The May 2013 edition of The Profit Newsletter for Tampa REIA is now ready for download as a High Quality PDF or Low Res PDF format. The Profit Newsletter is a digitally delivered, interactive newsletter for real estate investors to read and use with your PC, Mac, Smart Phone, iPad or other mobile ready device. 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! And “Yes”, The Profit is “print ready” and prints out beautifully on your black and white or color printer. Be sure to Subscribe to The Profit so you don’t miss a single monthly issue.

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I have been attending the REIA’s in Pinellas and Hillsborough County for the last 5 years. In that time frame I have heard a lot of creative ideas and strategies regarding real estate transactions in which I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of these deals required no money down or credit. Upon hearing this, I began to think my services would not be needed as I had anticipated. But as I listened more and more, and continued speaking on my “4-step Credit Restoration Assistance Program” people became more and more inquisitive. All it took was for me to help a few people with their credit problems, and then I was off and flying. Since then I have teamed up with a lot of investors, realtors, mortgage lenders, etc. and have offered them my credit ideals and strategies, only to enhance and compliment their services. I LOVE when people are skeptical of my services. I LOVE when they say “it’s illegal” or “it doesn’t work,” or “the negative items will eventually return,” or the most glaring of them all… “I’ve already had a bad experience with another credit repair company.” Let me make this real clear… read my lips… “I AM NOT A CREDIT REPAIR COMPANY.” 

Come out and join me at Tampa REIA on May 9th at 6:00PM at the Doubletree Suites Tampa Bay located at 3050 North Rocky Point Dr. West in Tampa, FL and hear what my 4-step Credit Restoration Assistance Program entails. I will cover all 4 steps in detail: Read More→

Do you have a business card? Do you keep them with you at all times since you never know when or where you’re going to meet someone important such as a potential buyer, seller, joint venture partner or private money lender?

It never ceases to amaze me how many investors I meet at seminars, conventions or local REIA meetings that I ask for a card only to be told that they don’t have one, haven’t had them printed yet, or forgot them at home!

What’s almost as bad, is when investors hand me crummy business cards with perforated edges that they printed at home or the ones they were too cheap to pay for that say “Business cards are FREE at Vista Print” on the back.

Many investors don’t realize how important business cards can be. They think business cards are made for one reason only… to give people the ability to contact you at some later date.

Most investors overlook the importance of having a professional business card that accurately reflects their brand. After all, business cards are often the first item prospects receive from you and are your first opportunity to make a strong first impression on them – positive OR negative.

Your image, reputation and credibility are everything in this business!

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There are several great and easy way to increase the response rates you are getting from your direct mail campaigns. The higher response rate you get from your mailings the more deals you are likely to create.

One way to increase the number of responses you get from your mailings is to use lumpy mail pieces in your envelopes to entice your reader to open the envelope and read your message.  This could be a penny which makes noise or it could be a magnetic business card which would add dimension. Lumpy mail is actually defined as “anything that adds dimension to an envelope.” 

It can be in the form of any type of enclosure such as a flat pen, or even a piece of candy or it can be the actual container in which the mail is delivered.  “Statistics show that dimensional mailings can increase response rate by as much as 80%. There are many items that are lightweight and small that can be added to your mailings to increase response with very minimal expense. Design your direct mail piece so different that it demands people’s attention, and gets opened and read.

Because I use a response mechanism within the body of my letters (a section within the body of the letter that allows the seller to fill out all the information I need) when I send them out, I will sometimes use flat pens in my mailings so that the seller has the tool they need to fill out the response mechanism right in their hand. This just removes another step or another obstacle for the sellers and they will contact me even sooner. Read More→

A civic group asked if I would speak to its members about success. After being in “the game” for nearly 40 years and achieving much success – along with experiencing a ton of failures – I’ve whittled my list of attributes needed for success down to nine.

First, let’s acknowledge that each person’s definition of “success” is different. More importantly, it’s a mistake to make my definition your definition. You must decide what success means to you!

Sadly, lots of folks never take the time or make the effort to write down what success means to them. This is like getting in the car to go on vacation without having a destination in mind. How will you know if you’re on the right road, or whether you ever arrived?

Here are my Nine Pillars of Success: Action, Persistence, Sacrifice, Belief, Integrity, Associations, Life-long Learning, Loving What You Do and Giving Back. Let’s briefly look at each attribute. Read More→

When you sell a property, a wrap will assure you retain control of a loan you have on the property. This may be a loan you got using the property as collateral or a subject-to loan when you purchased the property.

After the sale, the buyer pays you the full payment on the wrap and you pay the underlying mortgage payment. I suggest that you make the payment to the first mortgage holder automatically each month. Don’t wait around until your buyer pays you. Yeah, I know, properly constructed wrap documents do not require you to make the payments if the buyer doesn’t pay you.

But think about it. That underlying loan is in your name and it is your credit is on the line. Or it is in the name of someone who trusted you to make the payments when you took the property subject-to. In that case their credit could be damaged.

In either case, by keeping it current, you keep the lender from scrutinizing the loan and avoid late fees and foreclosure. When your buyer is in default, you want to control the collection process without the underlying mortgage holder interfering. Read More→

When do you know if you have a great house to purchase, fix and flip? Many investors start out their career looking for fast money. They focus on Wholesaling by looking for deals to get under contract and then wholesale for a $2,000 to $5,000 profit. I’m not saying that you can’t make money in wholesaling; however, you do need to consider all types of real estate transactions such as short sales, lease options, options, and subject to’s in order to find where you can make the most bang for your buck!

My 16 year old son, Taylor, has been involved in my business every since he was able to walk. He is ready to get his first house! We used to put him through windows of vacant houses to unlock doors and get inside so that we could make offers. He has learned so much in my business; many of you heard him speak during my Foreclosures Gone Wild event in Georgia. He is purchasing his 1^st house, rehabbing and hiring his friends, then flipping for profit with me, Kimberlee Frank, so he can purchase his first car! Read More→

In recent Washington State Supreme Court decision (Bain v. MERS), the court ruled that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) is not and cannot be a legal beneficiary under Washington State Law. In effect only the legal holder of the note, the real creditor, has the power to appoint a substitute trustee in order to transact such legal actions as a foreclosure.

The court asserted that the power of sale of a property is a significant one and trustees have tended to ignore their duties and obligations. The court believed it was time to swing a little bit of the power back to the side of the borrower.

Essentially, the court ruled that the lenders could not continue to routinely ignore the state’s laws regarding the recording of deeds and then turn around and use the same set of state laws to foreclose on a borrower. The court also left the door open for those with legal grievances to ask for compensatory damages against MERS and those who used MERS in wrongful foreclosures.

The court made this decision in part because MERS never has anything to do with the actual financial transaction. It never handles any of the money in the loan process, and it never has anyone on staff with personal knowledge of the principal for whom they are acting. Therefore, MERS has no standing when it comes to a foreclosure. Read More→

Commercial Real Estate

Buying Commercial real estate with your self-directed IRA is not much different than buying a residential property, except commercial real estate purchases require a whole lot more due diligence.

 Commercial Real Estate – Get the Real Numbers!

The offering says gross potential, (a.k.a. pro forma). This is one of the things you’ll run into all the time. The broker says it’s got a great pro forma. Here’s what it can generate. You want to find out what it did generate, not what it’s going to generate. You want to buy what it’s doing today.

 With REOs, foreclosures and distressed sales, you’re going to have to evaluate things on a case-by-case basis and get the real numbers.

Commercial Real Estate – The Truth is in the Documents!

 This section outlines the many important documents you need. Having said that, remember you can make the offer in advance of receiving all of the below as long as you make the offer contingent on the receipt of the documents you need. A note about contingencies: make sure you are very specific including amounts you expect to see on the documents, ability to get insurance at the current cost, verification from the county of zoning specific to what you intend to do with the property, etcetera.

A lease is the most important document. Read every lease line by line and make notes, or get somebody that knows how to read leases line by line. Are there any special arrangements? The landlord says they’re paying $1,000 a month, but it turns out that I’m obligated every year to repaint the place, re-carpet the place, and so forth. Read More→

I’m excited. I am using new techniques and they are working!

Where do I learn new techniques? Recently I took training because I know that change is one of the key factors of staying ahead of changes in the economy, the market, and life in general. I chose trainings about lease options and 0% owner financing. Each of these gave me a new in my tool in my belt – a tool to help me to make more money.

But understand, for any scenario to work, I MUST know my plan.

I assume that you want what I want: to maximize my profit potential. So, we are interested only in the properties that will help us do this. We must make choices with this in mind.

Here is a scenario to show you concrete ways of deciding… Read More→

“A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher.” ~ Henny Youngman

Did you know that the little iPhone I carry around with me is more powerful than the computer that took Apollo 11 to the moon? It’s true. The Apollo 11 computer was just 64 kilobytes!

It’s amazing, isn’t it? I can balance my checking account on my phone. I get 200 cable stations on my TV, and I bet someday I’ll be able to watch them all at the same time. And I’m pretty sure my kids don’t know how to dial a rotary telephone.

Yes, we’ve come a long, long way from Atari Pong!

(For my younger readers, Pong was a very simple computer game where you made a little ball go back and forth and .…. Well, I guess you kind of had to be there.)

But technology development for its own sake just creates shiny distractions. In the rush for new hardware, new applications, and new and more sophisticated Internet sites, it’s easy to forget about yesterday’s website of the day.

So this month, I’m taking a look at a website that’s well-known and not so shiny anymore, but incredibly useful: Youtube.

Yes, Youtube. I know, it’s old news,

But Youtube Isn’t just for wardrobe malfunctions anymore. Sure, you can watch the Shamwow guy, or see the zoo lady tickle the baby penguin (I love that one!), or be inspired by that great Chrysler Super Bowl commercial from 2011. Read More→

When it comes to Wholesaling properties, I see the question asked frequently:  “Where should I start?  Marketing for Motivated Sellers?  Or Marketing for Cash Buyers?”

We are somewhat biased when it comes to this subject, because in most of the materials we went thru when we were first getting started out all said to start with Marketing for Motivated Sellers.  The theory is that if you find a Hot Deal, meaning a property under contract that is WAY below market value, if you have that then the Cash Buyers will find you.  So just get out there and go find a Hot Deal and the Cash Buyers will come to you.  On a side note, same principle applies when it comes to finding Private Money.  If you find the Hot Deal, the Money will find you.  Not, go find a Private Lender then go look for a Hot Deal.  I always like to have the Ace up my sleeve – when you have the Hot Deal, you have control.

I am somewhat intrigued by the theory of building your Cash Buyers List first though.  The theory with that one is that if you go out and build a big buyers list, then you can just wholesale other Wholesalers deals.  So you  have lined up “Buyer Bob” and he wants to spend $100K this week on some cheapo rental houses, but you have nothing under contract.  You don’t tell him you have nothing, you say “let me check with my people”, then you call your Wholesaler buddies and see if you can Joint Venture on some deals that they have under contract and split the profits.  I can see this as a viable strategy now (since I have now done it – haha!). Read More→

In our last issue, I’d promised to deliver to you a fast, easy, and FREE way of getting a good chunk of motivated Seller Leads, so that you could start filling your pipeline full of deals, in order to avoid the dreaded condition known as “One-Deal-Itis!” Sound familiar? Great! We’re all caught up.

In this issue, you’re going to learn exactly what information you need to compile about each lead you’re going after. Remember, we’re targeting For Sale By Owner leads (aka FSBOs), and we’ve also selected Craigslist.com as a source for those leads.

But let me also point out that there are many other sites you can use to gather a nice list of leads, such as Fsbo.com, ForSaleByOwner.com (yes, they’re separate sites), Owners.com, and others.

You’re also about to get a sweet script to use when calling these FSBO leads.

Ready? Here we go… Read More→

The process is a long one after a home is foreclosed by the bank. These days banks take weeks if not months or a year after foreclosure to get their paperwork together, do evictions, minor clean up and make the assignments to the real estate brokers who they have hired to handle their properties. But the time of clean up and eviction is not a problem for the savvy investor, it is an opportunity to round up buyers so that these properties sell almost immediately as you get them under contract.

I suggest as an investor gets a property under contract to start the process of rounding up buyers. Videos, photos and massive email lists are several ways to attract your potential buyers.

Whenever you advertise your properties use photos or better yet video. I’ll get to more video in a minute.  This tends to get the buyer serious before they visit the property.  Even for buyers of a 100K home, they like to see pictures and it helps the buyer make an emotional connection. Investors and the individual buyer now search the internet to find homes that they can get serious about buying. It is very important to give them enough information to make a decision. Read More→

My first property turned out to be my first mistake in the real estate business and one of the best lessons I ever learned.

I am a pilot by trade. I graduated college and went straight into the flight academy. I flew and instructed there until my first real job as a corporate pilot for a medical supply company in Macon, GA. When I quit that full time job to go into real estate full time I had saved up $10,000 and had one deal under my belt. My first deal…a duplex which cash flowed $300 dollars a month. It was the best deal I ever did because it got me going in the business and now I have almost 400 units and 8 employees. I also made one giant mistake!

Always place the deal in context of the surrounding market. I analyzed the deal like I was taught and it did cash flow accordingly. I closed on the deal for $40K. Shortly after I attended my first REIA meeting in which I was promptly told “you’re an idiot!” Unfortunately I had to agree with the person that was telling me this. He and his friends had been buying similar duplexes in the neighborhood for $20K! I paid twice what the property was actually worth. Read More→

Method Number Three: Call Ads

I know this doesn’t sound appealing but if you’ll do it my way, you’ll probably grow to love it. You see, I don’t want you to call ads, I want you to get someone else to do it for you. Someone who will do it every night because it’s their job and you’re paying them. Here’s how it works. It’s so simple.

Get the Property Information Sheet out of my course or one of my Boot Camp manuals and have someone call all of the Sunday FSBO ads every Monday night between 6-9 p.m. Have them fill out the basic information you need to determine if you want to call the seller back.

Frankly all I need is the asking price, the estimated value, and the loan balance, condition of the property, name, and phone number, address and whether or not it’s listed with a Realtor. With this information, I can prescreen the prospect sheet in 5 seconds and make my decision to follow up or not. I can’t get into prescreening here so if you don’t know how to do this, I’d suggest you fix that before getting real serious about generating leads on houses when you can’t spot a deal when it appears. Read More→

Over the past 30 plus years I have learned that there are some different types of houses I shouldn’t have bought. Each of these types of houses gave me a financial seminar I didn’t really want to take but because of my inexperience at the time I made mistakes I don’t want you to have to make. Here are some of the different types of houses you should definitely avoid until you have some experience under your belt.

1. Houses located on a Busy Street.

Houses located on a busy street will definitely be hard to rent or sell simply because very few people want to have to listen to the noise of traffic day and night and have to back out into traffic every time they want to go anywhere. Another problem with houses located on a busy street is the danger of their children going into the street and being hit by a fast moving car. Houses on busy streets are not anything I want to invest money into that will definitely be hard to sell and set on the market for weeks or even months before they sell eating up my profits in holding costs.

2. Houses with small front yards.

Houses with small front yards are like houses on busy streets they place the house too close to traffic and noise will be a problem for anyone who lives there. Another problem with houses with small front yards is there isn’t room enough to have landscaping to enhance the looks of the property. Most homebuyers want a front yard to distance themselves from the street and the traffic and have a place to landscape and a place for their children to play. Read More→