Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

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→

One day I wanted to go fishing to a new spot. I knew where it was but had no clue as to how to get there from where I was at the time. I could have used a GPS if I had the address. I could use technology but Google maps needs to know the general area where I wanted to go. Another option, I could just ride out in the general direction and hope to see something I recognized. I could go old school and get a folded map. My time is money so I needed to go out there and get the fishing done, have my fun and relax. Then get back in time to meet my coaching clients for a discussion of how to create inventory fast, efficiently (low effort high return), and effectively (cost effectively). I needed the most direct route to get to the fishing spot with no time to loose, which maximizes my efforts and gets to the sweet honey fishing hole fast. I chose the old tried and true method. It would get me there. The good news was the map was only 12 years old.

Well the fishing was great and the method of maximizing the fun worked. You are asking yourself “why do I care about your fishing”?  Because fishing is similar to creating inventory!  You must do the right presentation to get the fish to be interested in what you have to offer and catch the fish or land the deal.  So if you are offering cash to the seller, they might be interested unless they have a big tax liability, have done a loan modification, and have 2 years before they can sell. If you offer fair market price in cash the owner will definitely be interested (however you will not be able to sell it or turn a profit).   I use artificial bait when I fish (creative financing). I also do catch and release (wholesale).  It takes a certain magic to look like the real thing, smell like the real thing, and get the fish to strike (close the opportunity and get paid)! Read More→