Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

The July 2017 Edition of The Profit Newsletter, the official newsletter of the Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance, is now available for download. There are 50 pages this month full of upcoming meetings, workshops, webcasts, educational articles and other valuable information for your real estate investing pleasure and success. Download it and check it out!

The Profit is Atlanta REIA’s digital, interactive newsletter for serious real estate investors delivered as an Adobe PDF file to read on your PC, Mac, Smart Phone, iPad or other mobile ready devices. Many of the articles and ads in The Profit contain many hyperlinks you can click to get more information online! The high res version of The Profit is “print ready” for those who want to print the newsletter on their home or business printer.

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Everybody has driven by a house that has been on the market for what may seem like years. You know the house: there might be a broken window here or there, the grass hasn’t seen a lawnmower for the last few summers, and the property overall has the look of negligence.

It might seem ironic, but this is the dog with fleas property that Filthy Riches has based its success upon. We all know in today’s market, these unwanted houses are practically a dime a dozen. These properties are everywhere. They are located in nearly every state and likely even within easy driving distance for you. This is the type property that everyone else avoids – including real estate agents, if they can help it.

After all, who wants to be saddled with an ugly, dilapidated structure like this? There is little to no chance to move it off the market. Or the selling price is so low, the realtor’s commission is practically nonexistent. What realtor wants to put the time and effort into the small commission from selling a $25,000 home when the same energy could be spent selling a home with a selling price six times higher?  Read More→

I am sure you’ve heard the phrase “fake it till you make it” but I have never believed in this. I have found more success in being the real you. Even if it means that you don’t know what you’re doing in something you’re looking to pursue. This belief continues to work to this day. As I mentioned before, I am in the process of immersing myself in commercial real estate (CRE) as a broker and investor.

I spent many hours learning from Google, YouTube and a few podcasts. I invested the time in learning more to insure this was something I am interested in doing. Just because a person likes residential real estate does not mean they will like commercial and vis-versa. Once I was certain I wanted to do CRE I started to reach out to practitioners and investors. Obviously, I picked the brains of those in my immediate network during social gatherings but I did not have serious conversations with them until I was committed. I make it a point not to waste people’s time or my own because I learned, a long time ago, that time is too valuable.  Read More→

Sitting at the kitchen table there were three people, two sellers and the buyer.  I wanted to buy their house but did not have the $40,000 cash to do it… now. The presentation from my side went just like I had planned.  From the Seller’s prospective it was too good to be true. They were unfamiliar with investing in residential real estate. They did have other investments like a 401 K.  They let other people handle their investment accounts. They haven’t touched it or changed their investment direction in 20 years and they had lost money during the recession. When the 401K and investment statements came in the mail they never opened the envelopes to see what they had. What they had was HOPE! They had a mortgage and had owned two houses prior with a mortgage. They had never heard of private real estate investing and getting an interest rate as high as I was proposing.

What I wanted to do was to buy the house. The house had a first mortgage of $120,000 and equity of $40,000 for a total financing of $160,000.   I wanted to keep the first mortgage in place, have a $40,000 second and pay an interest rate of 8%. My exit strategy was to buy, fix and sell the property, just like they do on TV. It would be for one year, then I would sell the house and the mortgage would be paid off.  This method of financing was going to save me $16,600 in interest fees and costs. I could pay a higher price for the house with the owner financing. It would be a lower price if I paid all cash.  Read More→

A Real Estate IRA is a great opportunity. It’s freeing. It’s invigorating. It’s a thrilling way to potentially build up a major retirement nest egg so you can build wealth over the long term and enjoy the peace that comes with financial security. But that doesn’t mean it’s fool-proof, either. If you want to make the most out of a Self-Directed IRA in which you invest in real estate, you have to avoid some critical errors along the way. Here are four you need to be aware of:

Mistake #1: Not Hiring a Property Manager

Hiring a property manager is critical when you have a Real Estate IRA. Not only will it help take care of any problems with repairs, tenants, and other issues like that, but it will keep you from participating in a prohibited transaction since you are not allowed to provide services to your Real Estate IRA.  Read More→

If you plan to have multiple employees using QuickBooks, you can limit their access to specific areas.

Controlling access to your QuickBooks company file is easy when you’re a one-person accounting department. You simply use one password to protect your data.

But when you add new employees to the mix, do you want them to have access to absolutely everything in QuickBooks? Probably not. You have confidence in your employees or you wouldn’t have hired them. But this isn’t solely a matter of trust. It’s just good business practice to restrict individuals to specific areas and responsibilities, no matter what the application.

That’s why QuickBooks has built-in tools to help you limit activity. Here’s how it works.  Read More→

“What do YOU do for a living?”

Those words can strike fear and paralysis in the hearts & minds of the tragically unprepared.  If you’re newly in business for yourself, or have just never really gotten your head properly wrapped around HOW you should respond to this powerful question, you’re sunk. Handle it the right way, and you’ll be rewarded with confidence, respect, and a fatter bank account.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this article. So shut off your Facebook & keep reading… 

It never fails. You’re out at a social event, taking a flight somewhere, or maybe you just strike up a casual conversation with someone somewhere sometime. If you’re both adults over the age of 25 or so, the question eventually comes up, “What do you do?”   Read More→