Tampa Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

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→