Messages

1

Questions and Answers / Re: Electrical safety inspection - What are the dos and don'ts?

« on: June 23, 2014, 03:19:01 PM »

Hi,

Have an electrical safety inspection on our first property. Since the place had been vacant for a few years.
My question relates to the condition of the house. It is a big dump (lot of junk and garbage still
Inside). There is also some superficial damage to the dry wall etc. Does all this make a difference? Has anyone had any experience with an inspection like this in similar conditions. Junked place etc etc.

Any insight would be helpful.
 

It sounds like you have booked a "general inspection" with ESA.  That would be required to get the hydro turned back on if it's been off for a long period of time (I believe it's 6 month's or more).

The inspector is just looking at the electrical so he won't care about the garbage.  Some holes in the drywall shouldn't matter either as long as the wiring behind it is in good shape.  He will be looking for electrical issues that are dangerous or not up to code such as open air connections, damaged wire, missing box cover's, etc.  If he find's anything he doesn't like he will give you a list of deficiencies to correct before you can get the hydro turned back on. 

If you think there are any electrical issues then you could take Frank's advice and have an electrician come in before ESA shows up.  It may save you some time as you won't have to wait for them to mail you a deficiency list, take out a new permit to do the work, fix the issues and then wait for them to come back and inspect again.  If you think the wiring is Ok then you can just get it inspected and save yourself some money.

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Questions and Answers / Re: Does anyone have the result of the recent taxsale in Haldimand County?

« on: February 27, 2014, 01:48:05 AM »

If the building is mostly steel and concrete I would doubt the grow-op did much damage.  I wonder if the grow-op will make mortgage financing an issue.  It's getting pretty hard to find a mortgage lender who will lend on residential grow-ops outside of the GTA these days.  If industrial grow-ops are treated the same it could negatively impact the re-sale value.

Thanks for the karma Jayz!

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Questions and Answers / Re: Does anyone have the result of the recent taxsale in Haldimand County?

« on: February 26, 2014, 01:32:25 AM »

especially that building. Is that a good deal went unnoticed?

Property 1: No Bids
Property 3: Sold $60,000 (the only tender)
Property 4: Sold $4,500 (the only tender)
Property 7: Sold $9,100, second highest $6,095

No idea if the building was a good deal or not.  I wouldn't want anything to do with a big industrial property in the middle of nowhere but I guess at least one person thought it was a good enough deal to put in a bid.  (I assume you where referring to property number 3)

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Questions and Answers / Re: Does anyone want to share costs of parcel searches?🐊

« on: February 25, 2014, 12:16:59 AM »

Johny, when you started this string of posts I thought it had legs and could be very helpful to everyone. I was betting with Dave2 via private post that with his help we could push the readership up to 1000. Well, it now sits at 1050, and we have all learned a lot. I moved your Karma away from negative, early on, because you had started a valuable thought process regarding managing the cost of assessing the risk inherent in tax sale purchasing. Great start, and welcome aboard!💰

Thank you for the warm welcome g2020 and thanks for fixing my Karma. I wasn't really sure what the "Karma" on here is all about but I was pretty sure negative couldn't be good! 

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Questions and Answers / Re: Does anyone want to share costs of parcel searches?

« on: February 18, 2014, 05:12:26 PM »

If the deals are out in the boonies then perhaps instead of asking who wants to share costs on searches I should have been asking who wants to carpool?

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Questions and Answers / Re: Does anyone want to share costs of parcel searches?

« on: February 17, 2014, 04:14:20 AM »

Dave2,  I was referring to a parcel search from the LRO not a title search from OTS or Tri-Target.  If the parcel search looks clean then time to consider further investment.  I'm not too worried about tipping anyone off.  The properties are advertised in the local papers and they're also all over the internets.  I figure that's why there are so many properties that sell at or above market value.

g2020, Nobody's interested so far. 

Either nobody wants to tip anyone off that they're interested in a property or maybe I'm the only frugal/cheap one looking to cut costs.

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Questions and Answers / Re: Does anyone want to share costs of parcel searches?

« on: February 17, 2014, 03:47:29 AM »

Johny, I have been watching to see what the responses to your request would be. Zip! Diddly squat, just as I suspected! It would seem that no one wants to help out their competitors by lowering the cost of a parcel register. However, if the true cost was just 8 bucks, as you infer, then it is not worth the bother. I am cutting back due to the high number of redemptions, but I still budget about $500.00 per sale, and only plan to look into about 10 of the hundreds of sales coming up this year. You can either do your search before, or after visiting the properties - I prefer the later. Consequently I do relatively few searches and the majority of my expenditures are the costs of travel, food and lodging, because us old farts like to spend our time and money looking at what we are tendering. Now Johny, about the 8 buck search. Each parcel register investigated costs 8 or more, and I like to know something about the neighbours, so add in another 8 apiece, and then you have the sheriff's searches checking for lien's against each owner, costs of instruments, and don't forget the parcel map for another buck to make sure you have the correct property for the PIN, part of the PIN, or multiple PINs being sold. You will probably be set back 30 to 50 bucks for each property properly searched, and still have no actionable information. My point is, why even bother doing a parcel search? To put in a good tender you only need to know two things - what is the property worth, and are there government liens and mortgages that you will become responsible for. Have your lawyer do the searches after the sale, and if you have taken my previous advice of never bidding more than 15k for anything, then you just walk away from a deposit of up to 3 k in a very unlikely situation.
Yes, you heard me right, do not do title searches. Buy an MPAC report, a GeoWarehouse report, or the new inclusive MPAC report that just came out to compete with the Taranet's GeoWarehouse offering. What is Teranet? Teranet is a privately owned company that bought the land registry systems from the Province of Ontario - that is who gets your 8 bucks (or more like 30 to 50 if you do it right). Buy the GeoWarehouse report and you get most of what you were after in your parcel search such as selling price, owner information, mortgagee and mortgage data plus much more such as square footage of the buildings, number of washrooms, year it was built, ceiling heights, property dimensions, assessed value etc. - real actionable data so that you can decide what to tender. Is that not all you want to know? - what to tender?
New tools are coming out all the time. Find some realtor buddies to share the costs of the newer tools and I might just be able to stay here in Florida one heck of a lot longer. Count me in!

G2020, I guess the parcel search is the first step of the screening process when looking at a property.  If the parcel search shows no crown liens or other scary stuff then it would make sense to invest more time and money into further investigation.

That's an interesting strategy bidding only $15k or less.  I'm still fairly new at this but I assumed $15k wouldn't buy much at a tax sale. I'm guessing maybe some vacant land or a dilapidated house in the boonies?

I do have a Realtor buddy to share the costs of the new tools if you are interested.

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Questions and Answers / Does anyone want to share costs of parcel searches?

« on: February 06, 2014, 01:08:26 AM »

Greetings fellow tax sale hunter's.  I'm finding that there are not many deals to be found in my area.  In my last local tax sale the property likely sold for more than it would have on the mls. 

So now I plan to broaden my horizons and start looking at tax sales in a larger geographical area. 

To keep costs down a bit I was wondering if anyone is interested in sharing the costs of parcel searches in different area's.  For example if we could have 10 people split the cost of an $8 parcel search we could each get a copy of the search for 80 cents each.

Or if 10 people split the costs of 10 different $8 parcel searches we could each get 10 searches for just $8. 

We would have to work out the logistics such as who does the search (ideally someone local), how to make payment (maybe email payment to the searcher?), how many days before the sale to do the search, etc.

Curious if anyone else might be interested in sharing costs?  I'm also open to suggestions if anyone has better idea's, comments or suggestions.

Cheers,