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What will you do when things don’t go as planned? Will you flounder, or will you be able to put into motion a clear set of actions? In other words,

Do you have a System for Success?

Recently, a colleague of mine had two contractors burn him on a job. It should have been a quick fix, three days maximum, light work… paint, cleaning, and light bulbs. But neither contractor had a system to get the job done right, and he did not have a system to fire contractors and still come in on budget. The upshot is that, without a system, you risk losing time and money.

Often, when things don’t go as planned (and this can be often!), we have fear. We become paralyzed, perhaps we focus on the negative. To be successful, we need a plan that keeps us from feeling this way because what we want is success.

What does a good system give you? Read More→

“What size property is right for me to start with?” This is a question I get asked all the time. My answer is usually the same. “Depends on how much of a loan you can qualify for”.

Unless you already have all the cash you need to buy your next apartment deal (and I am assuming you don’t) then you are going to need to get a loan. Understanding what it takes to qualify for a loan is one of the best ways to decide on a property size when you are starting out. If you try and go too big you are limiting the chances that you will complete the project. 80% of your efforts in finding deals should be spent looking at deals that have the highest chance of closing. What has the best chance of closing? Ask your sponsor.

In almost all loans commercial lenders want to see that you have the net worth equal to or greater than the loan amount. For example if you want to borrow $1,000,000 then you need to have a total net worth of at least $1,000,000 or more. Now, the nice thing about this situation is it doesn’t have to be just your net worth, it can include the net worth of your sponsor. A sponsor is a high net worth partner that you get to join you in the deal who brings the balance sheet you need to satisfy your lender. That is the great part of the multifamily business. We can get partners that will help us build our business and there is enough cash flow and equity for us all. Read More→

I am so excited to tell you about a trend that I am finding on short sales that I am negotiating! You have read in my previous articles and I also mention in my Home Study Course about an interview that went worldwide on 60 Minutes which named Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank, just to name a few, as Lenders and Banks who were falsifying documentation regarding Notes that Docx Company had destroyed. The interview referenced all of the “Robo Signings” that were occurring. After this was announced to the Public, the Lenders and Banks that were involved in falsifying documentation were fined big time. However, the Lenders and Banks were very smart on helping Homeowners who were taken advantage of. What they did was they looked at 2^nd loans on properties that were in default and forgave them. When choosing the loans that were in default, they were able to add all their interest and late fees on top of what was owed, so that when they forgave the debt, they were forgiving a loan that probably would have been put in their collection department and eventually written off anyway. I would recommend that each of you go to www.60minutesovertime.com and type in Robo and find the airing of the show so that you will know all the Lenders and Banks that you should be looking for on 2^nd loans. The Lenders and Banks would just file a discharge of lien against the property and as to whether or not they really notified the Homeowners, I am unsure about. The reason I state this is that many Homeowners who aren’t paying their loans on the 2^nd mortgage, they probably aren’t paying their loans with the 1^st mortgage either. Meaning that the property is probably in foreclosure on most transactions. The Homeowners who are in default have probably moved from their homes and they would ignore all the paperwork that’s coming in their mail and would never even see a notice if their debt was actually forgiven. Read More→

A common scenario…

You find a deal and the Seller is motivated to sell. You walk through the property and notate everything you think the property needs. You come up with some quick estimates, do some negotiating with the Seller and get the property under contract. Woohoo! Your blood is flowing. It’s time to sell it. You send it to your Buyers list and you have interest. Things are looking good. Buyers check out the house. The excitement then dwindles…

The reason? Repair estimate is too low. In some cases, very low. Before you know it, you are getting few offers and the few you get are simply too low…

Does this sound familiar?

This story plays out several times per week in our office from wholesalers that send us deals. The reality is, it is common for wholesaler repair estimates to be low. The majority of wholesalers I meet have never rehabbed a property. Selling to a rehabber is one of those things where it is best to walk in their shoes before trying to sell to them.

‘But wait, I don’t want to be a rehabber!’ you may be thinking. That’s ok, you don’t have to be. The solution is simple yet overlooked by the vast majority of wholesalers… Read More→

Want an easy, free way to make your business look more professional and polished? Customize your forms. QuickBooks has the tools.

As a Real Estate Investor you may be asking yourself “Why do I need to do this? I don’t send out invoices or statements” – You may, on a very rare occasion, need to do just that for a late paying tenant or invoice them for repairs that they are responsible for. Or you may need to provide financial documents from QuickBooks to a lender/investor.

You probably don’t get as many paper forms in the U.S. Mail as you used to. But when you do, do you draw conclusions about the business that sent them based on what their forms look like?

Whether or not you think you do, most people make judgements on businesses based on collateral materials. You might notice that there’s no company logo, or that there are unnecessary blank fields. Maybe the print is very light or blurry, and there’s no message at the bottom thanking you for your business and your payment.

How you present yourself on paper does matter. There’s a lot of competition out there, and you need to use all of the tools available to you to stand out. QuickBooks provides one way to do so with its simple forms customization features. Read More→

When you know the best pockets or market areas around the U.S. to find discounted real estate, you are half way home. All that is left is evaluating the inventory for maximum profit. For those of you connected to REIAComps , the control and feeling of confidence you have over your deals is priceless. Using REIAComps to investigate the value of “Shadow Inventory” houses as they come to market, against the recent sold comparables, will provide you a solid position to “make your profit when you buy”.

First, let’s define “Shadow Inventory”. The general definition goes like this; the current stock of properties in the shadow inventory, also known as pending supply, by calculating the number of properties that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or held as REO by mortgage servicers, but not currently listed on multiple listing services MLS’s.

CoreLogic has released its National Foreclosure Report with a supplement featuring quarterly shadow inventory data. According to CoreLogic analysis there were 46,000 completed foreclosures in the United States, down from 64,000, a year-over-year decrease of 29 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures decreased 8.3 percent, from 50,000 in one quarter. Read More→

I am always excited by the opportunity to share as many ideas as I can with regard to locating motivated sellers for your real estate investing business. After all, without the sellers, there are no deals. I also like having the opportunity to share ideas for both the beginner investor and the seasoned investor alike within a variety of budget constraints. One of my favorite techniques is using flyers to get the message out there that I buy houses.

Flyers are a great way to target and locate motivated sellers. They can be used to target specific neighborhoods and subdivisions where you want to buy houses. You can either hire a company to hang them door to door for you, or hire older children to hang these flyers for you.

Do follow up by driving by the area to make sure the work got done. When using a company to lay flyers for you, make sure you get references from satisfied customers first. There are some companies out there that will take you money and not get the work done, so you want to check their reputation before hiring them. Flyers are a wonderfully inexpensive way to locate sellers and this technique can be repeated either monthly or quarterly depending on your time and budget. When we used to lay flyers door to door ourselves, we would take one weekend morning to do this. My husband and I would each take one side of the street and lay flyers door to door. We would keep a chart of the neighborhoods we had done so we could track our results. You always want to be tracking where your leads are coming from so you know which of your marketing campaigns are working best. Interested potential sellers will hold on to these flyers until their situation changes and they are ready to sell, so laying flyers door to door becomes one of your long term marketing techniques. Read More→

Boy was Mike ever excited! He found his first real estate investing deal; a property he planned to keep as a rental. Knowing that Kim and I loaned money to purchase investment homes, he gave me a call.

Mike’s contract was a gem of an opportunity – at least according to him. The seller told Mike that six other buyers were lined up with cash money. If Mike wasn’t able to close within a week, the seller would let another lucky stiff…errrr…I mean investor…have the home.

Mike explained that the house was built in 1955, had three bedrooms and one bath, needed a good bit of work, the neighborhood was okay but not great, and like-kind houses in the area rented for $800 per month. The seller told him the home’s fair market value was $115,000, but he was willing to let Mike steal it for $89,000.

Mike was chomping at the bit with no time to waste. He needed a purchase money loan and he needed it now!

After digging into the guts of this “deal,” here’s what we discovered. Read More→

I want to take this opportunity to talk to you a little bit about commercial property. I’ve got a lot of experience in commercial property from developing vacant land to income-producing properties of all kinds. My favorite is development.

But first, let’s talk about what is commercial property. And, in the world of residential it’s anything over 4 units. So, a 4-plex is not commercial, but a 5-plex is considered commercial. And, some of the properties that I have dealt with actually had income from tenants. I’ve had office buildings, I’ve had apartments, I’ve had retail and two or three other things, heck, I even had a mobile home park at one time, and over the years I’ve pretty much dabbled in everything.

I’ve specialized in nothing in the commercial world because I’m more of a generalist than a specialist, and of course we could have this discussion for hours. I think the smartest thing to do is to be a specialist because you can get good at one thing and not have to do so much and go through the learning curve that I had to go through. Read More→

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Camfind is a new app that makes some big promises. It claims to be able to identify literally anything just by snapping a picture. I was quite skeptical since my past experience with Google Goggles left me hoping for more accuracy. But from object to QR codes, Camfind is far better than Google’s long forgotten product.

 I used Google Goggles way back in 2010, but it has never been updated, so I haven’t touched it since. But I was intrigued by Camfind just because of the application to real estate needs. It could be a great way to identify a specific style of house, if you are looking to replace hardware in the home, perhaps a specific door knob, this has the potential to be very useful in this field. Read More→

This month I will continue explaining what I believe to be one of the best ways to add additional income to your wealth building strategies investing in Paper Assets.

There are two types of promissory notes “performing” and” nonperforming”. The performing promissory notes are the ones being paid by the borrower every month as agreed. The nonperforming promissory notes are not being paid as agreed and in many cases are in default and in the foreclosure process. Depending on what the asset is that has been used as the collateral for the note, if not being paid as agreed, it may be in jeopardy of being foreclosed upon and the real estate may be taken back or the borrower of non-real estate may be taken to court by the lender to get a judgment against borrower to try to reclaim the money they lent to the borrower. I believe every real estate investor needs to understand how paper assets can be a huge part of their wealth building plan.

One word of caution I want to mention, if you decide this is something you might like to participate in ALWAYS be sure to do your due diligence before ever purchasing any paper asset. The reason I say that is because I recently looked at a portfolio of defaulted notes held by a major bank. When I did my due diligence I found several properties that had a promissory note and mortgage attached to them had been bulldozed and no longer existed and all that was left was a vacant lot. A vacant lot is not worth anywhere near the amount owed on the promissory note. If I had not done my homework and I had bought those particular promissory notes and I decided to continue with the foreclosure that those properties were already involved in there would be no way I would ever get back as much as I might have paid for the promissory notes. Read More→