Attended my first local REI meeting!

[Scott Bartlett]

WOW, that was a great experience being in the same room with some of my area's largest real estate investors!

The knowledge they have is immense and they were all nice and very open to me. I plan on going back every month and becoming a FULL member!

I would have never known about this place if I didn't read about attending your local REI meetings.

I found out about a few properties I haven't even heard of yet, and some that have JUST come back on the market. So I'll be following up on those.

Also, I talked to an investor about my "all cash" approach and I was told that if I did that, banks would not allow me to cash out the equity for a while. After a few months, they will give you a certain percentage of the equity, but from what I was told, it would take about a year to get 80% of the equity out of the property through the bank.

This would have directly affected how I've been approaching these properties.

I got a counter/rejection offer back from a bank that I had made an offer to. Basically their reply was the land was worth more than what I had offered, and the lowest they would go is $19,000. I was encouraged by two other investors, to submit another offer for $500 to a $1000 more than my first offer (then the investor told me a story about how it had worked for them on a HUD Property. They offered 25K on a 36K property and HUD Countered at 34K so the investor countered 26K and it was accepted!).

So I'll be putting in another offer on that property to see what they say.

I also have started to looking at financing. I contacted the mortgage lender at my local credit union and got some great info.

Just some questions regarding the financing:

1.) Do all mortgage loans investors like myself (middle income) get sold to FHLMC (Freddie Mac?) My mortgage lender had assumed that they would be selling the loan to the FHLMC. I had no clue about this, but I'm guessing yes based on the reading I've done about Freddie Mac and ect.

2.) I had asked about minimum loan amounts and I used the example of a 15K loan, and I was told they could do it, but the costs would be high (2-2.5K). I assume this means the full closing costs (and bank fees)?

3.) Lastly, I asked what the property standards had to be for loans, and I was told they had to meet FHLMC standards before closing. I searched the Freddie Mac website, but did not find exactly what I was looking for. From what I had learned at the local REI, the minimum requirement was there must be a heating source and one other thing I can't remember.