Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

Blue Collar Genius Defined

A Blue Collar Genius is all of us who have mastered our craft with hard work, diligence, taking action, creating experience, making mistakes, and most importantly never giving up!

That’s a blue collar genius by my definition. How many times have you said I’m smarter than he is, but he’s driving the big Cadillac and you’re driving the little economy car? How could that guy ever make any money?

Perspiration, Inspiration, and Blue Collar Genius’

Thomas Edison said “Genius is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration”.

The Top Real Estate IRA Investors Know Lack of Knowledge = Fear

How many people do you know that have been to every seminar, they know more about real estate IRA investing than anybody you’ve ever talked to, and when you ask them “how many deals have you done?”, they say “Well, I’m still working on my first deal.” You ask, “How long have you been a member of the group?” You’re not shocked when they respond, “About eight or nine years, but I’m looking.”

Knowledge is wonderful, but you have to actually use it! Read More→

In my last article, I explained that there are two approaches investors can take to determine whether or not a lender has been negligent or committed fraud.  The first approach I described is to look through the paper trail to dig up issues.  The second approach is to follow the money.

Not many people truly understand how the mortgage and finance industries work.  It’s basically a shell game with them moving money around with little regard as to the laws and regulations that govern how banks are supposed to act.

They play this constant game all supposedly in the name of increasing the money supply. Attorney Neil Garfield describes the process as the bank starting out with $100 in the left pocket and taking $10 out to deposit in the right pocket, but still reporting to the SEC and investors that the full $100 is still in the left pocket.  When the next $10 comes out, described as trading profits or a fee, the amount in the left pocket is still reported as $100 rather than the $80 that is actually there.  Read More→

Many Investors and Realtors avoid short sales like the plague. They are definitely missing the boat! My business specializes primarily in short sales and I have seen an increase in the number of approvals we are getting. The time line for a short sale varies from 90 to 120 days if you submit the lender a “complete” short sale package. Since short sales are dominating the market, the Lenders are creating more streamlined processes to conduct smoother short sales. If you do short sales, then I am quite sure you have heard of the online system called “Equator.” Equator allows all of the short sale paperwork to be processed electronically through one common venue, versus traditional and random faxes and emails. Having a file processed online avoids the common objection from the short sale lender of “We didn’t receive the documents.” Effective January 1, 2013, the newest lender that has started to use Equator is Chase. The following lenders and servicers are presently using Equator: 1) Bank of America, 2) Chase, 3) Wells Fargo, 4) GMAC, 5) Nationstar, 6) ASC, 7) Carrington Mortgage, and 8) Homeward Residential Services.

The Equator System assigns applicable tasks to each party (Agent, Negotiator, Closer, etc) including a deadline in which to complete each task. I like the fact that the lenders can no longer say “Oh, we never got that paperwork.” However, I don’t like the fact that they are tracking our information. Nationstar has taken the collection of Buyer’s information to a whole new level. They require all Buyers to fill out a loan application even though they most likely will not be using Nationstar as a lender. This application has been mandatory and this has not been waived on any of my files. If you are a Buyer on any property, you are required to provide your name, address, telephone number, DOB, SS#, assets, employment history and more. This is regardless if you are purchasing for investment or personal use and if you are getting a mortgage or paying cash. Read More→

“I’m known for my handwritten notes.” ~ Pamela Anderson

 You’re driving your Uncle Bugsy to the doctor when you spot a “for sale by owner” sign in front of a nice little brick house. You’re already running late, but you’ve been watching this house – it’s got a big blue tarp draped over the roof – for a couple of months now. You’ve got no pen and paper, and you won’t have time to stop later. Sure, you can snap a picture with your cellphone, but you’d really like to take some notes, too.

Unfortunately, Uncle Bugsy isn’t known for his patience, so you’re only going to have about a minute before he starts complaining about how inconsiderate kids are nowadays.

What should you do?

If you have an iPad, the solution is a great little app called CaptureNotes. CaptureNotes might look like just another note-taking application, but it’s not. Yes, it lets you do all the usual note-taking things: create notes, choose the type of paper and ink color, and doodle and scribble on a touch screen. So far, it’s pretty ordinary.

But there are three other things CaptureNotes does that make it really useful for us as real estate investors. Read More→

By remembering just a few basics, you, as a Real Estate Investor, can quickly determine whether or not a seller is motivated to sell their property. First of all, a motivated seller will ask questions like “how soon can you buy my house?” or “How can you help me get out of this situation?” or “How soon can you get here?” An experienced Real Estate Investor knows these are really good questions for a seller to ask.

There are two types of houses we are going to buy, either pretty houses or ugly houses and there are motivated sellers in both of these categories. When you are marketing to sellers, there are certain types of sellers who are much more likely to have a house they need to sell.

For example, I personally like working with out of state owners (folks who own a property where you live but don’t live there full time), heirs, divorces, vacant houses, estate and probate properties, military transfers and pre-foreclosures. These sellers are much more likely to have a house they need to sell “right now” and that’s the kind of seller you want to work with. As a Real Estate Investor, you may also run into landlords who are fed up with tenants ruining their properties over and over. These are all good sources of motivated sellers. Most of these sellers are folks who don’t live in these properties. Read More→

It is the goal of this column to answer questions about QuickBooks and how it is used in the real estate investor arena. Know how to record transactions in the proper way and have your set of books in good shape when it comes time for taxes. It is our intention to do this by you the members submitting questions to Karen@smallbusinessadvisor.biz, and getting answers here in this column.

Q: I am having difficulty reconciling my bank account.  I have reviewed each entry and have found that several of my deposits do not match the amount the bank has for them. How do I see all my detail on each deposit without clicking on each one to open it?

A: Go to Reports – Banking – and look for a report called “Deposit Detail”. It will give you line-by-line detail of your deposits in one report and you can compare that to what you have in the bank.  If you make copies of the checks for each deposit and put it with your deposit ticket on each one, that will give you a paper back up of what you actually gave the bank. This way if the bank made the error then you have details of what you produced to the bank. Read More→

“Greedy people bring trouble to their families, but the person who can’t be paid to do wrong will live.” (Pr 15:27)(NCV)

 The relentless drive to acquire the elusive “American Dream”, is what fuels many business professionals. To many, in pursuit of the world’s definition of success, means “getting more and more”, “climbing the corporate ladder at all cost”, or perhaps it means “the end justifies the means, no matter what!”  This kind of ill-advised pursuit requires that a person disconnect other areas of life that makes significant demands on their time and attention. One way to separate these distractions is to departmentalize them.

Highly motivated entrepreneur and business professionals often compartmentalize their professional interests from the rest of their personal lives. Many “go-getters” tend to divide their lives into these different compartments and make decisions as if they are not interconnected. For many, their thoughts about church, religion, matters concerning God and the Bible, or even their family, have little or nothing to do with their day-to-day business decisions and activities that are required to be successful. They rationalize that these different compartments neatly and separately co-exist. For instance, one might; Read More→

With each New Year comes new ventures. More and more often investors have to expand their investment territories in order to stay active. As technology continues to make the world a smaller place many investors are also looking at investing in different states and some in different countries. By doing this the amount of inventory increases dramatically if you make the right contacts. At the same time if you work with investors that are open in investing out of state or in different countries you have the ability to sell more.

With all this said it is not always as easy as it may sound whether you are the buyer or seller. As the buyer you need to make a trip to the new area you are looking to invest in. The reason to do this is obviously to learn the market but secondly to make a few key contacts in the area. The main contacts you need to make are a few wholesalers, real estate agents, contractors, a title company, and property management if you are looking for rentals. Not only will these contacts help you in their area of specialty but they can also be go-to people for a second opinion on any potential deals. In order for this to be a win-win situation you want to use these contacts’ services. For example, if you ask a contractor to verify repair cost on a home you should use him/her for that project. Read More→

Every New Year’s Day, people consider what they want to accomplish in the following year. Well, we are now 30 days into 2013, and I am sure that you have reflected on 2012. What resolutions did you follow to success? What results have you seen from last year’s work?

At the beginning of 2013, I reflected on what I considered success. Like many of you, I realized that I want to improve my monetary, financial, relationship and problem-solving skills because these lead us to success. What is success in 2013? ACHIEVING MORE OF YOUR GOALS.

We all know that success in our business means learning new tricks, tips, and techniques. We must accumulate knowledge and power. We must achieve a superior capacity to think and act effectively through presentations, best practices, and strong strategies. We must have a highly competitive advantage: a platinum value. But how do we strengthen the skills that we MUST have? Read More→

Welcome back!  If you read Part One of this article, you know that we covered the other different types of popular real estate deals that most people do, and the biggest problems with them these days. Then we talked about how advantageous it is to do the new type of deals: Wholesaling Pretty Houses! 

But we still have a few important things to cover, so let’s pick up where we left off…

Once you agree on the deal & terms with the seller, you get all the paperwork signed & closed at either a title company or attorney’s office. No exceptions.  You’ll want that legal backup in case the seller conveniently forgets what they agreed to later.

So now you’ve got a deal under contract & all the paperwork signed.  What now?  Simple.  You get it ‘sold’ as an opportunity to a tenant buyer who: 1. Has a decent chunk of money to put down (typically $5,000+/minimum), and 2. Can afford the existing monthly mortgage payments. Read More→