Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

BIG Reminder:  Follow up, follow up, follow up is crucial for capturing real estate deals!  What makes any deal is a Motivated Seller.  There are 13 main Seller motivators such as a vacant home, in pre-foreclosure, loss of job, job relocation, etc.  But how do we know when the “price” of the pain of home ownership becomes more than the price they want for the house?  How do we know when they’ve reached that tipping point, therefore agreeing to take a discount to allow an Investor to purchase the property and make a profit?  You guessed it….we follow up. 

Over 1 year ago, I was tracking a pre-foreclosure vacant home and I went to the next door neighbor to find out if they knew where the sellers moved.  During my conversation, I was informed that they hadn’t seen the neighbor in years and really didn’t even know them.  The couple I was talking to was an elderly couple who owned their home free and clear.  I asked them if they were interested in selling their house and John told me that he and his wife just might sell it at the right price; however, he and his wife were going to the doctor’s and he would call me to talk about the home and set an appointment to see inside.  I also got his telephone number so I could follow up in case he didn’t call me.  My first thought was whenever I hear the Seller say “at the right price,” that they always want more than what the house is worth and/or retail value.  I did ask John what the “right price” was and he replied again that he will call me back.  Read More→

“The building art is man’s spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.” ~ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Many apps I use are in lieu of something else, whether that be a tape measure or an architect’s blueprints. The RoomScan Pro seems to have replaced a lot of the physical tools needed to plan furniture placement, estimate how many gallons of paint or just to showcase a very simple to follow floor plan. It’s been helpful for prospective buyers to look at before they arrive at the open house. The app has its uses. For my own purposes, it saves me a lot of time trying to locate the original floor plan or determine whether a piece of furniture I want to use in the staging will fit in the room.

RoomScan Pro uses the iPhone’s accelerometer and additional sensors to map out the room. The app also has an option to create a whole floor plan. For me, in general, mapping out a single room works best. It charts the distance between walls in the room and then the end result is a clean illustration of what the app thinks the room dimensions are.

To get the best use out of the app you’ll need to buy the premium version. There is a free version but it is limited. I have my location settings activated so there’s no need for me to enter my location when I come to a new property. Tap on a named location like the street address and it will send you to the next step to create a “new room” with the app. You can name the room. If you’re doing the whole floor plan you don’t want to leave this blank. You can also name the floor you are on as well. By the end you will have a well-labeled illustration at the end, and it’s easier to navigate too. Read More→

In the last 15 months, thousands of TILA rescissions have been filed across the country. As a result we are finally seeing the patterns in how the banks are responding to rescissions. In case after case, the banks are obfuscating. They try to intimidate homeowners and confuse the courts into ignoring the clear letter of the law; that rescission is effective upon mailing as a matter of law. While they keep up this charade in the courts, they refuse to admit to federal regulators the risks posed by these wrongful foreclosures and the mortgage backed securities swindle as a whole.

First let’s clarify a few things about rescission. Whether disputed or not, a rescission is effective at the time it is mailed as a matter of law. It doesn’t matter what a judge WOULD rule if a challenge is filed by a party with legal standing. The rescission is valid until a party with legal standing can prove through a lawsuit in federal court that it should be vacated within the 20 day window.

Servicers will rarely try to dispute that the rescission happened, but will argue that it is not effective. First they usually send a letter to the homeowner stating that the rescission is invalid and they will not honor it. If the homeowner (correctly) challenges this, the bank will try to get a judge to ignore the law through motions that allow the bank to avoid having to prove actual facts in a lawsuit to vacate the rescission. The bank is trying to get the court to agree to the premise that the disclosures made at the time the loan was made were adequate and that the loan was consummated on the date they allege. All of these are questions of fact for a jury to decide the merits of, not a judge. Read More→

While I personally don’t use a lot of post card mailings in my real estate business, they definitely have their place. One of the main uses for a post card mailing is to either test a new list before spending a lot of money mailing to it, or to canvas large areas at very little cost to you. Post cards are also a very inexpensive effective means to building your buyers list.

If you are going to implement post card mailings, there are several different ways to do them effectively. On my web site at www.marketingmagiclady.com, I provide you with resources to find list brokers so you can focus on the specific mailing you want to do.

One effective way you can create these mailings is to download your list to usps.com and let them do the mailing for you for the cost of mailing the post card including printing. The post card is simply black and white, no frills, but can be used to canvas specific areas or large areas with your message.

There are some good reasons you might want to do this. One reason would be to do a sweep of a particular zip code range or group of subdivisions you want to mail to in order to find motivated sellers. This is a very inexpensive way to accomplish this. Another reason would be to do post card mailings to specific areas with high numbers of rentals in order to build your buyers list. Read More→

Two decades ago, Kim and I set a goal to replace our earned income with investment income.

There are a couple of advantages to achieving this goal.  First, you don’t have to labor for a living.  In other words, your capital is working for you instead of you working for your capital.  Second, the tax rate on earned income is much higher than it is on investment income.  Said another way: With investment income, the government lets you keep more of what you make, and when it comes to money, more is better than less, right? 

To accomplish this goal, we figured we’d need fifteen single-family rental properties.  Each month, the tenants would send in their rent checks.  Part of these checks go toward paying the mortgages, insurance, property taxes, vacancies, repairs and management.  We get to keep whatever is left over to spend or invest how we see fit.

There is a downside to owning rental property.  Though for tax purposes the government considers what you make to be passive income, there’s still hands-on work that needs to be done to maintain the property and manage the tenants. Read More→

Checking information with REIA Comps will quickly tell you that HUD foreclosures are available all over the United States.  The thing to keep in mind is, the sales process for purchasing a HUD home isn’t quite the same as you’ll encounter when buying a home from an individual.  However, the no Deed Restrictions these homes have can significantly boost your wholesaling business adding real income to your RE business.

HUD properties are sold using a bidding process. HUD foreclosures are homes owned by the government as a result of repossession.  These types of foreclosures are sold online from former mortgage holders who defaulted on loans guaranteed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

HUD homes are appraised, then priced at fair market value for their location.  HUD employees do not work with buyers, but NAID approved Agents.  HUD will generally accept the highest bid.  The foreclosures are usually sold at or below REO prices. This is like finding shells on the beach, believe me.  HUD sells these homes through approved brokers who often times advertise in the local newspaper to gain additional potential buyers. Read More→

QuickBooks’ structure is universal enough to appeal to millions of small businesses. Custom fields help you shape it to meet your company’s unique needs.

If you’re using QuickBooks, you probably know that you’re complying with the rules of double-entry accounting. The software is designed such that you can be compliant with these requirements without even being aware of it. You’re dealing with invoices and purchase orders, bank account reconciliation and bill-paying and payroll, not debits and credits and journal entries. QuickBooks does the double-entry part in the background.

While every business that uses QuickBooks is following those same rules, each has its own unique structure and its own need to modify some elements of the program to do certain tasks, for example:

• Store more specific information about customers, vendors, and employees in their records,
• Differentiate between variations of similar inventory items, and,
• Create more targeted reports.

This is where custom fields come in. Read More→

This is a question I constantly ask my students about every offer they are thinking about making to purchase any property, and I also ask myself this question before making an offer to purchase on every deal I do. It’s a wonderful thing when you put together a profitable deal but why not take a minute before submitting your offer to a flexible seller and ask yourself, “is there any way I can make this deal better”? If you are paying cash for the property I don’t know of any way you could make the deal better unless you offered more CASH to the seller. I truly believe that would be a huge mistake. It would be a huge mistake because it would in most cases only benefit the seller and not you.

Always Ask Yourself, How Can I Make My Offer Better For Me And The Seller Before Submitting Your Offer to Purchase Any Property?

The question is how can you make a better deal for you? If you are paying all cash, good luck. If you are getting seller financing terms there are many different things you could ask the seller for that could make the deal better for you as well as for them. Here are Six creative suggestions you might offer a flexible seller. Especially to those flexible sellers who want a certain price, monthly payment or interest rate. Read More→

If you have Buyers that are experienced, they know the drill.  A wholesaler gets a deal and pushes it out to their Buyers list.  Then all the wholesalers on that list send it to their Buyers with some marking up the price.  And then the next level does the same.  And somewhere in there are the bird dogs that literally do nothing but press the forward button thinking ‘easy money’.  Problem is the Buyer is on all of these people’s lists.  Depending on the timing, he may see the lowest price first or one much higher.  Or maybe the Buyer is not on the primary wholesalers list so he never sees the original deal.

At this point, the Buyer naturally goes to the lowest price wholesaler to get the deal.  But if that wholesaler doesn’t control the deal, then the relay of information from wholesaler to wholesaler begins.  And more often than not, inexperience or greed or dishonesty shows its head.  You’ll find few cash Buyers are stupid so they pick up on this and walk from the deal.  People can sense when something is up and all it takes is one less than confident conversation to kill the opportunity. Read More→

Everyone knows that the first thing we need to do to be successful in real estate investing is to find the Holy Grail of real estate: The Motivated Seller.

And when it comes to finding that beautiful motivated seller, there’s essentially two options: FREE and PAID.  Another way of saying that: TIME or MONEY.

Obviously, if you have more money than time, you’ll have more choices at your disposal. Direct Mail is most likely your highest & best choice. Hiring someone to find those motivated sellers for you would be another great option.  But this article is NOT about those options. We’ll save that for another time.

No, THIS article is for those of you without the means to pay much for your marketing. This article is for those of you who are currently ‘financially challenged’ (another way of saying broke), or who have more time than money AT THE MOMENT. Read More→

This past February, I attended the Keller Williams Family Reunion in New Orleans, along with 15,000 other “Type A” real estate agents. One of the highlights of this convention is Gary Keller’s Vision Speech. He makes this speech to educate us, so that hopefully, we will be the economist of choice in our market.

“You have to look at the past to predict the future”, says Gary Keller, “Mortgage rates are national rates.” Keller said, “While the government does not exactly know how to raise rates, but, low rates are helping affordability in most U.S. markets.” Mortgage rates averaged 3.85 percent in 2015, down 32 base points from the 2014 average. Since the Federal Reserve is now actively raising the federal funds rate, it is expected there will be upward pressure on mortgage rates in 2016.

Last year was the 5th best year in home sales in the history of home sales due mostly to the mortgage rates being so low. In 2015, 5.26 million homes were sold, making it the best year for home sales since 2006, which was the height of the market. In 2016, some slowdown in sales is expected as interest rates slowly increase. Read More→

Creating value in real estate is a great way to make money. In this article of the Master Lease Option (MLO) Series I will discuss how you can add value to your real estate deals using MLOs so you can make more MONEY!

Getting a seller to accept a master lease option deal is everything when using this technique. If a seller doesn’t believe that giving you a MLO on their property is the best option, then they won’t. Your job is to make the seller realize the value in allowing you to solve their problems with a MLO offer. The best way for you to present this idea to the seller is to know how to create value for this person. This will start by analyzing and becoming familiar with what the deal needs. In most cases we will get MLO deals done on distressed assets. You will show the seller that you can “un-distress” their property with a MLO and this is the biggest step in getting your offers accepted. If you can turn their property around then you have created value and the likelihood that you will complete the transaction is much better and that is what the seller wants. For the MLO to end in a sale and this is what you need to convince them of.

 Why is the seller selling? You should get the best answer to this question as the first step in your analysis of any deal. Sometimes sellers will be honest in their answer and sometimes not. First ask the question directly. No matter what type of answer you get ask several more questions to get the real story. Read More→