The October 2017 Edition of The Profit Newsletter, the official newsletter of the Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance, is now available for download. There are 46 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!

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Here are my seven strategies to help increase your return on investment on keeper properties by reducing vacancy.

1. Do Your Homework Before You Buy

   Location, Location, Location… Search out the areas that have low vacancy rates.  Talk to local realtors, property managers, and seasoned investors who have been renting units for over a decade before you take the plunge and buy a property.

   For example, I want to own property where supply of rental properties is low and the demand is high.  I own properties in a town where the schools are in the Top 50 Schools in America.  Demand for rental property is high and my average days on market to rent are usually less than 2 weeks.  Read More→

I believe we all need to improve our businesses. The only way to do this is intentional reflection and forensic analysis. We all can learn a better way to look at our business to stay on top of our game. The best example of this was back in 2000 when the market opened up and anyone who had credit could get into a house.  I was using an old business model to screen tenants and respond to inquiries about my properties. I had to make a change quickly because the vacancies lasted longer than needed. I learned the lesson to stay on top of the market. If you become complacent your business will drop off.

In the last article, I wrote about sitting at the table with two sellers and working to get them to finance their house so I could renovate it. Then I would pay off the mortgage. It was a buy, fix, and sell. I will be using poetic license in referring to the “lender” as owner financing / private lending/ hard money.  Read More→

In just about any real estate market I believe that there are a lot of great ways to make a fortune in real estate and one of those ways is to rehab and sell properties quickly. This is a strategy I implement on a daily basis in my own Real Estate Investing business.

There are some excellent resources for you to use to find vacant, ugly properties to rehab and sell in virtually any price range. One of those ways is to simply use targeted direct mail campaigns like I do to find motivated sellers of ugly vacant properties or estates.

This is a great way to find highly motivated sellers who need to sell quickly and there are great deals to be made for pennies on the dollar. Remember, your profit is made when you buy a property.  Read More→

We are seeing more interest among real estate IRA enthusiasts in purchasing distressed and vacant properties. Many times, the real estate IRA investor can purchase a promising vacant property at a substantial discount to its intrinsic value, which make these properties attractive value investments – especially for those real estate IRA investors who have the capital to upgrade these properties and make them once again attractive to tenants at a reasonable rent.

But as long as a property is vacant, there are some special considerations that investors need to consider:  Read More→

Last month I explained why sellers who live in the property they are selling usually do not have to pay high capital gain taxes. It is the exact opposite for property owners who do not live in the property they are selling. This is why I always prefer buying properties from sellers whose property is not their primary residence. These sellers will definitely have high capital gains taxes to pay if they get all cash when they sell.

Paying high taxes can be a huge deterrent for many sellers once they understand how much they will be losing. On the other hand, if the sellers do not, or have not lived in the property as their primary residence and you can’t convince them that if they get all of their money from the sale of their property at closing they will have to pay high taxes in the year of the sale you need to explain to them…  Read More→

The late Jack Miller was one of my primary real estate investing teachers.  He was a wonderful man and an incredible educator and mentor.  It’s hard to believe that he went to heaven almost six years ago…not a day goes by that he and I don’t have a conversation in my head. 

Jack was the type of guy who very much marched to his own drum.  One of his best quotes was: Never take orders from paint.

Let me explain: Have you ever turned onto a street, seen the One Way sign and realized that you were going the wrong way?  What did you do – an immediate U-turn, right?  That’s what most of us would do.  But not Jack!  Jack would keep going the way he was going and say, “Never take orders from paint!”  Read More→

They’re not as commonly used as invoices. But if you need them, they’re there.

When you want to document sales that you can’t (or won’t) fulfill immediately, but you plan to do so in the future, you can’t create an invoice just yet. This is where sales orders come in.

You may never need to create a sales order for a customer. Perhaps you have a service-based business, or you never run out of inventory. Or you simply don’t enter an order unless you know you have the item(s) in stock.

But if you plan to use sales orders, you must first make sure QuickBooks is set up to accommodate them. Open the Edit menu and select Preferences, then Sales & Customers. Click the Company Preferences tab to open that window.  Read More→

I hope all of you and your families affected by Hurricane Irma are all safe with little to no damage, and if that’s not the case, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.   Irma taught me some valuable lessons. There are more than a few, but in this article I want to share with you 4 lessons that she taught me.

1) Worry: I’m sure many of you spent much time worrying about your family and loved ones, your safety, your rental properties, and much more. Personally, I probably took 10 years off my life with the amount of worry I experienced.

Shantideva, an 8th century monk said, “If a problem can be solved why worry, If a problem can’t be solved, then what use is it worrying?”  Read More→