Just when I thought I heard all the horror stories, leave it to ABC News 20/20 to find even more. Real Estate Investing is full of surprises, and there are times the innocent turn to desperate measures to follow through with their dream.
The Landlords from Hell
The first featured a nice young professional couple that bought a San Francisco apartment building, in hopes of fixing it up, turning it into condo’s and reaping great rewards. Not a bad plan, especially in the high dollar areas of Northern California. What they didn’t expect was the difficulties of evicting the tenants. I’ve always known California has strong laws that favor the tenant. Unfortunately this obstacle caused this young couple to resort to desperate measures, landing themselves in a whopping 4 years in jail.
Texas, my home state and where my husband owns duplexes is a more landlord friendly state. In fact, the laws here support what is called a “landlord’s lien”, where if someone doesn’t pay their rent, the landlord has the right to enter the unit and remove valuable items, eventually sell and apply it to the rent.
What this couple did would be illegal even in Texas.
Where’d the house go? Part 1
The next horror story – the case of the missing house. This poor couple planned to fix up a nice old house that was in his family for generations, only to find that the house disappeared. What happened was the city demolished the wrong house! What is surprising is Barbara Corcoran (Real Estate Mogul) comment that this happens more than you would think, claiming you could find this in almost every City across the nation. Who pays for this mistake?
Where’d the house go? Part 2
Of course one of the issues we discuss when we go to field trips are specific issues in geographical areas. The Tampa Field Trip uncovered more information about sinkholes in the area, described as the city that lives atop swiss cheese like limestone. If you invest in Florida, remember that sink holes will scare any new buyer away. Consider buy and hold, not buy and sell, as you may not have a choice in that market.
“Good Bones”
Barbara Corcoran again shows she knows the ins and outs of real estate investing as they feature a hoarders house. Her suggestion was the same as one of MY real estate educators (Phill Grove) would say, “put everything in the swimming pool and cover it up”. (And yes, I had that one swimming pool from hell I wrote about HERE.)
Often times I find myself speaking with other investors, brainstorming on how to find leads – here’s one I never thought of: the county hoarder’s task force.
You might check #ABCNews recent episode series, “Home Sweet Home“.
My favorite was the Landlord from Hell. What do you think?