Starting up... Rev those RE engines!

In my not so distant past, as a private owner, I have rented a couple homes and I have built a couple homes with a partner.  Stacy has a rental now that she has had for upwards of ten years.  On my own, I had renovated the house that my previous wife and I lived in - this was a big mistake.  In hindsight, we shouldn't have done it and I believe there were plenty of people who warned us against doing so.  In the end, it cost a lot more time than I reckoned, a lot more money that we budgeted and the marriage (but neither of us can blame just the remodel on that).  So after that fiasco, I sold all the tools and got rid of the rentals and moved on...

So after a many-year break on real estate, Fortune Builders (FB) showed up with a two hour seminar.  Oh my goodness, the radio ads would not stop for weeks prior to the event and I heard it 30 times a day - even the day of the event!  This piqued my interest and so I decided to go and give it a shot.  It was a fast overview and they pushed a weekend seminar for $200.  I enjoyed the 2hr session and was gung-ho to sign-up for the weekend.  I got a manual titled "Building Wealth in Real Estate in Today's Market" to read before the seminar.  

The weekend came and the seminar was insightful and the sales pitch for the FB Mastery program was on.  Whew!  Depending on the level, anywhere from $15K to $25K to become a student of FB and get coaching and resources to start a real estate business.  It basically sold you the template, ala a Franchise, to run a business in real estate covering buying (you make your money buying a property), selling (you realize your money when you sell), marketing, asset protection, accounting, etc...  Over the three day seminar, we got an intro view of all of these topics with more to come for those who sign up (for the paid packages).  After several days contemplation after the seminar, we said No - it just wasn't the right fit for us, even though I look at the FB time positively and love the concept of the cthomesllc business model (they are the group behind FB).  They are all about processes and systems - and I am all about processes and systems in my own consulting business.

So now it is about ten weeks later and we are on our way with a RE business.  We found BP about 6 to 8 weeks ago and signed up and use the tools.  We market to distressed sellers (bankruptcy, tax liens, dilapidated properties), private lenders, and buyers of all kinds.  I'm researching pre-foreclosure lists next.  We scour Craigslist and Zillow and some MLS stuff.  He haven't started the heavy duty networking but that will come.  We look at property many times a week.  We haven't pulled the trigger on a property yet but it will happen soon.  I don't think we have analysis paralysis - we just haven't found the right property yet.  We read the insightful blogs daily and look at the marketplace also.  But right now the focus is on marketing.  We've stuffed a lot of envelopes (yellow letters may get the next batch 'cause stuffing envelopes is not a lot of fun).

Our preliminary mailings went out last week.  We will send out another to the same list every three to four weeks for the next several months.  Time will tell...