Tampa Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

“I blog because I have something to say.” ~ Eddie Huang

Do you have a blog? Have you ever thought about starting one? For a while there, you could be shunned if you didn’t have a blog. Every Tom, Dick, and Alice had a blog. Heck, even my second cousin Flora, the cat lady, had a blog. All God’s children had a blog! Thankfully, the hype has subsided. But the potential benefits of blogs – and pitfalls – are still there.

I’ve done some blogging myself, with mixed success, and in doing so, I’ve developed some ideas about what works and what doesn’t. Since I’ve been reexamining the idea of blogging as an investor, I thought I’d share my thoughts with you here.

As you know, I like to start at the beginning, and I’ll bet at least one of my readers doesn’t really know what a blog is. A blog is simply an online journal or diary. That’s pretty much it. Beyond that, each blogger decides what his or her blog is going to look like.

But first you’ve got to decide if blogging is for you. Read More→

Have you ever made a TOTAL fool of yourself – when you were least expecting to? Read on, and learn how I stepped square in the middle of it!

Last night, one of my lifelong friends – Mary Ann Doering – invited Kim and me over to a small dinner party she was having for her neighbors. Mary Ann is a wordsmith and the woman who proofs my columns.

As much as I like and appreciate Mary Ann, I did NOT want to go to her dinner party. Frankly, any get-together that doesn’t include real estate investors, capitalists and financial-freedom seekers bores me to tears. No matter – Kim made it clear that we WOULD be attending. What I didn’t know was that Mary Ann was setting me up BIG TIME! She was about to pull off her best practical joke on me EVER!

We got to Mary Ann’s before the other guests arrived. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Prior to the couple walking in, Mary Ann whispered, “I barely know these people. They’re pretty boring from what I remember.” GREAT, I thought: Now I’m really glad I came.

After meeting “Tim” and “Jane,” I began doing what I always do – asking questions. At one point, Mary Ann mentioned that she was rereading The Millionaire Next Door by Tom Stanley. Tim asked, “Who is Tom Stanley?” Read More→

Whether you are a serious investor or you’re just getting started in the real estate investing business, you need to have at least one Realtor on your “dream team”. There are many ways a Realtor can help you in your business, both on the buying and the selling side and they can play an integral role in building your business.

One of the questions I get a lot is “how do I find a Realtor to work with?” There are many ways to do this. You can find one by asking other investors who they use. They may or may not want to share this information with you. You can also go to your local real estate club. There are always Realtor/Investors at those meetings. Another way to find a Realtor to work with is to check with the Board of Realtors and find Realtors who specialize in investor properties. This type of Realtor may also work with bank owned properties which can also net you some really great deals, especially in today’s market where there are so many foreclosures and motivated sellers.

You need to find a Realtor who is going to do a good job for you. Make sure the Realtor you pick is at least a broker-salesman. These types of Realtors have usually been in the business for a long time and have a lot of experience in dealing with all kinds of properties and situations. You also want to work with a Realtor who is motivated to bring you deals and buyers. Read More→

I was just up speaking for Atlanta REIA when a member asked me “isn’t closing short sales back to back illegal?” My answer was NO! He asked me, when did that change? It has never changed. He just didn’t ask the right questions to the right Attorney or Title Company. Closing a short sale back to back can only be done with full disclosure which I always do on my paperwork to the short sale lender and to the “C” Buyer. I provide copies of my purchase agreement which I have signed with my “A” Seller and me as “B” Buyer to the short sale lender. I then provide copies of paperwork that I had signed with my “C” Buyer and me as “B” Seller to my title company. If you are using my paperwork, here is how I disclose the back to back CASH closing. Remember, disclose, disclose, disclose!

1. The “C” Buyer is a cash buyer.

2. The “B” Seller/investor must has signed a form along with the “C” Buyer, stating that they are aware that the “C” Buyer’s money is going to be used to close the first transaction between the “A” Seller who is doing the short sale and the “B” Buyer/Investor who is purchasing the property prior to selling to the “C”/Buyer.

3. In addition, the Title Company and/or Attorney who is writing title insurance on the property, their underwriter has no problem with this type of transaction as long as this form along with the disclosure stated in your purchase agreement to the short sale lender is provided to them for review. Read More→

Major Zane Purdy’s life crumbled overnight…

Maj. Zane Purdy was making over $100,000 a year employed by defense contracting company, General Dynamics, when his identity was stolen and sold to an identity theft and tax fraud ring. Now, Purdy makes $7.25 an hour at a Krystal to support his wife and two children.

In 18 years of service, Purdy had never had an issue with his top secret security clearance. But once thieves stole his identity, his credit was trashed. Bad credit automatically flags someone as a national security risk and his security clearance was suspended. To add insult to injury, he has also been blocked from active duty and General Dynamics was forced to fire him.

Adding to his plight, he has tax liens levied against his property and the IRS is claiming he owes them more than $10,000 in back taxes.

You may want to believe he was careless with his information, maybe on an Internet smut site or volunteering personal information to a phone scammer. Nope.

His identity thief was a data-entry clerk at a nearby hospital! Read More→

In last month’s issue, I began to explain exactly what securitization is and why it is fraudulent. For several years the mortgage banks in this country were flat-out making up transactions and trusts to cover for the fact that they were pocketing their investors’ money. But that wasn’t enough for them. They bundled up the loans, intentionally loaded them with toxic mortgages to increase their rate of return, and sold them to themselves for a “profit.”

But what does this all mean for the title on a property that had a loan go through this process?

Basically, the title was flawed from the get-go. Nobody who was a signatory to the loan had ANY interest in the repayment of that loan. MERS and all the others were just filling a role by pretending to be officials of the bank that was lending the money, when in reality they were a signature factory. If the trusts had been managed correctly from the beginning, the name of the trust should have been on the note and on the mortgage. They weren’t. Instead the banks set up a huge maze of companies to process the loans with defective notes and mortgages. Read More→

Funding in the real estate business can be one of the biggest barriers to entry and one of the biggest headaches! Here are some tips to help get your next deal funded.

Remember that the only thing that sellers really care about is solving their problems. Make your offers a solution to their problems. Do your homework on the seller and the property. Find out why they are selling and if the property is distressed in any way (deferred maintenance, low occupancy, etc.). Make an offer that solves the seller’s problems. An example might be using a master lease option to take control of a distressed property, fixing it up and then refinancing or selling it.

1. Use master lease options. A master lease option or lease option is a set of two contracts that give you the right to control the property (master lease) and an option to purchase the property for a set price and for a set amount of time. A master lease option will allow you to take control of the operations of the deal and give you time to stabilize the property. Once that is done you can exercise your option to purchase or sell the option to a new buyer for quick cash. Read More→

Considerations

Hard money lending can be a great place for self-directed IRA or other retirement assets. There are, however, a few things to be aware of before you commit:

• Hard money loans can be illiquid. If you are nearing or over age 70, pay attention to your required minimum distributions. You must make these RMDs, even if the borrower pays the loan late. You may want to earmark RMD money to come from another source besides the hard money lending part of your portfolio.
• RMDs do not always have to be taken in the form of cash, some self-directed IRA investors that do hard money lending have elected to take their RMD in the form of the actual loans themselves. In fact, you can even take a portion of the loan as your RMD thus becoming partners with your IRA on that loan. (For Example: You can take 25% of the loan as your RMD. You would then own 25% of the loan and your IRA would own the other 75% of the loan.)
• Your ability to contribute new money to your self-directed IRA or other retirement account is limited each year. For self-directed IRAs, for example, you are limited to $5,500 in new contributions. Anything over that must be rolled over into the account from another qualified retirement asset, or you will have to borrow the difference.
• You cannot lend money to yourself or certain family members, via your self-directed IRA. You therefore cannot make a hard money loan to any property in which you, your spouse, your ascendants or descendants and their spouses has an interest. Similarly, you cannot lend money from your self-directed IRA to any project in which any legal, accounting or financial professional who advises you on your self-directed IRA investments has an interest. Read More→

Across the country there are cities which have high percentages of underwater houses. Cities like Tampa, FL have as much as 43 percent of area home mortgages seriously below its formerly established market value. Fortunately for investors there are numerous areas like Tampa which have a large volume of homes with a mortgage balance exceeding the home’s value by at least 25 percent.  REIAComps helps to quickly see the number of foreclosure sales of these types of houses in your market month after month.

By looking at REIAComps valuation and sales data, we were able to actually verify the two market areas with a higher percentage of foreclosure than Tampa. They are Las Vegas, NV and Lakeland, FL. According to the local Tampa newspaper, The Tampa Tribune one additional factor is this market condition restricts the number of homes that can be listed for sale and exacerbates a region’s temporary shortage of homes on the market. Read More→