All Forum Posts by: Guy Olds

@Emma McClendon Start by finding like minded people near you. That means start attending real estate investment clubs. You say you're in the Inland Empire so here are four clubs to check out depending on where you live. 

First, the biggest is the Inland Empire Real Estate Investor Club which meets the 4th Thursday of every month at the Mission Inn in Riverside. I attend that club even though its an hour drive to get to it.

Then, TVREI Temecula and TVREI Apple Valley. Temecula meets the 2nd Wednesday every month in Temecula. Not sure when the Apple Valley club meets. 

Finally, there is a good club in Coachella.

You can find them all on meetup.com and maybe on facebook.

The TVREI Temecula club has a mentorship program you can join though I imagine there might be a cost to that.

All club meetings cost $20-$30. Don't let anyone on BiggerPockets tell it's crap to have to pay to go to a club meeting (and they will tell you that) but they don't live in SoCal.

Also, if you live close enough, there is InvestClub in Fullerton. That's an awesome club. 

And OCREIA in Orange County, Irvine or Cost Mesa.

Good luck finding your tribe.

Thank you @Karen Margrave for suggesting that I start a meetup but not only do I not think I'm the right person for that, I'm quite content with the clubs we have now.  I could easily hit one or two every week as I/we have our choices of guest speakers and topics. Though if someone else wanted to start a BP meetup in the San Gabriel Valley I might join it.

@Clifford G. Now that I've convinced you to go to the Inland Empire Real Estate Club (IEREIC) I have to tell you that in December all they have is a big Christmas party and that may be way too expensive if you don't know anyone ($40 in advance or $55 at the door) so you may want wait until the January meeting which unfortunately is like 7 weeks away. Hope to see you then.

@Clifford G. To answer one of your questions ... Yes you are being cheap. I'm not sure what part of southern CA you're in but you did mention the inland empire and I've never found any club there to be $40 a meeting. $30 tops. They run down to $10 a month. If you ever find a meeting that charges nothing it's because they make their money to pay for renting the venue, drinks or food and the cost of meetup.com by hard selling you the programs that their speaker is promoting because they (the meeting host) will get a percentage). If you don't like being a mark for hard sales pitches be happy you have to pay money for a no sales pitch meeting. There are quite a few of those in SoCal. 

The largest club in the IE is in Riverside (it's a no sales club). You'll get about 125 people there every month. The club is called Inland Empire Real Estate Investment Club. I meets on the 4th Wednesday every month at the Mission Inn in Riverside and costs $30. Now, is that too much money to have 5 hours of networking with rehabbers, wholesalers, buy and holders, property managers, airbnb hosts, and realtors. Oh and if you become a yearly member of the club the average spend per meeting is $19. I'm a yearly member.

Since I don't know where you're located I won't go into a whole list of clubs but most can be found on meetup.com.

Finally, what ever club you chose as your "home" club that will be the people you will get to know the best and make deals with and make money with. So, if you are an action taker and plan on following through real estate investing don't sweat the small stuff like the itty bitty cost of a monthly meeting when the connections, and friendships from your networking will make you thousands and thousands of dollars. It's paid of handsomely for me and I have to admit I hate networking as I'm more on the shy side.

@Jeff Driessen I suggest you start networking with local people. There just happens to be a very good and active real estate investor club in Murrieta which is run by a hard money lender. It meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month. You can find the club on meetup.com. The club's name is TVREI or Temecula Valley REI.

You might also come up to the largest investor club in the inland empire which meets on the 4th Wednesday (just not in December). It meets at the Mission Inn in Riverside. Called Inland Empire Real Estate Investment Club also on meetup. I'm a member of this club.

I recommend Formatic Property Management of Riverside. Matt Tandy runs the company and they have pretty good pricing. I hope this isn't the company you currently use.

@Kevin Craig Most parks in California won't allow you to own a mobile home in the park and rent it out except to a relative. But in the Inland Empire there are plenty of manufactured homes on land where you own the land. These are not in parks. Some in good shape but a lot are not. You can get a lot of them cheap. I bought one for $60,000 in Perris. It was a 2 bedroom 1 bath single wide with a non permitted addition on 1 acre and needed about 15k in repairs. These are cash only deals but cash flow like crazy. You could also buy beat up mobile homes in parks for 5-10k, fix them up and sell them for 30-35k.

I don't know if @Mark Pedroza answered to original poster's question but he nailed the probate issue on the head. Anytime a post begins with something like "I don't know anything about probate but I have a question..." Mark's post should pop up be required reading in order to post that question.

The last line "Think of probate as a title problem...." is critically important to understand.

@Ruben Torres  I applaud your desire to "take over probate" in El Paso. That of course won't be so easy. You will need to understand the probate process in Texas and how it's applied in your county. You'll also have to be the expert in probate terminology. Based on your original post you've got a lot of research and studying to go.

Probate is a very time consuming niche to get leads. If you want to "take over" probates you will have to become the expert probate problem solver. You will want it to be difficult to get leads as a barrier to entry from other investors. Learn how to pull current probate cases from your county courthouse then hire someone else to do it if it's a time burden to you. Don't hope for the easy way out like a list broker because then you'll have competition.

Also know that most likely it will be the most difficult real estate investor niche to work in.

Good luck.

Wholesaling is legal all over the country if you do it right. Some states are more restrictive. The only problem wholesaling in southern Cal is the competition.