Author Archive
Pick An Area To Focus On And Focus On It!
Posted on December 30, 2013 byHappy New Year!! You may be reading this in early January even though I am writing this in December so I figured I’d throw that out. Hope you had a great Christmas season as well. It’s always my favorite time of the year. Our December one year ago I think was still our best month Wholesaling. We did 12 deals – which was insane. Don’t let up in the holiday season – it can be a good time to get deals.
So this month I want to talk about Focus. Real Estate investing in general has got to be the most distracting business out there. I’ve never been in a business where you can be going in 10 different directions. Using 10 different exit strategies and 10 different marketing techniques. I am/was one of those people. I thought I could be a “wholesaler/lease option/seller finance/subject to/fix and flip/short sale/REO/vacant land/note trader” Real Estate Investor. Now I still think I “can” be this, it will take time. I think there are some bad asses out there that are this Investor, but they are 10-20 years into the business. Don’t try to be an expert in 10 different types of deals right out of the gate. Perfect one – which means you are consistently making money from it – THEN move on to the next strategy. Then have 2 strategies going for a while until both are making money – THEN add a 3rd. And so on. Read More→
The Most Cost Effective Way to Find Deals
Posted on November 26, 2013 byAlright – Winter Time! Time to hunker down and do some deals before Christmas. You want to give out good gifts this year right? Well get to it then! It’s cooler out so you will be less tempted by the beach and the pool and can focus on your marketing and getting the phone to ring.
So as I am writing this article in early November, I’m thinking about the deals we did in October. It was actually one of our best months (after a bunch of slow months). We did (9) deals in October. Yeah – that seems like a lot. And they were some of the easiest deals we have ever done – and the way we found and executed the deals was about the most cost effective way you can get them. We spent zero marketing dollars – directly – on getting these deals. How is that possible you ask? Well let me explain.
Networking. The (9) deals were all accomplished just through networking. I found the sellers of the properties and buyers for those properties just through networking. No direct mail, no fancy websites, no bandit signs, no door knocking. Over the past year and a half or so we have been out there in the real estate investing game and doing marketing, meeting buyers and sellers, meeting other investors, meeting other real estate professionals – whether its Realtors, Title Agents, Contractors, Property Management, etc. We get out of the house a lot and do a lot of networking and do our best to build relationships. Read More→
Create Your Own Luck in Real Estate Investing
Posted on October 30, 2013 byHowdy! As I am writing this in early October, I’m celebrating my one year anniversary of quitting my job as well as our 50th deal, as we closed deals 48, 49, and 50 last week. We are also a couple of weeks away from our one year anniversary of our 1st deal back in late October 2012. So as I reflect back on these milestones and the last year, I wonder how to attribute our early success. Was it luck?
Sure, you can call it luck. I’m fine with that. So let’s talk about how to get lucky. But first, let me tell you a quick story about our 1st few deals. We started researching real estate investing and wholesaling real estate last spring (2012). We started reading some books, reading real estate investing blogs, and listening to podcasts. That summer we finally got into the game and started doing some marketing – bandit signs, driving for dollars, and yellow letters. We started going to REIA (Real Estate Investors Association) meetings religiously. The 1st few deals we put under contract went nowhere for various reasons – bad title, priced too high/won’t sell, seller backs out – we learned a lot. We also started to get very discouraged and nervous about this working out. Bad luck right?
Then in October of 2012 we finally did our first deal ($5K) and we realized that this stuff really works and is for real and obviously gave us a massive confidence boost. In November we did (2) more deals – small deals – but we were gaining some momentum and learning along the way. With one of those deals, the seller told us they had (12) more properties they wanted to sell. So I went ahead and said we would take all of them for a good deal and wrote up a purchase contract for all (12) – $275K – and we had to close within a few weeks. Crazy huh? Crazier yet was that the next week we got (2) more deals under contract that had to close within a few weeks (before Christmas). We had done (3) deals in our entire lives and now we had (14) deals that we had to close on. Would you consider that lucky or just us being freaking nuts? Well let’s find out what happens next. Read More→
How to Talk to Sellers and Buyers If You’re Just Getting Started in Real Estate
Posted on October 5, 2013 byOK! So you have decided you want to get into real estate investing and you have gone to some real estate seminars and classes and read some books. Great! You have learned that the next step is to put out some marketing to get leads coming in, like people that want to sell their house, and hopefully at a discount. So you have started doing one or more of the following:
- Mailing letters to home owners that say you want to buy their house
- Put out bandit signs on the side of the road that say something like “We Buy Houses”
- Have set up a website or websites that people find when they search “We Buy Houses” or other various search terms (“Sell my house fast”, “Sell your house fast”, etc).
- Have put an ad in the newspaper or Craigslist that says “We Buy Houses”, “Fast Cash for your home in as little as 3 Days”
- Have put out flyers around town with similar messages as the above.
- Or one of the other (96) marketing strategies that Dustin teaches us.
And then what happens? The calls start to come in. YEAY LEADS! Read More→
CASH or CASH FLOW???
Posted on July 31, 2013 byHope everyone is doing well and out there putting out their marketing, getting leads, and doing deals. You can’t make much money in real estate if you aren’t doing deals, right? Real estate “Deals” can come in many forms. You can have a wholesale flip, where you are basically flipping the contract for a fee or doing a double closing. You might be closing on a house yourself that you intend to fix up and resell (fix n flip). When you resell that house, which would be considered a deal, and that is when you get paid (my favorite part). You might have just bought a house from the bank or a wholesaler that you intend to put a renter in. You may have just stroked a deal with a home owner to “owner finance” their house and you intend to rent it out. Or, you were able to negotiate a lease option with a home owner with a nice low down payment and monthly payment, and you can turn around and lease option that to somebody else for a higher down payment and higher monthly payment – very nice!
Gotta love Real Estate – so many ways to make money!! But we’re not in it for the money are we? Yeah – we are. Ha! Read More→
