All Forum Posts by: Sean Terry

Wow, great question!

Here's what I would do:

Strategy/Big Picture: Flip properties wholesale and accumulate enough cash to buy properties financed or "subject to" the existing mortgage with at least 25% equity and $300 REAL cash flow or buy a multi-unit complex or mini storage.

Use of Money:

1. Invest first in education, learn wholesaling and cash flow analysis. Be obsessive about your education.

2. Invest in Lead Generation:
a. Yellow Letter Marketing
b. Pay Per Click Advertising
c. Bandit Sign Marketing

3. Invest in Marketing for Buyers:
a. Pay Per Click Advertising
b. Craig's List Marketing
c. Post Card Mailing

These methods can be done on the cheap OR they can be done in a BIG way. We've spent over $76,000 this year alone on Google Adwords in our local market. This doesn't include Yahoo Search and MSN Adcenter.

Your ROI using these methods CORRECTLY will be massive, you'll turn that $100K into a small fortune very quickly.

Once your comfortable taking leads, getting contracts and selling the properties and you've built a nest egg, then you can start buying properties for rentals. Start small with SFR then move into muti-plex or commercial.

As for the long term...the sky is the limit!

Cheers :)

Sean

All great insights, thanks for sharing. I've learned by doing countless deals. It's amazing some of the stuff you come across over the years.

I wish I new about a great resource like BP when I started. There's some great information and some great contributors with vast knowledge on many topics.

Cheers :)

Hey Tyler,

I'm excited for you, real estate investing is such a great place to be right now. Here's what I would do.

1. I would get a job you can plan on quitting as soon as you have a comfortable nest egg of cash stashed. This amount is up to you. I suggest one years worth of income in the bank.

2. I would study everything I could as regards to "wholesaling". This takes very little if any cash and can be implemented around your day job. Wholesaling in a nutshell is finding a motivated seller and signing a buyside contract at one price and then finding a cash buyer and assigning or signing a sellside contract for a higher price.

To find motivated sellers there are MANY ways, but the 3 best ways for beginners are:

1. Yellow Letter direct mail to an inheritance list

2. "Sell House Fast" Bandit Signs

3. Pay Per Click Marketing via Google Adwords (takes some cash).

To find cash buyers, just post an ad on Craig's list for a below property with your phone number and watch the phone ring. Also put out "Cheap House For Sale CASH" bandit signs with your number. Make sure to use eVoice or a service like it to capture the calls.

Then just put the two together.

Now, after you've done enough deals to get one years worth of income in the bank you can make the decision to quit.

Once you go full time, you'll now have experience, confidence, and proof that you can make a living flipping properties.

Now you can decide to keep, in your own personal inventory, properties that make sense from a cash flow perspective which is the most important aspect of owning rental properties.

I hope this helps,

Cheers,

Sean

This is the wrong Fortress Investments, LLC, you're referring to Fortress Investments Group the NY firm (FIG‎ - Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE).)

We're a small company out of Phoenix AZ.

Just an FYI.

Thanks Sean
Fortress Investment, LLC (Arizona Limited Liability Company)

I wouldn't make a blog your company website, but you can certainly use Wordpress and a cool theme to develop a website and have a page dedicated to updates/posts. I have seen many real estate companies use Wordpress platform as a successful website along with a blog.

Just a thought

I use Twitter on a regular basis, it's a great way to make friends and build traffic to a website. I actually met a local realtor who wholesaled us a property. We got a great deal and he made $7K in a week.

http://twitter.com/DealMakersBlog

We blog to drive traffic to our company website where we sell cash flow properties to investors across the nation. The blog has been extremely successful using this method. I haven't monetized the blog to specifically make money but there are many blogs that make huge amounts of money just blogging.

Good Luck!!!

I did a blog post on the "Top 10 Real Estate Investing Blogs" It's under the most popular section. I hope this helps.

Happy Investing!

J,
Being an active real estate investor and developer, I can say that you should start out in wholesaling. Look for great deals and offer them up to investors that have the credit, the documented income and assets to hold on to the property for awhile. Once you understand the "making of a deal" then go on to more complex strategies. I started in wholesaling and moved into land. I currently own $12 million of residential real estate and $30 million of land we entitled. It’s not easy and you need great attorneys and deep pockets. Good Luck!

Earnest money or down payment, it should reduce your cash needed to close. In my experience of buying several bank owned homes a month they only require an EMD and proof of funds/Loan Approval. It is probably the agent requesting the larger EMD not the bank, it’s negotiable. Remember we are in a serious buyers market. You call the shots to some degree.