Tampa Real Estate Investors Alliance Blog

Recently, I heard a talk show host say that all properties should have their own LLC and that a corporation should own all of the LLCs so that it will be the umbrella under which the LLC’s are safe.

Let me offer another point of view that, after years of experience, I can say has worked for me and for people whom I coach on a daily basis. 

The reality is that an LLC for each property is impractical. The main reason is that each LLC would have it own tax return. This gets costly and tedious.

Compromise is the solution: Why not have a 3-in-one LLC that covers the good, the bad, and the ugly? Hear me out–an LLC is good because if someone tries to sue, by law the person has to take all or nothing; he cannot cherry pick. If you have a property that you just bought and it turns out to be a liability, it will balance out the GOOD property. And, the UGLY is a property whose cash flow is barely at fair market value.

If I am doing the buy, fix, and sell, this is an easy system. If the LLC is for long term holds and all the properties are “great”, then I have a chance to lose everything in that LLC. In this case, I create another LLC. Read More→

WARNING: If You Own Any Properties In Your Own Name Statistics Show You Have A Huge Target On Your Back And A Damaging Lawsuit Is Just Around The Corner If You Don’t Do Something FAST To Prevent This From Happening To You!

Let me share some very important facts that unless you do something FAST could cost you everything you’ve worked hard for. Statistics show…

Fact: Every year at least 7,000,000 (seven million) Slip-and-Fall Civil lawsuits are filed throughout this country costing millions of dollars. That means that at the very least 14,000,000 (fourteen million) people and their families will be party to those lawsuits that 85% to 95% are settled out of court. Most of these are nuisance suits generated just to get money.

I don’t want you to be the next victim? Why would you want to needlessly expose your real estate assets when you don’t need to jeopardize your financial future? Forget about time, stress and anxiety you and your family will experience just because you are named in a lawsuit. Even if you aren’t guilty of doing anything wrong it can ruin your life. When you are sued it costs you time, personal grief and attorney’s fees, and possibly thousands of dollars regardless of the outcome of the case. This doesn’t sound like a good formula for accumulating wealth to me wasting money defending you from those unscrupulous people and their contingency fee lawyers. Read More→

We get the question quite often about how you can start a real estate wholesaling business when you already have a 9 to 5 JOB – or any JOB for that matter. Naturally one of the biggest excuses people have about NOT getting into real estate is that they don’t have the time. Most people do have jobs and then they also have family duties to take care of on top of that.

But the fact of the matter is that we as people don’t really want to break out of our comfort zones or work more or work harder if we don’t have to. We might be OK with our normal routine of get up, get ready for work, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed – do it all over again the next day. Weekends are for relaxing and house chores. That’s the routine we’ve always had and we are getting by. Maybe we are getting by, but are we getting what we want out of life, and are we on the road to financial freedom? Probably not. So we may need to change some things. Read More→

Years ago I learned appraisers and other property valuation folks use three methods to build a value for a piece of property. The sales comparable or market approach basically look at what comparable properties sell for, the cost approach looks at what it would cost to build the property, and the income approach considers the value of the income stream that a property generates or could generate. Each of these methods has a different use and different type of property for which it is most appropriate. Let me share a little more detail before giving a slightly different investor focused concept.

Comparable Sales Approach

In the comparable sales approach, a value is created by looking at what similar properties in a similar market have sold for. Your REIAComps.com Membership is very useful here. For example, if three similar three-bedroom homes sold in the same neighborhood in a range of $75,000 to $85,000, it’s reasonable to assume that a comparable property would also sell in that range. The appraiser would choose a specific value by adjusting each comp for the unique characteristics of the property that they are analyzing. You can get assistance performing this same comparable analysis by using the Valuation Support Desk through your REIAComps.com Membership. Read More→

It is impossible to outline a single set of guidelines for due diligence, but here is a basic checklist, in no particular order, to begin your due diligence with a deal presented by another investor (referred to as offeror here). No money or commitment should change hands until you have satisfied at least this preliminary checklist. After all, you spent a significant period of time making your hard-earned money; don’t throw it away in 30 minutes. Unfortunately, this happens all too often. In many cases with experienced investors who should know better.

1. How well do you know the person offering you the deal? What is their reputation? Get names of other investors the offeror has done business with and talk to those along with other investors you know about their experiences or knowledge of this person. If you don’t know those investors, find out about them as well. Put more stock in the experiences of those investors who have been dealing with the offeror for years rather than a short period of time and have done several completed deals with them. What were their deals? Did they work out as expected? Did they check out what the offeror said? Did they receive the proper paperwork? Don’t rely solely on offeror’s references. A recent study showed that 40% to 60% of resumes have false references. You need to have independent references as well. For example, check with the president of a REIA local to where the offeror lives. Ask others in investment groups or classes where you met the offeror if they know him and his ethics. You can’t get too many references.
2. Ask the offeror about their experience and history. Ask what you will find if you run a credit-check or background check. You ask tenants and borrowers for this information, why wouldn’t you with someone with whom you are thinking about investing. Then run their credit, civil and criminal background checks. I once did due diligence on a fellow where everything checked out until I ran a background check for $40 to find he was in bankruptcy. Check the Secretary of State’s website for any entities the offeror may control or be associated. Then Google search those entities as well. What do you find? Read More→

When writing killer copy for an ad, there are several components that need to be addressed. The first of these is to grab the reader’s attention. If you don’t get the reader’s attention immediately, you will lose them. You need to remember that the average person is bombarded with hundreds of advertising pieces per day and yours needs to stand out. The second component is you have to raise their interest. Is the ad going to be something of interest to them? Does it spell out what you can do for them? The third component to a killer ad is desire. This is where you list proven benefits to your seller. And the fourth component to a killer ad is a call to action. You have to tell your seller what you want them to do or they won’t do anything. So let’s address these components one at a time.

The key component for writing any ad to attract motivated sellers is to begin with a killer headline. This headline has to answer the big question “what’s in it for me”? Using a really great headline can mean the difference between your success or failure at attracting motivated sellers using ads. Your headline is the very first thing a prospect sees when looking at your ad, or while scanning a page of ads, so it must deliver a clear and understandable message that makes your seller want to know more. You only have a fraction of a second to grab their attention so your headline needs to be strong and benefit driven or you’ve lost this prospect forever. Read More→

It amazes me how some people, most in fact, who have the same amount of hours in a day, get so little done. I’ve always had a hard time understanding why people intentionally waste time and live an unproductive life. Most people are just hanging around waiting to die. Every day is the same, more or less, and a whole lifetime is spent doing or accomplishing not one darn thing worth remembering.

Not me brother. The older I get the more valuable each of those days becomes and I’m fully aware none of us are getting out of this life alive.

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re not one of those folks I’ve just described, but I bet you could make a list of those who are. Some will have your last name perhaps. If you get this week’s lesson, you paid for it, which by itself tells me you’re looking for a more active and productive lifestyle. Kudos on that decision.

It’s hard for me to understand why some people can’t get one productive thing done in a whole day. Personally, I’d rather be snowed under than bored. Never could understand how people can lay on a beach all day and do nothing. Not me bubba!

Okay, Ron, what’s the secret to getting so much done? Are you superman? Nope! Not even close. I’m a 65 year old, overweight auto-mechanic. I’m no genius. I barely got out of high school, no college, just 45 years of working for myself and making the same stupid mistakes I see people make everywhere I look. Read More→

“Without a sense of teamwork I think it’s really hard to build a great business.” ~ Martha Stewart

Sticker shock. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling it these days. In the doctor’s office, at my kid’s college, and at the grocery store.

Business expenses are going up, too. Have you priced Microsoft Office Pro lately? Ouch! But it would be almost impossible to run a business these days without it. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to cough up the bucks to get it.

Or are you?

Maybe not, thanks to something called “open source.”

What the heck is open source? It’s software that’s created and improved by anyone who wants to pitch in, and it’s free for anyone who wants to use it. This is very different from the usual corporate model, where software is written in secret with lots of copyright lawyers hanging around the water cooler.

Open source is kind of a philosophy. The idea is that when you’ve got a talent pool made of the entire human race, instead of just a limited number of in-house professionals, innovations come more quickly, and bugs are eliminated faster. Everyone can contribute, and everyone can use it free, for any purpose. Read More→

Going through a Foreclosure action and losing your home is a very stressful situation for anyone. Until you walk in those shoes yourself, it’s hard for an Investor or Realtor to understand what a Seller is facing in their day to day life. I would like to share how a Seller feels during this process so that you can really begin to understand the Seller’s experience. It IS a scary roller coaster ride and you can help deter them from crashing and burning at the end!

Owning a home has always been the American Dream. Sellers become very emotionally attached to that “dream home.” They work their tails off, save as much money as they can, and make the big purchase. Unfortunately, the adjustable rate mortgage was introduced to our economy which allowed Sellers to purchase the home of their dreams with little money down, interest only payments with the Sellers knowing that in 3 to 5 years they will have to refinance their home to a fixed 30 year mortgage in order to keep it. When the housing market crashed, it affected everyone drastically.

Many people found themselves without a job ie. realtors, mortgage brokers, developers, contractors and many more people in different occupations. Can you image if you had a 700+ credit score and then suddenly you weren’t able to make your payments on your home, car, credit cards, and purchase food or clothing for your family? This is such a humbling experience that many Sellers don’t survive. Everything they have worked for their entire life is gone! This situation has crushed many dreams and is still occurring daily. Read More→

There are innumerable issues that can be caught in a forensic audit and used to argue either that a title is clouded or a foreclosure proceeding is improper. Here’s a list of nine common problems that may lead to a positive outcome for a homeowner doing legal battle with a lender or servicer:

1. An individual purporting to be an officer of one lender or servicer shows up as the officer of several other companies at the same time. It is improbable, if not impossible, for one individual to simultaneously serve as an officer of several institutions. This is an indication that someone hired by a document processor was told to sign thousands of forms per day for many different institutions. Such individuals are required to swear by virtue of signing the documents that they have personally examined all documentation and personally know of the loan—again an impossibility.
2. A name appears on several different documents for the same person but in different handwriting. For example, there are many different handwriting samples of the same purported bank officer, Linda Green showing on thousands of different loan and foreclosure documents. Read More→

“What’s the best way to find deals?”

This is the number one question I get asked by my real estate students. The answer is in the title. Most people new to the real estate business these days are looking for a “magic bullet” system that will bring them all the good deals they can handle. Unfortunately it doesn’t usually work that way.

There is no better way to consistently produce viable real estate deals than through quality relationships with commercial brokers and agents. No owner of a commercial property is going to go out to the road side and put up a “For Sale by Owner” sign and hope a qualified buyer happens to drive by. They are going to find a great broker and list the property with them.

I tell my students “You are trying to buy a property that is not for sale yet.” Good deals don’t stay on the market long. If you call an agent and they have something for sale, chances are it’s not a good deal. Your job is to build a relationship with this agent or broker so that when a seller walk in the door with a hot deal…you immediately get a call! Read More→

Lack of Knowledge

Many people make mistakes due to a lack of understanding of the governing rules. This article covers two of the most common mistakes. Understanding these rules can help you grow your self-directed IRA without fear of losing out to avoidable errors.

Violating Once-Per Year IRA-To-IRA Rollover Rule

You have two options when moving assets between your IRAs; one is a transfer and the other is a rollover. Under a transfer, the delivering IRA custodian pays the amount to the receiving IRA custodian for the benefit of your IRA. Transfers can be done for an unlimited amount of times.

Unlike a transfer, a rollover can only be done once during a 12-month period per IRA. Failure to follow this rule will result in loss of tax-deferred status, which means that the amount would be treated as ordinary income and could be subject to the 10% early distribution penalty if the distribution occurs while you are under age 59½. The amount could also be subject to a 6% excise tax if not corrected by your tax-filing deadline, plus extensions. Read More→

Our last column sure brought in a ton of calls and emails! In that column, we explained how last month we found, closed and financed a home in just three days by knocking on sellers’ doors – and didn’t use any of our own money. (You’ll find that column, titled “What’s Old is What’s New,” on our website.)

Here are the most common questions we were asked: What is a private-money lender and how do you find them? Why do private-money lenders lend to you? How are private-money lenders secured and paid?

More than a decade ago, Kim and I learned that a bank isn’t the only place to get a mortgage. There are individuals who will loan you their own money and fund your deals.

While banks can be a good source of long-term financing, they require a mountain of paperwork and take weeks to verify your information. It often takes a month or more to get an institutional loan. On the other hand, when dealing with a private-money lender (PML), because we’re dealing with a real person and the purchase property is being used as collateral for the loan, we’re often able to get immediate funding and close within a day or two. This is exactly what happened with our April purchase. Read More→