Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

The Profit has finally arrived just in time for Atlanta REIA’s 2 year birthday celebration. That’s right, it has already been 2 years since we decided to start Atlanta REIA back in June 2010 and to hold our first meeting on July 5^th, 2010.

Ever since we started Atlanta REIA, our mission has always been to help insure our members real estate success by providing affordable, quality real estate investing education, frequent, fun real estate networking opportunities and community outreach programs to build, renovate and repair homes for needy Atlanta families.  We’ve been able to achieve this mission through our meetings, special interest groups, networking events, seminars, webinars, workshops and our relationship with the Fuller Center of Atlanta.

Now we are working to bring you even more incredible member benefits and bigger discounts from suppliers such as Lowe’s, Sun Belt Tool Rentals, Sherwin Williams, Sears Commercial, Sprint /Nextel, Rent Fast, Build a Sign through our new relationship with the Community Buying Group; interactive, database driven websites with Super Smart; and our brand new newsletter, The Profit, which will be published and delivered each month about a week prior to our Atlanta REIA Main Monthly Meeting.

The purpose of The Profit is to help keep you and our members, guests, friends and followers updated on all the ups and downs of the real estate market; changing laws, rules and regulations; the latest real estate investing techniques, strategies and so much more! The Profit is also designed to keep you and other subscribers updated and informed of all the events and happenings going on at Atlanta REIA each month as well as exposing you to a wide variety of vendors and suppliers serving the real estate industry.

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1. Overcoming Fear. When I first got started in the real estate business I had a tremendous amount of fear. There was the fear that prevented me from placing the ads, the fear that prevented me from making offers, and the fear that paralyzed me to the point that I was not able to move forward in a real estate investing career.
2. Knowing The Numbers And Exit Strategies. After I made my first 50 offers I overcame that fear. After I got an agreement accepted I had the fear of not knowing what I was going to do with the property and whether or not it was going to be profitable. The exit strategy is the plan. The exit strategy defines what your profit is and how much profit there will be. Once I was able to get a handle on the exit strategies and refine the numbers my career started to take off. Read More→

Finding an investment deal today, although not easy, is not as difficult as it once was. When financing was easy to qualify for and no doc loans were offered by all, deals were harder to come by. Many people still believe that finding the deal is the hardest part of investing. I would have to say that finding the deal is less difficult than putting it under contract. Why? Well, by the time a contract is being discussed you know you want to contract the property and the seller knows he/she wants to sell. However, how much the seller will accept and what the buyer will pay rarely matches up.

Let’s look at the seller’s point of view. First, you must identify who the seller is and what is his/her interest in the property. There are many types of sellers but the most common seller is an owner that lives in the property, an owner that inherited the property, an owner that used the property as an investment, wholesaler, and REO agents. This is important to identify immediately because it determines how you should contract a property. More importantly it will let you know how to best present a contract to make it more attractive to each seller type. The one thing that all sellers have in common is that they expect you to justify your offer. As an investor you want the property as cheap as possible to make the most profit but making sure the contract is a win-win situation will make you more money in the long run. How? That seller will become your walking billboard and may bring you more properties! Read More→

Have you noticed a declining number of people attending real estate meetings lately? Well, maybe not at Atlanta REIA Meetings, but this is true of many other REIAs across the country. I’ve run a weekly real estate meeting myself for over 10 years down in St Petersburg, FL and I’ve seen my own group attendance diminish from an average of 200 people each week to approximately 50 over the past couple of years. I realize many investors are confused, scared and have lost faith in the real estate investing business and who can blame them? You can’t open a newspaper or turn on the television without hearing anything but negative news about the real estate market. All we hear about is the declining sales prices, lower number of sales, almost no building starts and of course the record number of Foreclosures nationwide. Who can blame investors for shying away from buying houses in this market? Many investors are waiting for the market to bottom out before they are going to get back in the business. There is no better time to be buying houses than NOW, yet many investors are finding it impossible to fund their deals while other investors believe doing Short Sales is their only chance to make money today. This is not true! That kind of thinking is simply crazy! Read More→