Tampa Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

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A little history. Back in 2007-2008, not only did the Real Estate market change, but so did our entire economy.  With the near total melt down of our economy, Real Estate took a huge hit. The Banking/Lending industry all but shut down making mortgage loans.

This made it very difficult for us to do business.  Up to this point we were doing just about every creative technique out there for they were all working.  We were doing Subject To, Lease/Options, Private Money, Rehabbing, REO’s, Wholesaling, Wholetaling, Commercial, Building Spec Homes, etc.

Lending was way too loose, but that was what was making it easy to sell properties.  In fact, it was so easy, some even crossed the line and put home owners into homes that they knew they could never afford, but were able to obtain these easy to get loans.  We of course could not do that.  Read More→

I am sure you’ve heard the phrase “fake it till you make it” but I have never believed in this. I have found more success in being the real you. Even if it means that you don’t know what you’re doing in something you’re looking to pursue. This belief continues to work to this day. As I mentioned before, I am in the process of immersing myself in commercial real estate (CRE) as a broker and investor.

I spent many hours learning from Google, YouTube and a few podcasts. I invested the time in learning more to insure this was something I am interested in doing. Just because a person likes residential real estate does not mean they will like commercial and vis-versa. Once I was certain I wanted to do CRE I started to reach out to practitioners and investors. Obviously, I picked the brains of those in my immediate network during social gatherings but I did not have serious conversations with them until I was committed. I make it a point not to waste people’s time or my own because I learned, a long time ago, that time is too valuable.  Read More→

Sitting at the kitchen table there were three people, two sellers and the buyer.  I wanted to buy their house but did not have the $40,000 cash to do it… now. The presentation from my side went just like I had planned.  From the Seller’s prospective it was too good to be true. They were unfamiliar with investing in residential real estate. They did have other investments like a 401 K.  They let other people handle their investment accounts. They haven’t touched it or changed their investment direction in 20 years and they had lost money during the recession. When the 401K and investment statements came in the mail they never opened the envelopes to see what they had. What they had was HOPE! They had a mortgage and had owned two houses prior with a mortgage. They had never heard of private real estate investing and getting an interest rate as high as I was proposing.

What I wanted to do was to buy the house. The house had a first mortgage of $120,000 and equity of $40,000 for a total financing of $160,000.   I wanted to keep the first mortgage in place, have a $40,000 second and pay an interest rate of 8%. My exit strategy was to buy, fix and sell the property, just like they do on TV. It would be for one year, then I would sell the house and the mortgage would be paid off.  This method of financing was going to save me $16,600 in interest fees and costs. I could pay a higher price for the house with the owner financing. It would be a lower price if I paid all cash.  Read More→

A Real Estate IRA is a great opportunity. It’s freeing. It’s invigorating. It’s a thrilling way to potentially build up a major retirement nest egg so you can build wealth over the long term and enjoy the peace that comes with financial security. But that doesn’t mean it’s fool-proof, either. If you want to make the most out of a Self-Directed IRA in which you invest in real estate, you have to avoid some critical errors along the way. Here are four you need to be aware of:

Mistake #1: Not Hiring a Property Manager

Hiring a property manager is critical when you have a Real Estate IRA. Not only will it help take care of any problems with repairs, tenants, and other issues like that, but it will keep you from participating in a prohibited transaction since you are not allowed to provide services to your Real Estate IRA.  Read More→

If you plan to have multiple employees using QuickBooks, you can limit their access to specific areas.

Controlling access to your QuickBooks company file is easy when you’re a one-person accounting department. You simply use one password to protect your data.

But when you add new employees to the mix, do you want them to have access to absolutely everything in QuickBooks? Probably not. You have confidence in your employees or you wouldn’t have hired them. But this isn’t solely a matter of trust. It’s just good business practice to restrict individuals to specific areas and responsibilities, no matter what the application.

That’s why QuickBooks has built-in tools to help you limit activity. Here’s how it works.  Read More→

“What do YOU do for a living?”

Those words can strike fear and paralysis in the hearts & minds of the tragically unprepared.  If you’re newly in business for yourself, or have just never really gotten your head properly wrapped around HOW you should respond to this powerful question, you’re sunk. Handle it the right way, and you’ll be rewarded with confidence, respect, and a fatter bank account.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this article. So shut off your Facebook & keep reading… 

It never fails. You’re out at a social event, taking a flight somewhere, or maybe you just strike up a casual conversation with someone somewhere sometime. If you’re both adults over the age of 25 or so, the question eventually comes up, “What do you do?”   Read More→

When I am purchasing a property either for myself or with my student/partner, we determine which exit strategy is the best for both parties.  Knowing whether you want to wholesale a property for a small profit or rehab/retail it for a big profit is important.  Many investors start off with wholesaling the properties because they either don’t have a money lender or partner to help them rehab/retail the house and sell it for a bigger profit.  If this is you, then I believe you really should find a partner or money lender so you have more than one exit strategy.

When you purchase a short sale, some of the lenders will put a hold time for the new buyer requiring them to hold the property for 30, 60 or 90 days before they can resell the property for a profit.  In addition, they may tell you that you can only make a certain amount of money on the property if you sell it earlier than 90 days.   Holding doesn’t bother my student/partners or myself because we normally choose to rehab the property and retail it for a higher profit.  Read More→

“I am thankful to all the souls, I meet in the journey of life.” ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Touchnote App is a familiar app to many. It’s commonly used to create eCards for birthdays and holidays, as well as printing applications like greeting cards and framed photos. I have found a way to use this for my own needs that are unique to my business.

Using this app has freed up some of my time. How to gently and politely notify a homeowner that I have an interest in their home without knocking on the door and intruding on their routine. I’ve utilized the Touchnote App to reach out to these potential clients. I usually drive looking for vacant homes in particular. I just take a photo of the house and look up the homeowner’s address in the public tax records. I write a simple message explaining that I’m interested in buying the property. It’s so fast and takes the time and thought out of trying to reach out to these homeowners by phone or physically printing and paying postage on a postcard. The cost is $1.99, which is very reasonable. You can also reduce this price even more by buying in bulk, making the cost $1.50.  Read More→

Implementing the right list and using the right letter when creating your direct mail campaigns to locate motivated sellers is crucial to your success as a Real Estate Investor. There are lots of different ways to find these lists and lots of different types of lists to choose from.

The easiest way I suggest to locate a list to use for mailings is to simply go to your property appraiser’s office or auditor’s office and have them create it for you. There are many different parameters you can use to create these lists.

Some of the lists you could create might be directed at out of town owners, deed transfers, zip codes ranges, sale dates, estates, evictions, delinquent taxes or pre-foreclosures. These can all be good lead sources for you to use to find motivated sellers and these are lists that I use in my business on a daily basis in addition to several others.  Read More→

In this article, I want to discuss a simple way to develop peace within, while in the midst of the chaos that many of us live.

We spend our lives thinking that there is some end goal, some place where we can be that will finally bring total happiness. Then to get there we set crazy goals that consume most if not all our time.

You know the saying, “live like no one else today, so you can live like no one else tomorrow” a popular Dave Ramsey quote that is interesting to ponder. There is nothing wrong with dreams, setting goals, and hard work but the illusion that there is some destination, or some sanctuary that will save you is what I’m addressing here.  Read More→

Making money investing in real estate begins with determining the actual value of the property. This is the most important out of the many factors in real estate. The price of the property is determined with real estate comparables or comps.  Being that this is the maximum amount a seller could expect to receive for a given property, it becomes the starting point for negotiations. This is where you, as a real estate investor, make your profit when you buy the property.  Mess up here and it could become difficult to make money on the deal or at the very least the ideal profit you had hoped for.

When researching a property, you begin by comparing your target property with those in the surrounding area.   Be sure you know the details of your property.  The square footage, beds/baths, year built and location of your property are important criteria for determining how closely these other properties match or compare to your subject property.  Read More→