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“With Google I’m starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.”
~ Douglas Coupland

Go to your computer right now and Google “real estate.” Go ahead, I dare you. Care to guess how many results you’ll get? Well, I just tried it, and I got 1.1 billion results. That’s billion with a b. Talk about information overload!

You’re pretty sophisticated, though, so you know not to try that kind of a mushy search. And you already know that you can search specifically for images and videos. You also realize that Google is pretty good at guessing what you’re looking for, and it will usually put those results first. But not always: If you search for “bronco,” Google won’t know whether to give you information about cars, football, or rodeos.

Luckily, you can tweak your searches to be surprisingly precise, if you know how. Here are some tricks for searching on Google that I’ve found useful. I’m concentrating on Google because it’s so popular, but some of these will work in other search engines, too. Read More→

If you have done wholesaling for even just a handful of months, you have undoubtedly come across that property that was going to be an easy deal, a sweet deal, a killer deal only to have it stall and possibly unravel because of a title issue. Obtaining clear and marketable title is a key item that rarely gets focus in courses I come across. It is usually a ‘the attorneys will take care of it’ issue. This is 100% true except that it is still YOUR deal first and as long as it is your deal, you must remain in the driver’s seat.

Too many times, I have come across deals that stall simply because as a wholesaler, we forget that the closing attorneys get rather busy themselves and we may find our transaction playing second fiddle or even backburner to ‘easier’ transactions for the closing attorney. This is not a fault of the closing attorney. Think about it, like you they most likely want to knock out the low hanging fruit the same way you thought your deal would be an easy one!

Sadly, this results in even more time to resolve issues and potentially frustrated Buyers both with you and the closing attorney. Not all Buyers have the same desire to be patient to get a deal done. So how do we handle this? Read More→

In this article I am going to take a different approach as to the format. This time I am going to give you a list of tips for finding and working with real estate Coaches and Mentors. A good education is paramount to building any successful business. Good mentors are the foundation of a good education. Here are some things to keep in mind.

1. It’s not only ok but GOOD to pay for an education. Your education is the first of your investments. It’s also the most valuable. A good teacher is not free. I have spent about $75,000 on my real estate education. Mind you I didn’t plunk all that down at once. I have been through dozens of programs, books, home study courses, seminars and even coaching programs. You don’t need thousands of dollars to get started but do expect to pay something for your education. Start by setting a budget for buying education. If your budget is small then read a book. Go online and read blogs and forums. There are free trade magazines out there that you just have to sign up for and they show up in your mail or inbox. JUST GET STARTED!

2. Not all mentors and coaches are equal (or even good). Buyer beware. Do your homework or due diligence on any teacher before giving them money. Good teachers will not be hard to get a good referral for. On that note…get referrals before signing up. Ask around or go online to get some feedback about the education this person is offering. If a teacher or mentor is not creating successful students or is ripping people off then someone somewhere will have posted about it. Just look. Ask the coach or mentor for some references from other students. If they have successful students then they and the students shouldn’t mind talking to you.

Read More→

There are many creative ways to find motivated sellers and promote your business. One of the great ways to get positive exposure for your business and give back to your community is to sponsor events or teams. There are lots of great ways to do this.

You can sponsor sports teams such as soccer, softball, bowling or track. You can also participate in a local golf tournament for charity. One of the ways to do this is to provide uniforms or shirts which of course have your company information on them. Walk-a-thons are another great way to achieve this goal. This is a good way to get advertising out for your real estate investing business and support your community at the same time.

Another way to promote your real estate business in a positive way is to sponsor events or take part in local functions by donating promotional items. For example, if your community is having a local fair or parade, you could donate balloons to be given out to the children which have your company name and logo on them. These are always appreciated and it’s a good way to get your company information out to the public. These events usually get press or television coverage as well. Imagine a news shot of a parade where every child is holding a balloon with your message on it! Or, imagine the winning team getting their picture in the paper wearing shirts with your message on them. What better advertising could you ask for! And what better way to let people know that you buy houses! Read More→

Negotiating is a vital part of your business when it comes to cashing in big on short sales. It is always important to know who the investor is on the loan, and I’m not referring to who is servicing the loan and collecting the Sellers payments. There is an investor behind the scenes. Also, find out the type of loan, ie: private, conventional, FHA, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and whether there is private mortgage insurance (PMI) or mortgage insurance (MI) on the loan. Knowing all these facts allow you to negotiate based on the percent of value each one of the Investors and/or Private Mortgage Insurance Companies on the Loan will accept on a short sale.

I found this new information to be very interesting and should not be taken lightly when negotiating on a short sale. Many Sellers are behind on their monthly payments which include principal, interest, taxes and hazard insurance. When the Sellers make their payments, the taxes and insurance monthly payment is placed into an escrow account to pay the taxes and hazard insurance when they become due. When there is not enough money in the Sellers escrow account to pay taxes, the Lender will pay them. However, when there is not enough money in the Sellers escrow account to pay the hazard insurance policy, the Lender still pays it, but it becomes Mortgage Forced Insurance. This is in place only for the protection of the Lender, not the Sellers, and normally costs 2 to 3 times more than normal Hazard Insurance. Read More→

It was March 12^th, 1982, when I had a decision to make, and it didn’t seem like a very big one. You see, there was a seminar coming to town called “How to Buy Real Estate with No Money Down,” and it caught my attention because I certainly had none and didn’t want to continue doing what I had been doing for most of my life. I believe I saw the commercial on television, and after about the third time it aired I got to thinking about it and said, “Well, gosh, what have I got to lose. I know it’s a scam, I know they’re full of crap, but I might as well go down and check it out. Maybe there is something there, maybe I can find a way to get out of this mechanic job and make a little money for a change that lasts more than 15 minutes.”

Now, this was not an easy decision because I was going to miss my favorite television show “Dallas” with J.R. Ewing. For me to miss J.R. in order to go to the seminar was a big, big deal. We laugh about it now, but it wasn’t so funny back then because J.R. was the guy that gave me hope. He’s the first exposure I had to see what it was like to be very rich. I couldn’t really see myself as J.R. at that time, but I certainly wanted to be like him. I’m not sure I wanted to be as mean as he was. Of course, some people will say I am. I certainly wanted to have his money and his power. Read More→

Have you been in real estate for 6 months, or have you really been in real estate for 1 month? Because if you’re really in real estate, you’ve made a deal by now, maybe several.

Here’s the truth: If you’re not making offers, if you’re not making deals, you’re not in real estate…yet.

Are you making the mistake of preparing and then doing nothing? Listen, if you’re prepared, then you have the education. You’ve paid a lot of money to take courses, you’ve read the books, and you’ve watched the videos. You understand that buying real estate is not rocket science. You understand that making an offer is not difficult. You have a power team: a contractor, an attorney, a survey company, and a real estate agent.

But you just don’t seem to be able to get one deal done.

What will it take for you to make a deal?

How can you overcome this fear and lethargy? Read More→

“Investment personality?” you might ask. “What’s an investment personality? I want to make more money than I have. That’s my investment personality.” Okay, we’ll admit it: the idea of an ‘investment personality’ might not seem to have a lot of merit at first—until you realize that you do have a set of clear priorities and preferences based on your experiences. To one person, Real Estate IRAs—for example—might fit perfectly in line with their investment personality. For someone else, a Self-Directed IRA of a different sort might be more appropriate.

The question becomes: what exactly is your investment personality, and how can you know it? Let’s look through some basic questions to find out exactly what yours is – and whether or not Real Estate IRAs are the right match for you.

Basic Investment Personality Questions: A Short Quiz

Your investment personality might not be the same as your normal personality. Some people who find themselves perfectly risk-averse and introverted in their personal lives might enjoy a riskier approach to their investments…and vice-versa. Let’s take a few moments for some questions that may just reveal some things about your investment personality: Read More→

Over the years investors have always wanted to know which way they should go. Buy a house cheap, fix it up and rent it out. Over time collect the cash flow, keep some and use a portion to pay the house off. It’s the oldest and truest way to build wealth and a secure retirement.

Then there are those who are seriously focused on making some money now. They either want to “Wholesale” a house doing nothing to it all or the alternative option may be to acquire, renovate and sell for a really good profit and do it again. This method doesn’t build wealth but you can make some potential steady income.

Truly good real estate investors know the valuation of their deals is key to insuring success and protecting projected profits. To effectively determine if a deal is a rental building wealth or flip to make some much needed cash, you have to analyze a deal fully. All the market areas covered by REIAComps.com, insure you easily know which way an investor should go. Read More→

Recently I was having a discussion with a friend of mine discussing some of the different ways to create wealth not only from real estate but other forms of investing that can give huge returns. We talked about the usual ways of making money buying real estate and we also talked about other ways of creating income without having to do any physical work for the money. Of course when you are a real estate investor your first thought is usually either about, buying foreclosure properties, wholesaling properties, fixing and selling houses at retail prices, and also buying long term income properties.

One subject I have never talked about before that I think is an important part of every real estate investors portfolio of investing opportunities is to also own paper assets for income. From this point forward we will refer to paper assets simply as “Paper”. So what are paper assets? Paper assets come in many different forms. Some different paper assets come in the form of property tax certificates, land contract paper, contract for deed paper and promissory notes secured by a mortgage or a deed of trust paper. It is my belief that every real estate investor should be diversified and have several different income streams to help them build the wealth they desire. Read More→

If you are blessed and fortunate enough to have lived on this planet for a while, there eventually comes a time when you start to notice the same thing that countless ancestors of ours have noticed over the eons… The undeniable fact that, sorry! You’re getting old.

The first signs of this sad truth probably reveal themselves to you in a very subtle fashion… An extra ache when you wake up in the morning; Recuperating from injuries takes longer than it used to; Or it could be a grey hair or an extra wrinkle in your smile. As my (older) brother always likes to tell me, “getting old is not for the faint of heart.”

Such subtle signs are a painful reminder of our own mortality. They can either make you sad or remind you that you may only have a certain amount of time left on this spinning blue rock we call home.

If you like movies, you know you’re getting old when the actors you grew up watching & admiring start showing their age… or die. (Even though Tom Cruise & Keanu Reeves are immortal. They never age!) Read More→

Kim and I have been managing rental property and tenants since 1997. We still own the very first single-family investment property we bought way back then!

Between then and now, we’ve made every landlording mistake in the book. We’ve bought bad rental properties, rented to awful tenants, and let tenants get three or four months behind in rent.

Here’s the important thing to remember: With every mistake we made, we learned what not to do. And with everything we did right, we learned what to keep doing. That said, here are the top 10 landlording lessons I’ve learned over the years.

Number 10: Take the magic nickel. Why own rental property? If you flip a house, you make a dollar. The only way to get another dollar is to find and flip another house. With rental property, you only make a nickel. But it’s a magic nickel that you get every month for as long as you own the house!

Number 9: Begin an eviction ASAP. Over the years, we’ve had tenants not pay us on time. In the beginning, we’d work with them only to be left holding the bag after three or four months of non-payments. When a tenant defaults on the lease, immediately file for eviction in order to get the eviction clock started. Read More→

Last month it was in California, this month it was in South Carolina. All across the country we are seeing rescission letters stopping foreclosures in their tracks. Over the last few months I have been writing about how effective a Truth in Lending Act (TILA) rescission of your mortgage could be, and how the banks are getting nervous. Well, the results keep coming in, and they are extremely encouraging!

One of my real estate investor students recently explained to his father how he might be able to use rescission to stop the foreclosure on his home. His father sent in a rescission letter and the 20-day period for the bank to respond went by without a peep from the bank or their attorney. When the auction day came up, the investor and his father went to the courthouse and explained to the judge about the rescission and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter. The judge pushed their auction to the end of the day in order to move onto other houses. At the end of the day, the judge asked for a copy of the Supreme Court decision to review it. After reviewing the decision, he canceled the auction and called for a new hearing. Read More→