Archive for Articles

Have We Reached the Top of the Market?

Posted on January 9, 2017 by

On the Front Page of The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday Nov. 30, it stated “Home Prices Hit record levels”. If you read this article, you will think it is over, the window of the “massive profits in real estate” opportunity has slammed shut. If you did not buy any property since the great recession, you have missed the boat. In your old age when you go into the smelly retirement home, that your Social Security or what’s left of it will pay, you will remember this lost opportunity of buying real estate in the 2012-2016. Yes, it is true the national average states that prices have recovered. If you sat on the fence, you have missed that once in a lifetime opportunity. You decided that the market wasn’t right and you would wait. Those who waited have lost the greatest opportunity in this decade or life time to hit it big and coast into retirement. You might as well go to your “JOB= Just over broke” opportunity and sell your health, back, brain and soul to the company. Don’t invest in any more real estate courses… Save your money, you will need it for your retirement.  Read More→

Self-Directed IRAs and Real Estate Notes

Posted on January 9, 2017 by

Expected returns are hard to come by. Stocks are at elevated P/Es on a historical basis, and yields are near all time lows. With economic growth sluggish, at 2-3 percent per year, any major gains will have to come from multiple expansion – and who can count on that? Earnings multiples can fall as easily as rise. This is what caused many of us to gravitate to self-directed IRA strategies in the first place!

Bonds aren’t much better, in the publicly traded market. There’s some downside protection, in theory.

Fortunately, electing to use self-directed IRA strategies allows you to transcend the limited publicly-traded stock and bond world, and explore hidden opportunities that are invisible to most investors – but which still offer reasonable yields – at acceptable risk levels, or at least with some security.

One such opportunity for self-directed IRA investors: Discounted Owner-Financed Real Estate Notes.

Here’s how it works:  Read More→

As an Investor, having a Realtor to work with is important in your business if you are buying or selling houses on the Multiple Listing Services.   Many new Investors rely on their Realtor to send them “good deals” to buy, hold, fix and/or flip.  However, a Realtor does not know what good deal means to an Investor.  A good deal for us could be the cash flow that you receive on a rental property or it could be the profit that you would receive from reselling the home.  As Investors, you are taught a MAO “Maximum Allowable Offer” Formula in which you use to make offers on homes for buying, fixing and reselling.  The formula varies based on your own situation.  The average formula used for Investors who have to get hard money to purchase the home would be:  ARV (After repaired Value) x 65% – Repairs = MAO.  Let me give you an example:  $100,000 (ARV) x 65% = $65,000 – $10,000 Repairs = $55,000 Maximum Allowable Offer.  This formula would then leave you with $35,000 for holding costs, cost of money, closing costs of purchase and resale, and then profit.  Your MAO formula would be different if you are purchasing the home as a Landlord and/or you have your own money to fund the deal.  You may be willing to pay between 70-75% of the After Repaired Value for the home – Repairs = Your MAO.  Read More→

Paying Bills in QuickBooks Online

Posted on January 9, 2017 by

In a previous column, we talked about setting up bills in QuickBooks Online. Now it’s time to pay them.

We recently laid out the benefits of using QuickBooks Online for bill entry and payment. It’s faster than manual methods. It leaves an electronic record of your accounts payable. And it helps ensure that bills are paid accurately and on time.

As we discussed, QuickBooks Online employs a two-step process for bill payment. Once you’ve completed the first (setup), the hard part is done, and you can move on to fulfilling your financial obligations. Let’s take a look.

Warning: Because you may be “handling” a lot of your bills twice in QuickBooks Online, this system can take some getting used to. We’ll be happy to walk you through the process until you’re comfortable.  Read More→

“I live a highly scheduled life. There’s absolutely no time wasted. I’m very focused. And I have a great assistant.” ~ Madonna

Amazon Echo has been a game changer at my house. I find it a great selling point for new homes I’m working on as well. I use “Alexa” to turn on my lights, my television, set the thermostat and basically anything that’s connected to the system. It’s been really helpful around the holidays too, baking with the family has been a breeze while “Alexa” sets up the timer and converts measurements for us.

I’ve talked about other systems, like the Ring for the doorbell answering service, but Amazon comes to a new level with Echo. Technology won’t solve all our problems but it does make things a bit easier. While baking holiday cookies with the kids, I do have a bit of trouble in the kitchen. It’s just that Echo made small tasks easier like setting the timer and changing the measurements from weight to cups. Small hiccups were easier to get through when the tech was literally a voice command away.  Read More→

Know Your Guru

Posted on January 9, 2017 by

With the internet, fake news and social media anyone can create a persona and/or a story and have people believing it is true. With a great marketing plan, a website, paid likes, paid followers, a cheap book on Amazon written through research as a top seller and some know how you can be the next real estate guru. And who knows, maybe you end up knowing more IN THEORY than actual successful investors but it would only be in theory. Therefore, you should be cautious of who you are giving your money to and more importantly who you are learning from. Here are a few questions you should ask along with a few acceptable answers.

The number one thing to do is find referrals. I do not mean the testimonials on their website, unless you personally know of that person in your market area, but someone in your local REIA that has used that person and has hopefully had success. Ask them if the guru and/or their program provided what it advertised. However, also keep in mind that you have to ask detailed questions to find out if that person actually implemented the program. For this reason, you want to find as many referrals/users as possible. Eventually you will begin to notice a consistency that the program was not as advertised, good but lacked content, ok for a beginner, not worth buying, terrible or maybe so bad they will give you the content.  Read More→

Download The Profit Newsletter for December 2016 (PDF)
The December 2016 Edition of
The Profit is Available for Download!

The Profit Newsletter - December 2016The December 2016 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.

Be sure to Subscribe to The Profit by Email or Subscribe to The Profit by Text so you don’t miss a single issue.

Download The Profit Now!
High Quality PDF / Low Res PDF / The Profit Archives

Duncan WiermanThe internet is full of hidden bargains!  As many as 24% of the real estate market is composed of self-sellers, and you have a 10-23%  chance of finding a property well below market value depending on the seller’s intentions.

Kinds of Properties

There are so many different types of property, its almost like a smorgasbord. It can be a fixer-upper,  foreclosure or just motivated sellers. With a few online strategies and tools, you can tap into the hidden bargains available online. Investors who use the internet wisely can find 100s of real estate deals monthly.

Use the Internet

Why shy away from internet marketing, when there is massive potential and you can get more deals faster than your competitors. Many experienced real estate investors have turned to the internet to find as many real estate deals they can without leaving the office.  Read More→

Use What You Know to Grow

Posted on December 5, 2016 by

In the last article, I briefly discussed the beginning of my venture into apartment investing. I encouraged people to do some self-learning before going to networking events so you have a better idea about what is going on. While attending plenty of networking events and having a handful of meetings, I realized that you may have something the person you are looking to for advice wants to learn from you. This works out great because in all my articles I discuss the importance of win-win scenarios.

Let me explain what has happened in my pursuit in learning how to invest in multi-family. First, most multi-family clubs or gurus want you to spend $5,000-$25,000 for them to teach you how to invest in multi-family. The lower end is reasonable but you don’t get much and the higher end is crazy. I’d rather take that money and be a limited partner in an actual deal. Keep in mind I am referring to multifamily with a purchase price of at least 1MM and/or 50+ units. I have participated in much smaller multifamily properties. Luckily, I found some great people that I hope will be able to teach me what I need to learn to be successful. They told me it was not worth investing that much when they were willing to do it in exchange for my time and expertise.  Read More→

Dealing with Untruthful Sellers

Posted on December 5, 2016 by

When purchasing a property, the Sellers of the property should fill out a Seller Disclosure which tells you about the condition of the property, any repairs made since the date of purchase and any problems that they are aware of on the home.  As an Investor, there are many times I will purchase the home without receiving a Seller Disclosure, and without a home inspection other than my own personal inspection.  However, I highly recommend that Investors obtain a Seller Disclosure and have a formal home inspection even though you are replacing a lot of things inside and outside of the home. 

Recently, a Partner and I were working on purchasing a property from a 4-member limited liability company who had purchased the property at a Tax Sale.  Their Attorney informed us that the members would like to just sell the property and had purchased the property as a Tax Deed.  They started the rehab on the property with the assistance of the Attorney but had not completed it.  Our only contact was with the Attorney, who was a silent partner, and informed us of the following:  That they wanted $48,000 for the property, that they have all new windows for the property that they would give us included in the purchase price, that there was an open roof permit on the property that just needed the facia to be painted to close out the permit and that all the material in the property was also included with the purchase of the property.  We submitted the offer to the Attorney on October 31, 2016 and we still had not heard from him about our offer.  We had called a couple of times reminding the Attorney that our offer was only valid for 2 days and now it was 7 days and still waiting on a response.  Read More→

The Words We Use

Posted on December 5, 2016 by

STOP what you’re doing and read this. I promise that it’s worth it.

You have more power in you than you know. Right now, you have the ability to change someone’s life, starting with your own. And starting now – in this moment – you’re about to learn some secrets that can produce powerful results for you.

The “Big Secret” is this: The words you choose to use every day are vitally important. To you and everyone around you.

Words have power. They have the power to uplift. They have the ability to motivate, to inspire, to elicit emotion. Words can make someone laugh, cry, or smile.

For example: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” LOL  Read More→

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” ~ Walt Disney

When I first started, I felt like I had no business designing spaces. I’m good at the big picture but putting textures and colors together that will sell the house I was not so confident. I’ve been using Pinterest and Houzz to piece together ‘dream boards’ that you would put together using ripped out magazine pages and taping them together to compose some sort of theme or color scheme.

Pinterest is known as a predominantly female geared platform. People use it to plan events, like weddings, or recipes for special occasions or holidays. It is a great tool to use to plan your decorating scheme for an interior and the exterior. You can easily gather ideas for landscaping, curb appeal, how to style your front door and entry way, from kitchen materials to flooring and bathroom tile. What I like best is that other ‘pinners’ have done most of the work for you already. Most pins that you research are already part of a larger board, and if you visit that board you can see what else that user put together already. It has been easy to use, either hit pin, send or like on the image. Once you click an image it usually leads to the website that sells the item or a blog post about how to do the project. Sometimes it’s just a source image from google, so it is still a good starting point to show a contractor to get the gist of the idea.  Read More→