If you’ve been to the monthly Atlanta REIA meetings, you’ve seen the big blue table topper display and the smiling face of Lima’s representative, Cortney Newmans.  Lima One Capital is an active Atlanta REIA Business Member and we thank them for their ongoing participation and support.

As a fully capitalized, direct lender for residential real estate investors and home builders, with offices in Atlanta, GA Greenville, SC, Charlotte, NC, Lima One is revolutionizing the hard money industry with highly competitive and straightforward rates, the length of their loans, and unmatched customer service.  Says Mr. Newmans, “Our loans provide clients with the ability to capitalize on great opportunities in the real estate market… and we hold firm to a policy of no hidden fees and no junk fees; we close quickly and offer our clients the most professional customer service in the industry“.

Lima One Capital offers a 13-month loan, which is perfect for real estate investors who plan to sell the property, refinance it through conventional lenders, or conduct a 1031 exchange.  Lima also offers a longer, 5-year loan for those investors who want to hold onto the property and rent it out in order to generate income. Read More→

Say you are fighting a foreclosure on a securitized loan that you took out during the housing boom.   Using a fraud investigator you were able to prove that the foreclosing entity forged your signature on the note.  You rest your case and wait for the judge to come back with a ruling in your favor.  Ten minutes later the judge rules that the foreclosure can continue as scheduled.  This is surely a miscarriage of justice, right?

Not so fast.  The judge made the right call, and you need a better attorney.

Here’s an example.  Let’s say a friend lends you $1,000 and you agree to pay him back in installments.  After a few months of making payments on time, you default on the loan and your friend sues you.  In court your friend produces a promissory note that lays out the terms of the loan with your signature.  You acknowledge that you were lent the money by your friend and then defaulted on the loan, but you have never seen this promissory note before.  Furthermore, you have evidence that your signature on the note was a forgery.  Under the rules of evidence, your proof of forgery should be tossed out.   The reason is simple.  You have already admitted to owing your friend the $1,000 and that you defaulted on the debt.

A note is merely documentation of the debt.  If you have already acknowledged that you owed the money and then defaulted on the terms, the note itself, whether forged or legitimate, is irrelevant. Read More→

Just met with a guy who has a very interesting story that you’re not going to believe: He has $1 million in the bank, but doesn’t have enough money to buy food!  He’s practically starving to death.

This guy worked hard, saved hard and invested wisely his entire life.  When he retired, he had $1 million in liquid capital.  To keep his money safe – the volatility of the stock market scares him – he invested his money in bank CD’s paying 3.6% interest.  Last year, when the CD’s matured, he was forced to roll his retirement money into new CD’s with a dismal 0.6% interest rate. 

Here’s the thing: These days, this guy’s investment doesn’t earn him enough to live on – he’s forced to exist like a pauper.  He said, “Once I became a millionaire, I thought I’d never want for anything.  I couldn’t have been more wrong!”

Before your dumbfounded look affixes to your face forever, fully understand this man’s predicament.  He and his wife have $1 million cash, but they don’t want to spend any of this principal.  Their retirement goal is to live off the interest the $1 million generates. Read More→

It is the goal of this column to answer questions about QuickBooks and how it is used in the REI arena. Know how to record transactions in the proper way and have your set of books in good shape when it comes time for taxes. It is our intention to do this by you, the members submitting questions to Karen@smallbusinessadvisor.biz, and getting answers here in this column.

Q: I have negative balances on some expenses on my income statement.  How did this happen?

A: Negative expense numbers can happen. It is possible you made a purchase and booked it to one expense and returned it and booked the refund to a different expense.  Therefore, the refund had no expense to cancel out (if there is nothing else in that account). Do a search for the original purchase and either move that to the account you booked the refund to or put the refund where the purchase is.  A negative balance can show up if you made a journal entry and did not post the debit/credit transaction correctly.  Just go back and reverse the entry. Read More→

Have you hit a wall with looking for deals? Are you having trouble finding deals that make financial sense or that will cash flow at all? Are you having trouble getting started with your multifamily investing business? Not sure where to get started? If this is the case, I can help you with a fresh start. If you are just beginning then this article will help you to avoid a lot of unnecessary frustration and to jumpstart your investing career.

What size deal should I start with? This is one question most people ask when they get started in multifamily investing. Let’s take a close look at the answer.

To qualify for a commercial loan these days most lenders want to see that you and your partners have the net worth equal to or greater than the loan amount. So if you are looking at a $1,000,000 dollar deal then you plus your partners must have a collective net worth of about $1,000,000. Notice I said “collective” net worth. That means you can have $0 net worth and use the value of your partners to cover it.

Next step is to decide what your net worth is plus the net worth of the people closest to you, ones in which you think will join you in a multifamily deal. This may be family, friends or close business partners. Once you decide what your collective net worth is, you have the first piece of a formula that will lead you to success. Read More→