My 2,000 Hours - Beyond Significant Frustration!

[Craig C.]

This post/subject, is to help the new guy, and keep him/her from wasting thousands of hours to achieve nothing!  

So to begin:  Is anybody else tired of the "You can start investing in real estate with 0 down" garbage yet? 

I know I am!  I know that at the conclusion of 2015, I calculated a loss of over 2,000 vested hours trying to make something happen!  Multiple banks, multiple loan applications, multiple offers, multiple approaches, and what did all of 2015 get me?  Behind on other things that require our time, and Beyond Significant Frustration!  

Who else has put serious time into this and managed to get no-where?   Am I missing the broad side of a barn, or am I hitting the nail?  Numbers are simple!    Yet if you try to talk to anybody who would consider lending you money, they get a deer in the headlights look, and say "no" because they are uncomfortable at best! 

As far as 0-down goes:

1)  Banks: Wont work with you!  Unless you have an 875+ credit score and a favorable underwriter, this is coming from my experience with 4 different major banks, and 2 local banks.

2)  Other Peoples Money (OPM): Unless you are already well established as a real estate investor, OPM does NOT exist!  Don't waste your time with your hopes and aspirations on this subject, it is trash, and you wont use it until you are already well established.  Unless of course, you spend $20,000 at some guru's seminar for them to "give you a reference" for something entirely worthless to begin with.

3) Crowd Funding: Unless you want to blindly throw in $5,000 of your own money, forget about it!  I didn't go any further than that with this, because my gut feeling was: this is a total scam!  And I was not going to waste anymore time on it.

4) "Creative deals":  Sounds great!  I will just use a public records search on a house I think will make everybody involved some pocket change!   Next, I will contact the seller directly - bypass the realtors, and hope the sellers don't mind that I essentially stalked them so I could speak with them about making a sort of an offer that I already know they won't understand (Because if you're new, you hardly understand it yourself!), and then somehow someway I just know they will handover the keys to the kingdom, and everything will be hunky-dory, everybody makes their money and goes-home happy, healthy and wealthy!   -  False.  Stalking is illegal, and at best it is shady and discourteous to by-pass an employed realtor! 
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The other part of all of this?  Somebody prove me wrong here!  I am sick and tired of wasting my time, energy, and money chasing this false promise of "0 down investing!", And I promise you, more than half of the registered users here, quit coming on to discuss great idea's and common issues, because most people can't even get in the door!    I can't count on 1 hand how many inactive users I find by just browsing the "search bigger pockets"!  

So please, somebody prove me wrong, or make a legitimate effort to be blunt up front with people who are "brand new" to the game, because odds are, if they have $25,000 in their hip-pocket to play with, they aren't wasting their time on here looking for advice.

[Joel Florek]

@Tracy Selfridge

I bought my first 4 unit with no money down and a 16 unit with only $5k down(could have borrowed it but had money so I used what I had). I don't have partners and I cash flow about $2k a month right now and live for free. I bought my first place last June so am only 11 months into my investing.

I have used lines of credit, commercial loans, seller financing and private financing to close deals. Its possible and working for me. By the way, I did it right out of college getting approved for my loans signing a personal guarantee and having an employment contract. My credit score fluctuates around 725.

Calling around I have found half a dozen banks in my area and North Eastern Wisconsin who will lend on commercial loans with no money down by the buyer. Its all about cash flow, mitigating risks for all parties, and showing you know what your doing and are ready to take on the challenge. And its not luck my friend, its all about working hard, and working smart. If you have only called 6 banks after 2000 hours of work you need to work smarter. The other week I called and vetted a dozen banks in 2 hours of calling and found 3 who could work with me under my buying structure in an area I am looking at investing in.

At the end of the day I would challenge you to focus on building relationships with property owners, investors and bankers. Present yourself professionally, positively, and make sure you can speak their language. Get them out for drinks, or coffee. If you want to make it you can make it but its not easy, I can tell you from experience.