Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

Using the people around you to locate motivated sellers for you is a great way to find even more deals absolutely free. Think about it, the more people you have locating deals for you, the more deals you are going to make. And personally, I always advocate “free” techniques for finding motivated sellers, especially those of you with a very limited budget for marketing.

So how are we going to find these people to find deals for us? Well first of all, look around you. Friends, relatives and co-workers are good sources of leads for you. They usually live, drive and work in different areas of town than you do and they come in contact with a lot of people that you simply won’t. So they are likely to bring you deals you would never know about otherwise.

You can also ask anyone who does deliveries to be a bird dog for you. For example, mail delivery, Fed-X or UPS delivery people are delivering packages all over your area and can tell you about vacant houses they may see. In fact, you could even give them some of your business cards to stick in the doors of vacant houses they find. Just have them write their first name on the back of the card so you can pay them if you get a deal from it. Read More→

In my early twenties, I’d decided that to be successful, I needed to buy a Mercedes Benz and a gold Rolex watch.  Dean Kates, who was my mentor back then, told me the following story to help me understand that greatness comes from within, not from what you own – that bling is pretty much meaningless!

After many years away, a world-famous violinist returned to his small hometown in Georgia.  He came to play a benefit concert to raise much-needed funds for his high school’s music program.  Because the violinist was one of the very best musicians in the world, the town spared no expense rolling out the red carpet for him.

At a reception held two hours before the concert, many of the performer’s high school chums showed up to pat him on the back and wish him well.  As a group, they asked to see his one-of-a-kind Stradivarius that had been built in the 17^th century.  It was said that the music that flowed from his Stradivarius was the sweetest, purest, most heart-touching melody the world has ever known. Read More→

Can any bank foreclose on your house? You would think the answer would be a resounding “no!” A reasonable person would assume that only the bank that lent you the money to buy your house or bought your loan through a legitimate sale would be able to foreclose on your home. Well, until a recent decision in the California Appellate Court, that wasn’t necessarily the case.

In a May ruling from the California Court of Appeal, it was finally and clearly declared that “only the person or institution entitled to payment may enforce the debt by foreclosing on the security.” That is to say that a bank must prove a clear chain of title on any loan on which it intends to foreclose. In this specific case, there was a void assignment of a Monica Sciarratta’s note to US Bank. US Bank then claimed the right to foreclose. Sciaratta then sued for wrongful foreclosure and won in this decisive ruling from the Court of Appeals.

The court also included in the Sciarratta ruling a clear indictment of the attitude many judges take that says that a borrower who defaults deserves to have their home foreclosed upon, no matter who does the foreclosing. The Court stated that “The borrower owes money not to the world at large but to a particular person or institution” and that person or institution is the only one allowed to foreclose in the case of a default on that debt.  Read More→

Many people expect to learn how to invest in real estate from seminars, books, videos, etc. but until you actually pull the trigger and go all in you will not know how to invest in real estate. Yes, you will learn the procedure and steps involved but those usually do not go as planned either. As Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Well, real estate is no different.

I know you heard this a million times but if this was easy there would be more people doing it, successfully. The amount of people that attempt to invest in real estate has increased drastically in the last few years. Suddenly, overnight, everyone was able to “BUY HOUSES CASH.” It might be due to all the new television shows, new investment clubs, one year old gurus, a volatile stock market, etc. but whatever the reason more people are giving real estate investing a shot. The best thing you can do when investing in real estate is to pay attention to the details. This can be the difference between getting punched in the mouth and moving forward or giving up because it was too much.  Read More→

Here is a great tip for you to think about when rehabbing your houses. I have written about this subject before and I thought I would share some different ideas that will help you sell your houses faster and many times get a higher price than other houses in that same price range. 

So, What Is The Secret To Getting A Higher Price For Your Houses Than Your Competition Can Get For Their Houses?

The simple answer to this question is doing what other investors won’t do!  

Years ago I learned a simple but very powerful lesson that has since made a huge difference for me and those who have followed these suggestions.

Here is what I mean. When doing your rehabs always put things in your houses that would normally be found in houses located in a higher price range. It is a good idea to take some time and go to a few open house showings and take notes about what things these higher priced houses have that aren’t usually found in houses in the price range of the house you are about to rehab.  Read More→

Ok so you want to learn everything you can about a certain subject. Become an expert. It takes around 10,000 hours to become an expert. If you worked at it 40 hours per week you would get there in 5 years. If you do it part time, while you are working to put a few pennies together, then it will take 30 years. The choice is yours.

Becoming a realtor, mortgage broker, contractor, attorney, appraiser, and loan servicing company all require a learning curve. How long do you have before you are at a loss of income?  The person who goes to College postpones their earning power for a period of time.  They will command more money than a High School educated person. The interesting fact is the person who works straight out of High School will earn more gross money until the 20th year out of High School. After that the College educated person will earn 2 times more over their life time. One interesting idea to ponder is what do the people without the College education do with that money and if they invested it they would have more net worth at the age of 65 through compounding. Because the High school graduate only has life experience and does not think about investment, nor have the educational background on economics, they tend to fail financially. Understand that if that is you, then you are under more pressure to succeed than someone who went to College.  Read More→

Assessing finance charges is a complicated process. But if you have a lot of late payments coming in, you may want to consider it. Be sure you know what your lease agreement says before you start this process.  If your lease agreement clearly states a flat fee per day, month or some other period then finance charges do not work for your situation.

There are many reasons why your tenants send in payments past their due dates. Maybe you sent an invoice for additional charges and they’re disputing the charges. They might not be very conscientious about bill-paying. Or they simply don’t have the money.

Sometimes they contact you about their oversight, but more often, you just see the overdue days pile up in your reports.

You could use stronger language in your customer messages. Send statements. Make phone calls if the delinquency goes on too long. Or you could start assessing finance charges to invoices that go unpaid past the due date. QuickBooks provides tools to accommodate this, but you’ll want to make absolutely sure you’re using them correctly – or you’ll risk angering tenants and creating problems with your accounts receivable.  Read More→

Introduction

As an agent with Keller Williams Realty First Atlanta for 15 years, I have watched our company grow from “Keller Who?” to Keller Williams Realty being the number one company in Georgia, and, our office being the number one office in the state of Georgia. Over this time period, the internet has become a dominate factor in communication with clients, and, between agents. Of recent, our office intranet (370 agents) and our company Facebook have become abuzz with agents requesting corporate rentals, also known as Short Term Furnished Property Rentals or Vacation Rentals in many tourist destinations and now many major cities.

My dearest friend of 20 years, Renata Circeo Louden, whom I have sold at least a dozen Atlanta properties to or for, and, who was the only rent and hold investor in Gary Keller’s Millionaire Real Estate Investor (page 364-I nominated her for the book), has had a successful vacation and corporate rental property management company in Atlanta and Destin, Florida for over 15 years managing over 100 properties. As she owns 20 properties in Atlanta and the Destin Area herself, she jokes that “I bought myself a job.” However, she manages to net her clients more money per year with less hassle, which is the reason of her tremendous growth.  Read More→

 You’re going to learn something very useful by reading this article.

This “something” is so valuable that you might want to use it for the rest of your life.

But before you learn what it is, let me start by saying…

The older I get, the more I realize things.

While that statement/observation could apply to just about anything…or anybody, I’d like to use this article to point out how it relates to people’s everyday communication skills.

We live in an age of instant information…yet people these days don’t seem to have any patience to communicate properly. We abbreviate stuff, like lol, brb, and wtf.

We text. We Tweet. We post. We share, and we like. What’s up with all the cat videos?

With so much information all around us, bombarding our everyday lives, it’s easy to understand why we need to curtail our communication. We just don’t seem to have the time to talk with most people the way we used to.  Read More→

“Plans are nothing; Planning is everything.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only by finishing things is the way to learn. Despite this fact of life, I do find myself a bit overwhelmed at times with the various projects I’m planning at any given time. Making two or three phone calls to get a quote about one single project isn’t too much work. When you have three properties that need at least two large or small scale projects to be addressed that consumes at least two days of shopping around, getting in contact with the local businesses.

Homewyse is a site that was pretty much made for a person like me, but anyone who wants a jumping off point to get ballpark figures on home repairs will find this very useful. You don’t have to give up any personal information like a credit card to gain access to quotes in your area, or a property outside of your primary residence. Unlike Angie’s List, you don’t have to become a member to browse. Homewyse is an immediate source where you can get an idea of what things will cost. You don’t have to be specific about your project, I do find it great to look at comparable costs and then call or email local tradespeople to get a better picture.  Read More→

You’re an investor who’s focused on the long-term: your ability to retire with a nest egg. You want to build over the long-term, and you know that there are many different vehicles for doing just that, including employer-based 401(k) plans and more. But what many investors overlook is the possibility of using a Real Estate IRA in their retirement portfolio.

Why do they overlook it? For one, the option is rarely presented to them. Many people don’t even know that you can invest in real estate with an IRA. Another reason: many people believe that investing in real estate is a “rich man’s” game. But investing in real estate is available to anyone with the drive and interest to make it happen. Let’s take a look at what every retirement investor needs to know about the Real Estate IRA in order to make it part of their portfolio.  Read More→

Buyers… a wholesalers best friend.  A lifeline.  The reason why we make the money we do with a smile on our face.  However let’s face it, many wholesalers are fantastic at shooting themselves in the foot in this area.  Even experienced wholesalers run into more challenging Buyers that while qualified to buy, are hesitant or even downright against buying from a wholesaler.  Or they are just so picky that the time spent quickly feels like it is not worth the effort.  These are not the easiest of hurdles to discuss.  And even if they are willing to buy, how do you structure things to ensure you actually can close and not end up on the short side of the stick?  (i.e. Buyer walks right before closing)

A few simple steps will make this hurdle much, much easier.  We’ll cover two this month:  Read More→