Bahamas drinking pina coladas. Good for him!

So I'm now working with another broker from the same firm, thankfully he sat in on my meetings with my original broker when I was in the USA, so I'm still dealing with somebody with whom I have a personal connection. He's bringing himself up to speed on the deal - which has become rather unusual/complex - and I should get some advice from him in the next few days about finance.

All the indicators in the area I'm looking at are encouraging. Very little to no construction happening, and even approved apartment complexes (several hundred doors each) are not being built because they can't be funded. Very bad for developers, fantastic news for me, as the housing shortage is going to get quite severe in about 5 years' time, IMHO. Prices are still falling modestly, tipped to bottom out in the next 3-6 months, only about 10% below peak. Jobs and population still growing, the regional economy has weathered the storm relatively well.

I had wondered if my broker's lack of responsiveness was because it's hard to fund a deal without a deposit ("earnest money" in their lingo), and had considered putting together a syndicate. I'm quite pleased, in a way, to learn of my broker's situation, because it may mean that finance wasn't the obstacle at all... it was just that my broker was winding down to retirement. If I can finance the deal without having to form a syndicate, it makes my life much simpler, and my share of the profits larger.