All Forum Posts by: Eric Jacobs

I'm in South Florida as well. I would strongly recommend you skip the bandit signs. First of all, they are down fairly quickly. Secondly, they are such a tired marketing method down here . I don't wholesale personally as I think it has a terrible ROI but if you are inclined to seek out distressed properties, the only real scalable option are FB advertising as @Account Closed suggested or direct mail with an well organized, scripted telephone program.  

Wow.  Totally surprised at the response to what is a perfectly valid question.  Anyone who can say that the 8 possible deals are or are not legit doesn’t know wtf they are talking about becuase without looking at them, you can’t possibly know.  Maybe she has a realtor hookup, maybe she is just more of a hustler than the person complaining...maybe a lot of things....having said that, your next step is to put a or all of the properties under contract.  If they are not under contract, you are windowshopping not investing.  If you are looking to wholesale without a quality list, you are likely to be in for some real heartache.  If you have a list then hit it hard.  My biggest point of view on your initial message though is that it suggests to me that you have put the cart before the horse a bit.  “If you don’t know where you are going any road will get you there “.  If you had real clarity on what you were after, you would have more clarity on the next steps.  Good luck 

Ok, I’m a bit surprised by the thread here.  I guess I’m going to be a bit of a contrarian but here goes.  Can you add?  Can you multiply?  If you can then you know all the math you need to know.  Yes you can get better at analysis and knowing more sure makes underwriting faster and easier but unless you are suffering from a lack of the most basic math skills mentioned above, there is nothing about investing that you can’t do. You may need a little guidance to understand that this is far simpler than it sounds and dare I say you may be suffering from informational overload if you think its all that hard.  It sounds like what you are missing is clarity of mission more than math skills. Good luck ! 

Yasmin.  I wish you the best of luck but I would respectfully suggest you dig deeper on your “Why”.  Wealth is not a Why.  Wealth is a tool.  Saying wealth is your why is like saying you want a hammer when what you really want is a house.  I hope you take this in the positive experience it is intended.  Also, the key is not patience but action.  Sounds like what you may need is a process.  All of that is easy to do but you have to first find your why.  

@Jay Hinrichs yeah I totally agree with that.  The key though is they stop being “wholesalers”. They have built and scaled a business and as you say they could have done that with anything.  That’s not what they folks are being taught though and I dare say that is not what the folks teaching it have done.   

Fair warning, here comes a rant.  I am a regular BP visitor and think the site and the vast majority of its members add enormous value. On the extreme other end of the spectrum (in the no value category) are these wholesale seminar “gurus”.  The truth is though they bear very little blame for what they are doing.  I’m going to assume most of them sell something, teach something and actually do something.  The fact that what they sell are magic beans, what they teach is impractical and what they do is largely master the art of separating an investor from their money is not the problem. The problem is the “INVESTOR’.  

I’ve been in the real estate business for 27 years.  I’ve been a lawyer, a title company owner, a real estate brokerage, an investor, a lender, a consultant, a coach.  In that time, I have learned quite a lot. There are folks that make a fortune and folks that make zero.  I know and have known NOT A SINGLE MILLIONAIRE wholesaler.  So there retort to that?  “ well, its where you get started and then you move on to SF or MF”. That’s utter BS.  There is no logic to it.  You are better off starting off as a real estate sales person, the money is better connections are better and it is a more natural segue.  “But I have no money to be a realtor” you say?  While I would reject that for a variety of reasons, let’s put that aside.  You could be a sales person at anything (cars, insurance copiers) etc until you were ready to start investing.  The key whether wholesaling or investing is to save money until you can buy or partner to buy.  Well, the wholesalers have an answer to that to don’t they?  They promise you buying properties with “no money down”.  Give me a break.  While I won’t say that the option doesn’t come up from time to time, it is rare and most of the properties that fit this category quite obviously have problems of their own that you won’t be financially equipped to deal with.  

In the end, if you want to be an investor or a wannabe is the threshold decision you have to make. Then you need some knowledge for sure (much of which you can get here but that doesn’t make you an investor either).  Then you need a plan of action and sometimes someone can be of great value there and you might have to pay them (so be it).  Then you need and here is the big secret of real estate investing.  Ready? Then you have to take massive action and DO IT !!! ...

Killing me.  I had this poor guy contact me who paid some “guru” $43k to teach him to be the next wholesaling millionaire.   I have to tell you, I know a lot of wholesalers.  Full disclosure, I don’t like wholesaling, dont’ think the business model is very good, and think it is basically a dead-end job by other means.  Having said that, I don’t know a wholesaler who is a millionaire.  I know many, many real estate investing millionaires (not that this should be a metric of anything but I digress).  This wholesaling seminar nonsense is the (not so) newest thing to over promise and under deliver. It is another means to make an excuse for someone otherwise failing to execute on a real plan and settling for this.  To be clear, wholesalers are not real estate investors.  If you are paying someone ridiculous money to “learn” to wholesale I think its fair to say (putting it mildly)value it not going = the amount you paid.  If you want to be an investor, be an investor, if you want a job, get a job.  Becoming a wholesaler is no more a path to being a real estate investor than is being a copier salesman.  In both cases, you make money on sales which you can (in principle) save up and then use to buy real estate.  This drives me nuts !!!! There is no “shortcut”. There are no “secrets”.

So how many cars should Toyota sell?

How many gallons of Milk should Borden's produce?

How many hospital beds should Tenet own?

Do you really needs a 3 egg omelette?

greed is about selfishness or an excessive concern for one's own needs not about the accumulation of anything.  If you are buying units for the purpose of keeping  them from someone else, then I suppose you are greedy.  Ofcourse in that case, the investor would be more stupid than anything else so in all likelihood the market would deal with him/her in its own just way wouldn't it?   

@David Zheng getting emotional will only lead to bad decisions.  This is a  business and tenants have rights.  I won't say there aren't cases of tenant abuses, there surely are.  There are also cases of terrible landlords.  Regardless, when you get into business you play by the rules of the game and your odds of being successful go up exponentially.  You get worked up and try to fight for some "principle" and you end up regretting it.  Its just business.  Tenant doesn't pay you evict.  Alternatively, you save yourself the money and you just stroke them a check.  You end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit and you only have to be wrong once.  

@Gary Barella gives you exactly the type of advice that supports my advice above.  A landlord with a similar point of view helped pay off my school loans many years ago.  So here is a cautionary tale for you.  A client owns a small little warehouse renting for around $500 per month.  He fails to pay rent multiple times.  Landlord doesn't want to be a "sissy" so what does he do?  He hires a couple of guys over the weekend to take all my client's stuff out of the warehouse and dump on the swale.  The client happened to be a vendor for me.  I filed a lawsuit.  End result?  A Judgment for $50,000 in my client's favor, another $65,000 for me in attorney's fees.  Landlord didn't have the cash so the proper was sold at auction on the courthouse steps.  Tough guy huh?  For a few bucks he could have hired a lawyer and done it the right way.