All Forum Posts by: Alisha Lee

We have 13 rental properties in Rochester, New York that we've had for about 7 years and need to get a hard money loan for some renovations on a couple of houses to help get tenants in before winter.

Since most hard money loans are for a minimum of $50K...we're trying to find a way to do a smaller amount.

We own one house outright but it's only valued at about $30K and have about $30K equity in each of about 8-10 other properties. So my question is....is there any creative financing that could be done to use multiple properties for a loan? Or, is there some way to do a smaller amount? I'm looking to do a variety of different renovations (for example roofs) on a couple of different houses and am trying to find a way to do it.

Does anyone have some suggestions of what we could do? Or, is there any financing options that might work? Right now, our best option looks like selling one of our properties. All suggestions welcome.

You're absolutely right. Unfortunately, most people realize that they need a lead funnel after it's too late or when they're a bit desperate.

As a professional marketing consultant and part time real estate investor, there are several different areas you can focus your marketing efforts if your new to marketing your business.

The first thing you should do before you spend a dime on marketing activities is to clearly understand your target customer. Unfortunately, missing this critical step is usually where most people go wrong and end up wasting a lot of money on marketing activities because they're not properly targeting.

You should be so familiar with your target customer, that you could describe them (and their interests, hobbies, fears, concerns and questions) as if it they were a close friend. By clearly understanding your target market, this will help you understand the best way to market to them. I'd suggest doing a customer avatar or profile so you have a clear image in your head of who your target customer is.

The second thing that I see go wrong a lot is that people fail to set targets AND measure their results. Never, never do a marketing campaign unless you have some way to measure your result. And make sure that you have some baseline number to compare your results to so you know the amount of improvement. Your marketing activities need to be able to generate a return just like any other part of your real estate business.

In response to building business credit, I recently started working with a credit broker.

Before this company had been recommended to me, I personally had never heard of a credit broker but they help you get between $50-$250K in business credit (assuming your credit score is above 680 and you have a legitimate business). Plus, they help you build your business credit lines up for your LLCs or other entities so you don't have to continue always personally guaranteeing loans or lines of credit. Building business credit does take time to build to get your Dunn and Bradstreet paydex score up, but I wish more education was focused around the importance of building business credit that's not personally guaranteed.

I just started working with them, so I can't recommend them yet, but I certainly wished I would have heard about them 5 years ago when we formed our 2 LLCs.

HI Stephen-

I tend to agree that don't waste your money on expensive software programs when you can put up a nice Wordpress site very inexpensively.

I'm actually a real estate investor and marketing consultant...so here are some tips. Remember that a website won't make you a cent if you don't have quality traffic to your website. If you have a small budget or are doing it yourself get a simple website up focused around your target customers needs. Think about what your target customers concerns, issues and questions are and speak to those on your website. If you can add some video as this will help you relate to your audience better. Then when it comes to getting traffic, I'd recommend that you start with a small budget doing Google PPC (pay per click) ads. This will give you the opportunity to select a specific geographic area and test out what search terms work in your market. Before you start running any ads, make sure to set up Google Analytics on your website so you can track what's working, set a set daily budget that you can afford and then make sure you use the following Google settings: Exact match on your search terms, target your specific Geographic area ex. the city/cities you're targeting, manual bidding, and break up your search terms in specific groupings like a specific city and write ads specific to those ad groups.

By doing PPC right away you'll know what terms get your target customer to take the action you want, plus you'll be able to get traffic to your website right away.

There are lots of other things to get traffic to your website, like SEO, Facebook PPC ads and specific social media strategies but PPC is a very good place to start.

I hope this helps.

Hi-

One of my favorite real estate books that I've used a lot is actually a tax book....it's called "Lower Your Taxes- Big Time" by Sandy Botkin, CPA, Esq. It's a real gem and helps you understand the tax laws when buying and selling real estate.

Good luck!

Jon- Sorry didn't know deal making wasn't allowed in the forum. I'm still learning the ropes here:)

Jeff and Loc- Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it:)

I'm amazed at how helpful everybody is here...you guys are awesome!

Hi Steve-

Yes, I have to hope that she would agree to something instead of foreclose but that is the threat. We have 50% equity in each of the properties so we could sell the largest one but unfortunately, that's also the one with the most positive cash flow per month. Since these are all positive cash flow properties we really want to exhaust all funding avenues before having to sell one or two of them.

I appreciate your help in trying to provide some solutions.
Thanks-
Alisha

Hi J Scott-

The 3 notes are for:
1) $17,997.73
2) $16,529.66
3) $37,936.88

Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks-
Alisha

Hi Alan-

Thanks for your message. Unfortunately, the note holder is a 75+ your old widow with a disabled adult daughter so she's very unwilling to extend it because her health is ailing.

Do you know of anyone who would be a private lender that might be interested? The properties are cash flow positive every month and the notes are for less than half of the value of the property.

Thanks for your help-
Alisha

Hi Jon-

Thanks for your quick reply and input....I have already spoken to the seller and about 15 local banks with no luck. Local banks aren't interested because I live in California and the properties are in New York. I've also talked to people I know but haven't found anyone yet. I'm okay paying into the high single digits as an interest rate...my primary interest is just getting it refinanced. Right now the original seller threatens to foreclose if we can't get it refinanced by end of October.

I know it's difficult finding someone I don't know who might be interested in refinancing, but any ideas? My last resort is hard money as I know we'd be paying way too much but I'm running out of options.

Thanks for any advice you can share :)