Tampa Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

The August 2013 edition of The Profit Newsletter has arrived just in time for our Tampa REIA Meeting on August 8th. You can download The Profit Newsletter as a High Quality PDF (Recommended) or Low Res PDF (for slower devices). The Profit Newsletter is the official newsletter of the Tampa Real Estate Investors Alliance and is a digital, interactive newsletter for new and seasoned real estate investors delivered as an Adobe PDF file to read on your PC, Mac, Smart Phone, iPad or other mobile ready devices with a PDF reader. Many of the articles and ads in The Profit contain hyperlinks you can click or tap to visit websites, watch videos, listen to audios, download content, send emails, comment on articles, share socially and much more! The high res version of The Profit is “print ready” for those who want to print the newsletter on their home or business printer. Also, be sure to Subscribe to The Profit so you don’t miss a single monthly issue.

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Last month’s article was on “Driving for Dollars and Farming with Flyers”. As you are out driving neighborhoods in search of houses to buy, you will soon discover that there are many vacant houses out there. Some of these houses are obviously for sale or rent as indicated by a sign in the yard, but many are not so obvious. These houses are just sitting empty, often deteriorating, waiting for someone like you to come along and buy them. Many of these houses appear to have been abandoned and unkept.

Vacant houses often provide some of the best opportunities to create some killer deals. After all, many of the houses have mortgages, taxes and other expenses that the owner is responsible for paying, even as the house sites vacant and unused. Even houses that are free and clear have expenses the owner must pay to avoid tax liens and code enforcement violations. Since the owner doesn’t live in the house, they are often highly motivated and more than willing to do just about anything to get rid of it.

When I am out driving neighborhoods and spot a vacant house, I stop and take pictures and write down the address. If the house is for sale by owner or for rent, I write down the number on the sign and call the owner later. I will even call Realtors from time to time if I know the house has been sitting vacant for a while since the owner might be motivated and eager to sell. Read More→

Hello fellow investors,

I hope you enjoyed the 4^th of July last month and took a moment to think about the fact that this country has fought many wars to give each one of us independence and the ability to create and do business as we wish with unlimited income potential. In this country our income is only limited to our vision and our determination to succeed at what we choose.

As the year goes on I am getting reports that many of my students are doing deals and starting to make some serious money, and I’m not talking about doing short sales or wholesale deals exclusively. One of my students found a seller who has 80 free and clear houses they want to sell and are willing to do seller financing terms. My student is cherry-picking the deals she wants and is finally deciding that sending letters is a good thing not a laborious waste of time. Three of my other students who are working together have bought 40 properties since the first of the year all with seller financing terms and many with zero percent interest rates and monthly payments as little as $200. I had lunch with another student from Missouri yesterday who has four properties ready to close in less than a month and one of the properties doesn’t have a monthly payment due for 12 full months and zero interest. All of these deals my students are doing are coming from their letter campaign sending letters to “Non-Owner Occupied – FREE & CLEAR” Property Owners. Read More→

It is as easy to succeed as it is to fail. Why does this sound untrue? Because most of us forget that we have a choice: we can enjoy the good and overcome the negative. What we must remember is that when we encounter something that we initially see as negative, we have a choice about how to react.

Did you know that Harland David Sanders, the famous KFC “Colonel”, couldn’t sell his chicken? More than 1,000 restaurants rejected him.

Or that Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”?

Or that Henry Ford’s first auto company went out of business?

What made these people successful after so many “failures”? Read More→

Which is better for real estate investors – buying a note in pre-foreclosure, buying the house through a short sale, or waiting until the house comes on the market as an REO?  That depends on the difference in the discounts expected, the condition of the house, and the likelihood of reaching an agreement with the current homeowner to either move or purchase the note at a discount and remain in the house.

The discount on the note may well be less than the amount of discount the lender will be willing to take for the house as an REO. Having the note gives the note holder considerable flexibility—and some additional risks.  The note buyer can decide to set up a new mortgage with the current homeowner, negotiate a “cash for keys” or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure with the homeowner, or may be stuck taking the homeowner through a long, drawn-out foreclosure process.  If the latter happens, then the note buyer may well be better off waiting until the home comes on the REO market rather than tying up funds unproductively waiting for the foreclosure process to complete.  However, if you have a cooperative homeowner, buying the note presents you with some incredible opportunities. Read More→

One of the biggest mistakes we continually see real estate investors make is buying a rental property that produces a NEGATIVE monthly cash flow. When it comes to rental properties, positive cash flow is much more important than equity!

Here’s a typical example: An investor buys a single-family rental for $90,000. The property will rent for $725 per month and have mortgage payments of $485. The investor thinks: Wow, the property will produce a positive monthly cash flow of $240 – boy will I be sitting pretty.

But what about little expenses such as property taxes, insurance, repairs, vacancies, and management? When you factor these costs into the equation you suddenly find yourself knee deep in a pit of money-losing quicksand.

Always remember that investors make their profit – including positive cash flow – when BUYING the property. For a deal to be profitable, it’s critical that you know all the numbers and structure it accordingly. Read More→

Okay, the media in general is touting the US economy is doing better than it has over the last bunch of quarters. People across the country are working again. Typically this news leads people to feel better about the overall economy. More directly, this has translated to a recovery in the real estate market.

Signs show home values are coming up from the lows of 2008-2011. It is easy to keep track of values using REIAComps. Sales in many markets have been increasing and there a good volume of houses to choose from and lastly the number of folks looking to buy are up.

These previously mentioned factors are good for people who purchased at the height in 2004-2007. This was the time period when negative equity was born. Upside down mortgages became common place far too often. Read More→

(This article is continued from Part 1 in the July 2013 Edition of The Profit Newsletter.)

3. Listening to poor advice. This is something you probably already know. As you go through life, there will never be a shortage of people who want to give you advice. Your parents, your spouse, friends, in-laws, kids, they all have opinions about what you’re doing and what they think you should be doing. Very often, the value of their advice is worth exactly what you paid for it . . . nothing!

   I’m not saying these do-gooders aren’t honest, intelligent and well-intentioned. However, you must ask yourself, are these folks qualified to give you advice? Have they had any experience in what you’re doing? It seems to be human nature for people to offer advice on subjects they know nothing about. What baffles me is how often the recipients of this so-called wisdom will listen to it and even act upon it without ever questioning the credentials of those giving it.

   Through many painful experiences, I’ve learned that when you take advice from people who don’t know any more about the subject matter than you do, the quality of that advice is, at best, suspect. Plus, very often, listening to unqualified advice can have a negative impact on your focus (see roadblock #1).

   So, who should you be listening to? I believe in taking advice only from people who are: Read More→

If you have looked at more than a few deals over the last year you have undoubtedly seen a distressed asset. Repairs needed, low occupancy, bad management (or tenants) are some examples, just to name a few. From single family to large apartment complexes there are distressed assets in all types of real estate these days. Fortunately they can be hidden goldmines if you know how to get financing. Most lenders are not lending on distressed assets, making it harder to close these deals, let alone mitigate the needed repairs.

My favorite way to deal with this is with a master lease option or seller financing. If you can get the seller to give you control of the property then you can do the fix-up and flip it for cash or keep it for cash flow!

Either way you structure the deal, the idea is to limit the cost of getting into the deal because you will have repairs and other expenses to overcome while you get the property cash flowing. Here are some tips for getting started with a rehab property using creative financing. Read More→

Hope everyone is doing well and out there putting out their marketing, getting leads, and doing deals.  You can’t make much money in real estate if you aren’t doing deals, right?  Real estate “Deals” can come in many forms.  You can have a wholesale flip, where you are basically flipping the contract for a fee or doing a double closing.  You might be closing on a house yourself that you intend to fix up and resell (fix n flip).  When you resell that house, which would be considered a deal, and that is when you get paid (my favorite part).  You might have just bought a house from the bank or a wholesaler that you intend to put a renter in.  You may have just stroked a deal with a home owner to “owner finance” their house and you intend to rent it out.  Or, you were able to negotiate a lease option with a home owner with a nice low down payment and monthly payment, and you can turn around and lease option that to somebody else for a higher down payment and higher monthly payment – very nice!

Gotta love Real Estate – so many ways to make money!!  But we’re not in it for the money are we?  Yeah – we are.  Ha! Read More→