When it comes to Ponzi schemers, Bernie Madoff and Lou Pearlman are rank armatures when compared to many of our elected officials.  Can you spell D-e-t-r-o-i-t?

A Ponzi scheme is a FRAUDULENT investment operation that promises to pay BIG returns to its investors.  Problem is, the investors are paid with money gotten from additional investors, NOT from profits made by the investment.  At some point, there aren’t enough additional investors to cover costs.  So the operation goes belly up, and the investors lose EVERYTHING!

Last week, Detroit declared bankruptcy.  It is the largest city in U.S. history to do so.  You see, Detroit owes its retirees $3.5 billion.  One small problem – Detroit is $3.5 billion light of having the $3.5 billion it needs.  In other words, the money promised to pensioners (police, firefighters, schoolteachers and government workers) isn’t sitting in a bank account somewhere.  Instead, money currently collected from taxes is being used to pay the retirees.  But because the city no longer has enough tax money coming in, they were forced to declare bankruptcy – which allows the city to clear ALL of its financial obligations and NOT pay its retirees.  Doesn’t this sound EXACTLY like a Ponzi scheme to you? Read More→

We’ve been managing rental properties and tenants for nearly two decades.  Over the years, we’ve learned TONS – mostly through the school of hard knocks! 

In the beginning, we were clueless – as green as the fungus between my toes.  In our middle phase of landlording, we often made things much more complicated than they needed to be.  These days, hundreds of tenants later, we’ve boiled down what we look for in a tenant to the ridiculously simple.

Here are the four things I need from a tenant: 1) Someone who will take good care of the property. 2) Someone who can comfortably afford to make on-time monthly payments. 3) Someone who is easy to deal with. 4) Someone who will be a good neighbor.

Let’s look at each of these four categories and explain why they are so important to landlords. Read More→

Last week, Kim and I drove to Savannah, Georgia to speak to the Savannah REIA (Real Estate Investors Association).  When teaching, in addition to presenting at a REIA’s monthly meeting, I do something most real estate investing teachers won’t do: I take the REIA members out to knock on sellers’ doors before the meeting.

Kim and I have built a very successful real estate investing business on the foundation of knocking on seller’s doors.  We don’t put out bandit signs (these are the “We Buy Houses” signs you see at intersections), we don’t do mail outs, and we have the WORST website in the world.

Lots of “gurus” TALK about knocking on sellers’ doors, but when it comes time to walk the walk, just try getting them into a neighborhood, out of the car and up to the door. Read More→

To steal a quote from Pete Fortunato: I have a very high opinion of my opinion.  I think that 99% of the time, I’m 100% right.  Welcome to Willieland!  Just imagine what beautiful Kim has to put up with every single day.

Real estate investors regularly call seeking our opinion about potential deals.  Too often, after we explain that their deal is probably a stinker, the “discussion” turns into more of an argument about what a good deal is and what it is not.  Let’s look at an example.

Since 2008, Fred has called about properties he puts under contract.   As far as I know, he has never taken my advice.  It seems he does one money-sucking, high-drama deal after another.

Last week, Fred called about a triplex he just put under contract.  Because the investment property is in a VERY bad area of town where gunshots regularly ring out, I advised him to run from the deal – even if the property was FREE!  Fred far from agreed, so back and forth we went. Read More→

Kim and I are headed to Tampa tomorrow to attend Pete Fortunato’s Acquisitions seminar.  Pete is THE BEST creative deal structurer we’ve ever met.  This will be the twelfth or thirteenth time we’ve taken this course!

This raised a question from a fellow real estate investor: Why do you attend so many real estate investing seminars?  You’re already successful.  Don’t you think seminars are just a big waste of time and money?

Learning is NEVER a waste of time or money – especially if you’re learning from GREAT been-there-and-done-that investors. 

For example, last month a fella called with a landlording issue.  He (let’s call him “Tom”) bought his daughter a home some years back.  She had moved out two years ago.  Because Tom owed a lot more on the house than it was worth, he couldn’t sell it, so he decided to turn it into a rental.

Despite absolutely NO training, Tom – with a wave of a magic wand – became a landlord.  After all, he was a pretty smart guy – so what could possibly go wrong?   Read More→

Most folks think real estate investing is about buying, then selling a house, and walking away with a big pile of cash.  This is known as “flipping.”

If your goal is to AVOID retiring wealthy, then flipping is definitely the way to go!  The government steals nearly half of a flipper’s profits, and the flipper often foolishly spends the other half on important things like vacations, boats, watches, cars, etc.

On the other hand, if your goal is to be financially free – to be able to do what you want, when you want, where you want, why you want – then CASH FLOW is king.  In other words, you want to KEEP your investment property and put someone in the home who will take good care of it and send you monthly mailbox money.

This is why, as a real estate INVESTOR, when a property sells, it hurts, and it hurts bad!  Sure, you gain a pile of cash, but you LOSE your all-important cash flow.

Remember – cash can be a very dangerous thing as well as a huge obstacle to achieving financial freedom.  Cash can make you stupid – especially if you are young!  It’s way too easy to turn a pile of cash into a shiny red thing that honks and drops like a rock in value the second you buy it! Read More→

Austin Boston Berry (aka Austin Boston) bought his first investment property about two weeks ago.  It’s a nice four-bedroom, two-bath, all-brick home on Grassdale Road in Cartersville, Georgia.  And here’s the best part – Austin Boston is only twenty-four years old!

The key to Austin getting this deal was his tenaciousness.  He stayed after this deal.  He met with the seller on a regular basis.  Kim described Austin as being a little bulldog – and because he’s a Georgia Tech grad, he didn’t like this moniker one bit!

But what if, because he didn’t have a contract to use, he didn’t give the seller a written offer?  It’s likely he would have lost this deal.    

Most folks think the scariest part of real estate investing is meeting with sellers.  It’s not.  It’s when you make an offer to a seller and the seller says…YES!

What’s so terrifying about the seller saying yes?  It leads to the all-important question: What do I do next?  So what DO you do next?  You document what you and the seller just agreed to: You write up a contract.

Contract?  What kind of contract?  Where do I get a contract?  What needs to be in the contract? These are common questions we’re regularly asked.  Here’s another: “What if I sign a contract with a seller but then change my mind because there’s something wrong with the house, or I can’t get financing, or I find a better deal…how do I get out of the contract AND get ALL of my earnest money back?” Read More→

In 1988, I was living in Paris, France with my brother, Sam.  Sam was a fashion photographer.  His job was to take pictures of lots of very pretty girls – and get paid to do it!  Needless to say, I L-O-V-E-D Paris!

I got a call from my dad.  My grandmother was very sick.  He needed me to fly home immediately.  Soon after I arrived, my grandmother passed away.  Part of settling her estate was getting her house, which was built in 1930, fixed up and sold.  This was my first attempt at a major rehab.

At first, I thought: No problem.  I’m mechanical and handy with tools.  I quickly realized that I didn’t know what I was doing and was in way over my head.  Each repair that I did took much longer and cost a lot more than estimated.  My frustration level shot through the ceiling.  All the while, my dad kept calling and asking, “What’s taking you so long, boy?”  I nearly went postal!

Fast forward to today.  Last month, Kim and I bought a house on Green Acre in Cartersville, Georgia.  It was built in 1969 and needed a ton of updating – walls, wiring, plumbing, kitchen, bath, fixtures, flooring, etc.  How does this rehab compare to my grandmother’s rehab?  There’s no comparison: the Green Acre rehab is as easy as eating pie. Read More→

What a difference three years can make!  At the May 2010 foreclosure auction, there were only 5 real estate investors on the courthouse steps bidding on 186 foreclosures advertised for sale in the legal section of the newspaper.  Two days ago, at the May 2013 auction, there were over sixty investors bidding on less than forty properties!  Good golly, Miss Molly!

Here’s just one example of how ridiculously high the bidders are pushing sale prices on the steps: A house at 15 Waters Edge in Acworth, Georgia had an opening bid of $57,500.  A house a few doors away sold at auction last summer for around $85,000.  The two houses are similar to each other. 

Our maximum bid price for 15 Waters Edge was $70,000.  The house needed a shave and haircut rehab – about $12,000 to bring it into perfect condition.  As the property was cried, the top-bid price quickly zoomed north of $100,000 – then climbed to $125,000!  When someone bid $150,000, my jaw hit the ground.  The winning bid on the property was an astronomical $168,000 – $30,000 more than the property’s current fair market value! Read More→

April’s foreclosure auction put Kim and me on a quest: To discover where the best real estate investing deals can be found.  Due to a huge increase in the number of bidders, a significant decrease in the number of foreclosures and rapidly shrinking profit margins, the most profitable deals are no longer happening on the courthouse steps.

To solve the mystery: “Where to find the best deals now?” Kim and I made a goal on April 5^th to knock on doors and talk to 60 sellers by the end of the month.  We started by knocking on every homeowner’s door whose home was slated to be sold at the May 7^th foreclosure auction.  In addition, every time we saw a For Sale sign in a yard, we knocked on that door, too.  (NOTE: You can read about our daily door-knocking results by going to North Georgia REIA’s Facebook page.)

What is the result of April’s door knocking?  We bought one house last week, we’re closing on a second this week (it’s a subject-to deal), and we have two short sale offers pending on properties that were due to be cried at May’s foreclosure auction.

To be clear: At the April 2^nd foreclosure auction, Kim and I got outbid – and outbid by a lot – on every one of our target properties.  In other words, we got our teeth kicked in and walked away with no deals and had none in the pipeline.  Knocking on doors immediately turned on the spicket and caused deals to gushed forth…and best of all, we had little competition! Read More→