All Forum Posts by: Japheth Grimm

I'm not new to realty investing, but I am new to investing in Philly. Our family business primarily cash buys or owner-finances residential properties.

Looking forward to being back in the city of brotherly love!!! 

Tentatively, count the Grimm Family Homes (Houston team) as in!

Welcome to Bigger Pockets! I have family in Adelaide and been trying to talk them into investing in real estate. So far, they've been researching what they can but I'm not sure how much progress they've made. I'd love to have investment properties in Australia. Keep in touch and we'll see about working together in the future.

Here's a good resource we use for helping us eyeball repair costs. Keep in mind these aren't always accurate, but it's a good starting point.

http://www.homewyse.com/services/index.html

That depends. Are you marketing yourself as an agent? If so, yes. If not, then no.

If you're securing deals, it's good to disclose in the addendum or special provisions that you're not acting as an agent in the transaction.

Note: I'm speaking from my experience in Texas, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Best bet would be to participate in a local REIA and find a real estate attorney who is familiar with REI practices to look over your contracts.

Looking forward to hearing when and where the April meeting will take place!!!

The best advice is the same that's been going around for years. That is, find a local REIA, network with investors, and find those who are willing to mentor you or at least keep in touch on a regular basis. Here's a list of REIAs to reference:

http://www.mynationalreia.com/clubportal/795files/Directory.cfm?clubID=795&statevalue=TX

When finding mentors, make sure they have a good reputation within the REIA and other networks. If someone wants you to pay them for mentoring, find someone else. For an investor to be willing to help you learn, you've got to make it worth their while. Some people are surprised that this means you "work for free", but what's really going on is you're getting a free education through experience.

For instance, right now I've got a guy who is your age that is more or less our shadow. This guy has been working with my team and a few other investors for the past two months, learning as much as he can. Our deal with him is that we give him access to our Google calendar and if he wants to come with, he tells us at least a day in advance and shows up two hours ahead of time. If things start in the morning, we'll pick him up and he'll spend the entire day with us. Most of the time he does busy work and observes, but lately he's been participating hands on in some of our deals.

Since he's been busting his butt with us (not for us), other investors have seen his work ethic. Because of this, he's gained access to more resources for free; the same resources that other people are paying for (ie: services, workshops, classes, field training, webinars, books, etc.). When he hears about an event, he finds out who's hosting and offers to show up early, make coffee, direct traffic, greet people, distribute materials, or whatever busy work they don't want to do. Most of the time, people are paying money to attend. These hosts aren't paying him to work the event, but he's not paying to be there either. It can make for a long day but, for him, the educational and networking opportunities are becoming endless.

This coming week, we'll be working out some details concerning him partnering with my team on his first few wholesale deals using our leads and marketing. Even though we're going to split the payout, he's still going to get a nice check from putting what he's learned to work for him. Since he's already proved that he can perform to potential end buyers, not to mention he's well aware of what they want in the first place, he should have no problem turning deals. Heck, he's already been told by some investors that once he gets some deals down, he'll have access to their private lending money. Not bad!

Bottom line: Gaining access to education, mentoring, and other people's money is the way to go if you're going get serious about real estate investing. All it's going to cost you is a lot of time and a bunch of elbow grease at first, but the payout is huge if you're consistent.

Again, I have the information but I'm not going to just hand it over without more details from you. You have my contact info in your inbox.

There are a few agents I work with in the Houston, Sugarland, and Baytown areas. I've also got a property under contract in Baytown. Let me know if you want the info. I'll message you my direct contact details.

Sorry for such a late response, everyone. Just got busy with helping the new family REI business that stepped away for a bit. Big thanks to @Raymond B. for helping folks learn about the tag feature!!!

@Lori Walker and @Cody Marchant , I would have to say that the book and DVDs are basic, but not without providing some good direction. The book is written like a manual/workbook. Sure, a lot more detailed information can be found here on Bigger Pockets, but Chris Goff's Wholesaling Course is great for outlining some step-by-step guidelines that is easy enough to follow; especially for people who aren't used to self-educating.

The wholesaling course also comes with some handy forms and contracts. You can edit them to suit your needs. Personally, I think the forms are great to use for handling phone calls. We've made some adjustments here and there but didn't have to revamp the entire forms. Our attorney suggested the single page purchase contract have "or assigns" mentioned more than once, but gave us the go-ahead on the rest. Make sure you have your own attorney review the contracts before using them in your own business.

There was no hype, no further sales pitch for another product, no promising access to an "exclusive REIA network" (think: Phil Grove - REIMatcher, Than Merrill - Fortune Builders), or any other yada yada to get someone to buy more products and/or get sucked into an MLM-esque "network". No one has called us from Mr. Goff's office trying to sell us anything further. The only sales stuff we get are emails that provide links to access his webinars which are informative enough to give ideas for how to take further action. Sure, he offers some of his products towards the end, but if you don't buy that's a-okay with them too. There's no follow up to buy another kit at some blah blah reduced rate of whatever.

For the family members who were intimidated by the process, and REI stuff in general, this program helped them get through the hesitation and take action. It also provided a way for me to not have to explain terms, what to do next, and things over and over again, which I definitely like.

Bottom line: Chris Goff's Wholesaling Course a good resource for beginners; especially those who work best with a manual/workbook type setup. For our purposes, it was worth the 300 bucks.