Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

The February 2017 Edition of The Profit Newsletter, the official newsletter of the Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance, is now available for download. There are 48 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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I have heard it 100 times over…

That wholesaler, fill in the name, totally ripped me off.  False rehab costs, false appraisals, false inspection reports, false ARV…and on and on.

Last month we talked about experienced wholesalers.  This month, let’s flip it over to the new Buyers.  They are new, excited and hungry.  And they are prime targets to get taken advantage of by some wholesalers.  Unfortunate as it is, there are wholesalers that are less than credible.  I have seen quite a bit of less than ideal advertisements.  Some examples:  Read More→

One of the Questions I am frequently asked by students wanting to implement a direct mail campaign is where to get the lists of sellers to mail to. While there are several resources available, I find they vary greatly in price and in quality of the lists. It is important for you to find a good, reliable source for your lists. When doing direct mail campaigns, their success is going to be based 70% on the list and 30% on the direct mail piece you are using to contact these motivated sellers.

There are a couple of resources for lists that I find to be especially reasonable in price and the quality of the lists is excellent for your use. One of those resources is very easy to find and simple to use use. Just go to your property appraiser, auditor, or assessors’ office and ask them to put the lists together for you. You will need to target specific types of sellers you want to do deals with. If your county is online preparing this list is usually pretty simple for them to do. I will suggest to you that you go down to their office and ask them for their help in person to customize these lists for you. If you just call them, you may get “blown off” by someone who doesn’t want to do the extra work, or you may get someone on the phone who doesn’t understand what it is that you need. I know all of this from personal experience with counties I have worked with. In addition, if you live in a particularly large county, they have plat maps you can look at to subdivide your lists by specific areas you want to mail to. This is just another way for you to hone in on the area and type of seller you want to work with.  Read More→

People from all over the world have a common trait. No matter what the product, the word SALE always draws our attention.

When it comes to real estate, that same line of thinking stands.  The phrase “you make money when you buy, you realize that money when you sell” continues to ring true. The challenge is being able to spot that awesome deal amongst many poor or inadequate deals.  I cannot stress enough proper real estate investing education should be your goal. Using REIA comps to analyze every new deal you do is the avenue that will help you make such a distinction.

There are many people venturing out and searching for additional ways to make additional income.   Investing requires knowledge of different techniques which can be used when trying to buy, sell, negotiate or repair a house.  Having proper investing education to stand on can mean the difference between success and failure.  Read More→

After beefing up its film incentive program in 2008, Georgia has emerged among the top places in the world for film production.  In less than a decade, Georgia has quickly become the “Hollywood of the South” with more movies and TV shows filming in the Peach state than most places around the world. A recent study has put Georgia as the third largest film industry in the world only behind the United Kingdom. However, with the recent BREXIT issues, Georgia’s film industry is expected to exponentially grow and possibly become the number #1 filmmaking location in the world.

For those that don’t know, Georgia gives film, television and digital entertainment a tax credit of up to 30 percent. Georgia’s Entertainment Industry Investment Act provides a 20 percent tax credit for companies that spend $500,000 or more on production and post-production in Georgia, either in a single production or on multiple projects with no caps on amount spent. Then, the state grants an additional 10 percent tax credit if the finished project includes a promotional logo provided by the state. If a company has little or no Georgia tax liability, it can transfer or sell its tax credits as well. These credits create significant cost savings for the production companies producing feature films, television series, music videos and commercials, as well as interactive games and animation.  Read More→

This year will be different.  Has it happened?  Has the flame gone out? Is the passion gone away? Have you followed through?  One way that I keep the passion alive, is to have access to more money than I can use to produce great investments. Raising capital is not very hard. Getting over the psychological parts of making “the ask” seems to be the difficult part for most people. I have been approached over the past year by a number of people who want me to fund their projects. I can get excited about this because I can see they have a project which will work and make us a lot of money. 

I was at a networking event recently. There where people in the room who wanted to invest in real estate projects and earn a great rate of return. There were people who did not have a clue as to what lending is all about, that there are multiple alternative investments, other than the traditional ways Wall Street gets your money. There were individuals who were reluctant to dip their toes into the pool of lending to investors. There were people there who had projects, which they wanted to get funded. So the environment was ripe for synergy to happen.  Read More→

“If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

I didn’t think Timyo was going to be a game changer for me. I already felt like I had great management tools using Gmail in the first place. A friend recommended that I check out this new app so I tinkered with it for a while. It is an email inbox management system that works best with Gmail, Office 365, Outlook.com and Hotmail. I have tried other inbox zero apps but I’ve felt like it’s a waste of time for me to go through all my emails weeding out the junk. I have used Gmail options before but it still seemed like I was getting a lot of emails that were not a priority first. My time is valuable since I’m running multiple projects, what I focus on needs to be what moves me along to the next step in line.  Read More→

Having met with numerous new investors and/or wholesalers, I am always asked, “How do I get more properties? Where can I find more deals? What kind of marketing do you do to get leads?” The questions continue with the same idea in mind. I understand that you are eager to start and begin marketing in order to get your first deal done, but are you truly ready? In most cases I would say, NO.

Marketing is not cheap and you may be throwing away money if you do not have a good foundation in sales, or better yet problem solving. Over the years, I have made more money solving problems than “selling” a person on selling me their property. In fact, I am rarely the highest bidder. I attribute this to being able to come up with the best solution to the seller’s problems. Most would assume that the property for sale is the problem but many times that is only the start. Usually a person is selling a property to get rid of a headache and/or to realize a profit in order to solve another lingering problem. Problems can be as small as not being able to repair the property to as big as being behind a year or more on mortgage payments. Let me give some examples to demonstrate what it is I am referring to.  Read More→

I am writing this article because I mentor so many people who desire to become successful in real estate; however, their life gets in the way of educating themselves.  Making offers on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a great way to find Sellers, yet, when you submit an offer to the Seller, the Realtor really doesn’t know the answers to the following questions.  Is there a mortgage on the property?  Are the Sellers in foreclosure (unless it is a short sale)?  Is it a probate matter and how many heirs are in the estate?  What permits have been pulled for the property and what dates were items like the roof or A/C installed (this information is sometimes provided in a Sellers Disclosure)?

After talking with a Seller and/or finding a Vacant Home, the research you do is a vital part of your business success.  I provide students with over 43 ways to find motivated sellers without using the MLS.  Knowing in-depth information about the Seller’s situation, ownership and mortgage balance allows me to negotiate and close more deals than just listening to what a Seller has told me.  In fact, Sellers normally tell you what they want and not what they NEED.  In order to make a deal work for all parties, we need to find out what they NEED, not what they want, then see how/if we can create a win-win situation.  Read More→

Are your property taxes too high?  If they are, in the past three years, how often have you attended your county commissioners’ meetings to voice your outrage? 

My mother taught me early on that silence is a form of acceptance.  Most times at these county commissioners’ meetings the silence was deafening!

If your property taxes are too high and if you don’t speak out at the public government hearings, then you lose your right to complain.  Instead, just step up to the window and pay the nice lady what you owe without one complaint!

Since 2006, Kim and I have fought our property taxes 142 times.  We’ve won 122 times – that’s an 86% success rate.  I don’t say this to brag; I say this to let you know that you can fight your property taxes and win!  Just know that it’s a learned thing, not a born-knowing-how-to-do-it thing, and it begins with standing up and speaking out!  Read More→

2017 is here. Now’s the time to do your end-of-year QuickBooks tasks.

Since early January of this year, you’ve been faithfully creating new records, entering transactions, and recording payments. You’ve run basic reports. You’ve done your collection duties. You may have paid employees and submitted payroll taxes.

Now the end of the year is rapidly approaching. In the midst of holiday get-togethers, gift shopping, and perhaps preparing for travel, you probably have a list of work tasks that must be completed by December 31.

Is your annual QuickBooks wrap-up on that list? It should be. Here are some of the things we suggest you fit into your busy schedule sometime this month.  Read More→

The recent series of wildfires here in our own Smokey Mountain region of North Carolina and Tennessee has been devastating. The fires around Gatlinburg, Tennessee late last month resulted in at least 2,460 structures that were damaged or destroyed, and the death toll has reached at least seven.

Lots of people have lost their homes and businesses – and surely many of them were uninsured for wildfire damage, or will find that they were woefully underinsured.

The real estate investment community, including real estate IRA owners, can and should be active in this environment. By offering a fair price for fire damaged properties that we have the capital to repair and resell or rent, investors will be vital players in helping a traumatized community get back on its feet and rebuild.  Read More→