lane
10-03-2006, 10:45 AM
I am a college student starting my fourth year of school; I live in a house a block from campus with 4 other guys my age. Recently three of my roommates and I have been thinking about buying this house. A few of our friends did this down a nearby street and it saves them a good amount of money, our rent would actually go to paying off the mortgage instead of lining a slumlords pockets. We feel we would get back the full price we pay because we are handy and intend to make improvements to the house ourselves. In the year and a half that we have lived here most of the repair work done to the place has been done by us. We usually just send the slumlord the receipt with rent since his “repair man” won’t return phone calls.
My questions here might be numerous and probably not all will be pertinent so stop me if I go off track of the goal. Hopefully someone here can touch on just a few things for me for starters.
• Should we start a company to do this through? If so what kind of business would give the four of us the most benefits?
• If I was to register for a company name now I assume it would be as simple as registering for an EID number on the IRS website and continuing from there. Stop me here if this is a stupid way to go about things.
If you are up for reading on I will give you an idea of the house we live in and why we believe it’s economically feasible for us poor college kids to buy it. First let me explain its age and what we have put together about its maintenance from our landlords over the last year. The house is an 1880’s built home that would probably have been one of the first houses built in this area. In more modern times the house was converted into an apartment building by some idiot who thought they could make more money renting it by room. Whoever came up with that scheme quickly folded and sold the house to a renovation company. The house was brought up to modern standards in the early nineties. These renovations saw the removal of the coal heating and gas lighting in their place we now have some wall lights and a really inexpensive central heating system for the first two floors. A support beam in the basement appears to have collapsed around this time and the owner was forced to put a new basement floor in to support an i-beam that could hold up the house. For good measure they threw new siding and a roof on the place to keep it from being a totally decrepit property.
This is where the house was apparently sold again and again to new landlord after new landlord. No improvements other than fresh paint have been made since the landlord swapping has occurred. Real Estate in this area is basically hit flat bottom since the houses are old and the area has high crime.
We plan to hold on to the property for another 2 – 3 years of schooling and then another 2 – 3 years renting it out before selling it. We plan to do all the work ourselves (permitting its legal to do so), including bringing it up to building code for a rental property in this area (it doesn’t make fire code because it lacks a central fire/smoke alarm system). We intend to get one of my partners parent in here to inspect the first floor to see if it’s feasible for us to knock out a wall or two to give the first floor a more open feel.
.:: EDIT ::.
I forgot to mention that I am unable to find this houses last sale in December of 2005 on the county auditor webpage. Where else might I go to find out how much the house sold for last?
My questions here might be numerous and probably not all will be pertinent so stop me if I go off track of the goal. Hopefully someone here can touch on just a few things for me for starters.
• Should we start a company to do this through? If so what kind of business would give the four of us the most benefits?
• If I was to register for a company name now I assume it would be as simple as registering for an EID number on the IRS website and continuing from there. Stop me here if this is a stupid way to go about things.
If you are up for reading on I will give you an idea of the house we live in and why we believe it’s economically feasible for us poor college kids to buy it. First let me explain its age and what we have put together about its maintenance from our landlords over the last year. The house is an 1880’s built home that would probably have been one of the first houses built in this area. In more modern times the house was converted into an apartment building by some idiot who thought they could make more money renting it by room. Whoever came up with that scheme quickly folded and sold the house to a renovation company. The house was brought up to modern standards in the early nineties. These renovations saw the removal of the coal heating and gas lighting in their place we now have some wall lights and a really inexpensive central heating system for the first two floors. A support beam in the basement appears to have collapsed around this time and the owner was forced to put a new basement floor in to support an i-beam that could hold up the house. For good measure they threw new siding and a roof on the place to keep it from being a totally decrepit property.
This is where the house was apparently sold again and again to new landlord after new landlord. No improvements other than fresh paint have been made since the landlord swapping has occurred. Real Estate in this area is basically hit flat bottom since the houses are old and the area has high crime.
We plan to hold on to the property for another 2 – 3 years of schooling and then another 2 – 3 years renting it out before selling it. We plan to do all the work ourselves (permitting its legal to do so), including bringing it up to building code for a rental property in this area (it doesn’t make fire code because it lacks a central fire/smoke alarm system). We intend to get one of my partners parent in here to inspect the first floor to see if it’s feasible for us to knock out a wall or two to give the first floor a more open feel.
.:: EDIT ::.
I forgot to mention that I am unable to find this houses last sale in December of 2005 on the county auditor webpage. Where else might I go to find out how much the house sold for last?