All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

@Yoni R. - make friends with a great title company and see if they can cut you an en masse deal to run some title searches and background info for you each week. You would have to cut it down to the TOP prospects to make it worth both of your time. The lure for the title company is that if it goes to an on-market transaction at some point, the title will already be complete and an attorney may be inclined to use that title co.

@Jason K Green - if you are just getting licensed in California, I would not worry about figuring out how to sell in Mexico as the process will be completely different and a very large uptick for you. Also, if it's a nice beachfront property it is likely that people will want to buy from the best agent in the area, not a new agent from California. To serve your relative the best, find the best listing agent in that area of Mexico, and refer the listing out to him and take a 25% referral fee.

@Yoni R. - if you think investors in Miami only buy on the MLS, I have to say you are behind the curve. The courthouse auctions are busting at the seams in most major cities and the deals are getting worse and worse (in my area) because inexperienced investors are pushing the prices up and making bad deals. I do think you can find deals there, but what I am saying is that your best bet is to find an untapped neighborhood near you and start mailing them consistently.

To win at foreclosure auction you have to have the back data on the property (history, amount owned, liens), know if someone is living there (tenant or owner), estimate the interior upkeep from the look of the exterior (no easy task) and knock the doors of the next door neighbors and the three across the street to get a gauge on what they know about the homeowner (not always well received, but you are trying to help them by turning a foreclosure into a flip).

I hope this helps.

@Daniel Gonzalez - I have a referral for you in Hudson Co, but there are some good tips to finding an investor-friendly agent in this blog I wrote on BP - https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/10015/64777-5-...

@Jaago Viitkin - any time you are looking to sell a property, when you are a licensed agent, and not looking to cut your broker in, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, you are thinking the wrong way. As said above, most IC agreements will have this spelled out and they usually allow you to sell your personal residence only for free and only if you have been at the brokerage more than a year.

When you are an investor & agent, these things should be spelled out in detail with your office so there are no misunderstandings in the future. If you are listing your own property and have not done a lot of flips in your area, this may not be in your best interest as buyer's agents will think you have too much of a stake in the outcome and could be prone to hyping it up too much.

Your brokerage will take a cut on anything they can so you need to go through these scenarios to see what they expect:

1. you buy on your own off-market 

2. you wholesale a deal from buying on your own and send it someone else (this area is very murky for brokerages)

3. you buy a property on market, but for yourself

4. you sell any property on or off-market (they are getting a cut)

@Christopher Hunter - chances are he was going to pocket that money, which is illegal. Why would he be compensated for doing his job before you close? He gets compensated by finding good properties (not just surfing the internet) and then helping you get to closing. Call the broker.

@Llewelyn A. - this type of thinking below from you means you should not get your license

"If the listing expires without going into Contract AND if the deal falls out of Contract, such as when a Buyer fails to attain a Mortgage, then I can offer to buy the Property since there is no Agency relationship as the Contract with the Buyer had expired."

If that happened and then records show that the listing agent bought the property, agents and buyers who showed the property and did not offer would find things that you said to them to be disingenuous, whether they were or not, because it would look like you were putting off buyers to get it yourself when it expired. Once that is raised, then the seller would also have an issue with you.

@Llewelyn A. if you have to keep asking the question and you aren't taking in all the answers, getting your license is only going to cause you problems. Just from a strict ethical point-of-view how would it be ok to look at all of the offers and then just bid higher? There are so many problems with this before even looking at the rules and it seems like you are looking for a way to make it ok and there will never be.

If you are the listing agent you are NEVER bidding on the property, not through someone else, NEVER. If you have a client who is interested in your listing, dual agency, you can write up an offer for them but if you do ALL of the offers must go to another agent or your broker for review so you have no access to them until a decision is made between your substitute agent and the seller. If you would rather stick with your seller then you can farm out your buyer to another agent and take a referral fee, but that is still pushing the line. The other way is better - write the offer and give up control of the intake of offers to your office manager or broker.

@Christopher Hunter why would you pay a buyer's agent a retainer to look on the MLS. You should check with his broker as to whether he was planning on running these fees through the brokerage or not. A buyer's agency agreement does not require a fee and really shouldn't. The agent will get paid when he closes deals for you and if he needs money to solidify the deal, he probably isn't going to work that hard. Both sides need to prove themselves to each other that they are in it for the same goals. Contact his broker and see if this was sanctioned by the office.

@Andrew Taylor - your first question is "How can I help you?" Every seller who calls back at least has a faint interest in selling and if you are mailing the right lists, they have a reason for calling you back. This reason will be different for each seller - out of state landlord doesn't want to manage anymore, empty nester ready to move, the absentee owner doesn't take care of the property. Before moving into cash offer mode, ask them questions about them and why they are calling back. When you know their why and when you invest in learning about them, even for 3-5 minutes, you will be far ahead of all the investors trying for a quick sale, cash deal that is the "best deal you are going to get." Of course, your goal is an appointment and a buy, but who do you think these people are more likely to have over - the guy who asked them questions about WHY they need to move or the guy who told them they would give them 100k right now?