My Third REIG Meeting

Yesterday was my third REIG (Real Estate Investors Group) meeting. Due to overtime at the bank I was running late and, on the way, I was debating whether or not I should go. From 6pm until 7pm is the “meet and greet”, followed by the main topic which is from 7pm until 9pm. The best part of the meeting is the meet and greet and it was already 7pm, so what's the point of going? Nevertheless, I decided to go and get it over with. Good choice.

I walked in late, but they were still in the meet and greet session. Yes! There were about 10-15 people at the meeting. The president, Carmel, asked me to introduce myself and I did… as Roger. I wanted to say my real name, but I didn’t like the idea of people with money looking me up online to find things out about me. I told them my whole story, and was somehow able to weave it into my questions about code enforcement and the certificate of compliance (C of C) that they’ve been hounding me about for property Charlie. The second I mentioned code enforcement, most of the people sucked their teeth or shook their heads. I asked them about whether I could ignore code enforcement letters for a while as I try to purchase more property. Carmel immediately shook her head and said that it’s never a good idea to ignore the notices. Eventually, she continued, they would take me to court and be complete assholes about every little thing. She’s going through the court process with them now and they give her a hard time because she ignored the first few letters.

Another lady mentioned that code enforcement usually looks for basic living standards, not the high standards that I’ve feared. She said that as long as I treat them nice and not antagonistic like most landlords, the officer assigned will be reasonable. And, if he’s not reasonable, I can simply request a different officer. After we were done talking about me, they went to talking about how to look up properties. They went on the NY.gov website and then clicked on the “Counties” tab. From there, one can look up the financial history of a property, which can help in deciding whether to purchase it. They looked up my county and a couple of addresses that were owned by some of the people at the meeting. We were able to see a picture of the place, the sales history, the acreage, the tax history, and even how big the rooms are. I sort of knew about this already, but I haven’t been using it. I’ll be sure to use this when looking at prospective property Deltas.

After that came the main topic of the meeting—self directed IRAs (Individual Retirement Accounts). I first read about the uses of an IRA in that Automatic Millionaire book my dad got for me a long time ago. The main thing is that the money put in an IRA doesn’t get taxed. Self directed IRAs are great because the investments made through the IRA are directed by the individual, not the company. So I can buy a property through my IRA account (instead of, say, my own bank account) and not have to pay taxes on the profits I’ve made. I can roll that money over into another investment, like owning a restaurant for example, and continue getting non-taxed profits. We went on a site for Equity Trust and ran down all the different things an investor can use this for. I mean, one can run an entire catalog of businesses and investments from his/her IRA and not have to pay taxes on the profits. It was pretty interesting and, if I was sure I would see the age of 59 (the age in which one can take their money out of an IRA without penalty), I might have opened an IRA account immediately. But being that my health history isn’t great and I scoff at the idea of making it to 40, I’m gonna leave IRAs and 401ks alone for now. If I make it to 50, I’ll consider it.

After the meeting was over, I got in my car and drove home with a good feeling. My third REIG meeting was a shining success, and took the bad taste of the second meeting from two years ago out of my mouth. I felt the same as I did after the first REIG meeting I attended. I’m still not sure how I’m gonna handle the code enforcement issue, but I’ll ask more questions about fines in the next meeting. It felt good to feel like an investor in a community of other investors looking for different ways to make money. Even today I feel pretty damned good about it, so there’s very little doubt that I’ll be going to next month’s meeting. Hell, I may even pay the $100 and become a member.

Best Tip of the Night: Be wary of buying in a village. Village properties come with village taxes that add onto the normal taxes. 

P.S.:  One question that was brought up interested me. Carmel wondered why a certificate of compliance was needed immediately after purchase. Ronnie Mud’s C of C was done in 2005 and expired in 2012 (a C of C is good for 7 years). So how exactly did Ronnie Mud sell property Charlie to me with an expired C of C? I’ll have to ask Marvin Wassle about that.