All Forum Posts by: Brad Shepherd

I'm from Utah but have lived in Texas for the last 6 years. I'm about to put a property under contract in Orem. Any recommendations for title companies in the area that are used to working with investors and creative deals?

@Oleg Shalumov, the only way you'd know is if you got a call from the owner! That'd be best scenario. Second best would be if the letter got returned to you so you'd know what happened to it. It's a 50 cent gamble so it's worth trying. You could send it a few times, but if no response, then you could try the skip tracing services.

I was afraid that might be the answer! Makes sense. Thanks for the quick reply. 

Originally posted by @Sharon Vornholt:

I would like to add something here.  Direct mail is a long term strategy.  Something like 81% of your deals statistically will come at or beyond the 5th mailing. Does that mean you won't get a deal before the 5th mailing? Not at all. You will build momentum in time, and most other investors will either mail sporadically or quit after a few times.

You need to mail everyone, every month.

My motto is to mail every month until I buy the house, someone else buys the house or they come off the list for some reason.

Sharon, my question about that is how to do you keep your listed updated with the properties that are sold to someone else? I can see that on tax records or MLS, if it was listed, but how do you do that for a whole database of addresses? Any tips on that topic?

The quit claim process is standard procedure. I'd say having an LLC for each property is not. It's probably overkill and unnecessary for most, but of course follow your own counsel's advice. As stated by another, a good insurance policy can provide similar liability protection.

I'd challenge those saying this will trigger the due on sale clause to find more than a single random real estate attorney who's ever seen that happen when transferring title out of your name to an LLC in which you have a controlling interest. The LLC is an alter ego of you. The lender has no motivation to engage in the hassle. And if you found one that wanted to, they have to provide a 30 day notice for you to resolve the issue, so you'd just deed it back out. It's not complicated.

On my first flip I got the seller to agree not to be paid until I completed the work and sold the house (he wouldn't go down to the price I wanted, so that was the alternative I gave him to get the price he wanted). I gave him a decent down payment, we closed at a title company, and they drew up the note in accordance with the terms we agreed on. I fixed the house, sold it to the end buyer, and at the closing the lien to the original seller was paid off from my proceeds. To tell you the whole story, I borrowed the down payment and rehab budget from another investor,  which was a second lien and also was paid off at closing from my proceeds. I was in that deal for a total of a hundred dollars of earnest money on the original contract. Search for the right sellers and see how creative you can get. 

You got it. Look them up on the county tax records. That'll be right 85% of the time. If it shows the mailing address being the same as a house you know is abandoned, then you'll know you need to do some more digging...or just spend the 50 cents to send the letter and see if it gets forwarded to the owner. For additional information searching, there are all sorts of paid services to find people. Check out beenverified.com for starters. 

The answer is yes, but with rules to be aware of. (I'm no expert so count all of this as hearsay to verify yourself. There's my disclaimer!) For example, you can't "partner" with your own IRA or lend to yourself from your own IRA. You can flip, wholesale, lend to others, and own rentals in your IRA, but those dollars belong to your IRA, which you can't touch for personal use without penalty until your 60's...standard IRA rules. But just think of the tax advantages when using a Roth account's dollars...it's huge!

So, to do deals where you could access the money earlier than retirement:

Party A can lend my IRA money to Party B, B can lend yours to A, and each can each take that money to use in their own ventures, paying back the loans as agreed. You can't lend to anyone you're closely related to, so no monkey business there. (Makes sense why you'd want to go to mixers and meetups hosted by SDIRA custodians, right?!)

I've done two flips using funds from another investor's self-directed IRA. He gets first lien position and a better return than mutual funds offer. i get private financing cheaper and with fewer hoops than hard money. He uses a custodian out of Waco that he likes. I have my money with Quest IRA out of Houston. If nothing else, go to Quest's site and read their articles, which are really helpful.

@Mike Hicks

Regarding your comment about SEO challenges with the template site services like Wix. I've never used one. I have built a bunch with WordPress before but I've been curious about Investor Carrot and Lead Propeller for the sharper looking site and lead generation, but had the fear of it being like Wix and unable to rank. What do you think about those ones? Are they in the same category as other template services, making it impossible to rank them? 

Thanks guys. I appreciate the feedback. @Will Pritchett, I really appreciate that insight, thinking about who it is I want to build my business around. That's some good food for thought.

I shared my hesitations with the seller and told him I'm going to pass, unless he'd leave the financing in place. He took the offer, and the numbers make sense. I'm going to make a go of it.