All Forum Posts by: Alan Brymer

Are you referring to the minimum dollar amount? If so, I'm not sure. I've always thought it was about the % of the purchase price you qualify to borrow.

I've never had the joy of being in a market where houses are $50,000----even 50% off.

I've done that a few times when making offers unlisted properties, and was somehow able to get away with only $100 earnest money deposit. But make sure you do no more than $500 and you're totally sure the deal is going to go through.

I'm not a broker myself but I would imagine that there are classes involved in order to get your license in the 1st Pl. as well as continuing education classes.

There are probably groups and associations for loan brokers, as well as discussion forums for them online.

I have just about ruled out California until I spoke in the bay area a few weeks ago and heard firsthand what kind of deals the investors they were doing.

Here's a blog post about it: http://www.alanbrymer.com/blog/?p=768

one of the guys there bought a house that was formerly $400,000 for only around $40,000. What its current value is, I don't know, but that's still pretty dang significant. Michael Morrongiello is also buying a ton of houses up there (he's in charge of the Bay Area wealth builders) and I would talk to him and see what he's doing.

I recently wrote a blog post about this same topic: http://www.alanbrymer.com/blog/?p=736

Money is not the biggest motivator. There is so much research out there that shows that things like recognition, status, and other things are bigger motivators and money is in a variety of businesses.

Just because you and I have big dreams doesn't mean that everyone does. Experiment I would get rid of the guy. It is so easy to find someone who is excited about their job and will do it gladly for a flat hourly rate it's worth the hassle of finding somebody else.

It is too broad a question. It's like asking how much money you need to start a business.? What area? What property types?

that doesn't make any sense. It sounds like a business expense to me. Is he making you itemize your deductions on your personal return and is claiming that the amount of money you spend isn't enough to itemize?

If you buy the house the traditional way, the seller will have to pay the taxes of the money you give them in closing. This might affect what you offer though, since the seller will make less money and will probably want you to offer more although you don't have to.

If you buy the house subject to, you don't have to pay them off at that time but eventually you will.

if you're looking to wholesale houses to other investors, you don't need any cash in order to do that -- except maybe for an earnest money deposit that you use to type the property. This would be $500 at the most, though I have never used more than $100.

However, even if you are going to wholesale deals you'll probably have some expenses involved with marketing to find sellers. There are plenty of free ways, but even then there are some hidden expenses such as gasoline. If you're going to start out with basic methods for finding deals, I would just plan on having $1000 to spend on marketing and you could probably find your first deal with that -- and a little bit of hustle and elbow grease.

I would look to meet other investors at your local investment club, call classified ads in the paper and on craigslist that look like they're from investor sellers, call we buy houses as in signs that you see and meet the people who are running them. Put all of their information into a spreadsheet and that's the start of a good buyer's list.