All Forum Posts by: Mat Lewczenko

I am a huge believer in scripts, collapse your learning curve - model after success.

I agreed with all prior posts: be yourself, be honest and let them talk - but if you don't know what to ask them then you risk spinning your wheels, getting frustrated and quitting. That is exactly what a script is, a series of purposeful questions and objection handlers based on anticipated answers. You can maximize conversions or be able to better pre-qualify each lead when you have a good script i.e "series of questions"

So find a series of pre-qualifying questions "SCRIPT" and internalize the questions and be prepared for certain objection handlers. Role Play, practice, call an investor friend every morning and run your scripts. Before you know it, it will feel normal and you will then be able to add your own spin to it, add your personality and NO ONE on the other line will know you are following a series of specifically designed questions in order to get the answers you are looking for - scripts.

All takes practice, which you get if you focus on lead generation and make your calls. After 2 weeks of 40-50 contacts you will be breezing through your pre-qual call scripts and be setting some great appointments.

But most important - just make more calls - everything else falls into place - this is a CONTACTS sport.

and boom @Mark Ferguson is there to give you the info. Great Blog/website by the way.

Check out Mark Ferguson's blog I googled the question since i was also curios to the specifics.

Couple things can happen if you as an investor who plans on not occupying the property put in a bid as an owner occupant, they are kind of serious:

All owner occupants sign an Owner Occupancy Certification - certifying that you will be living there - for at least a year. If you happen to falsify this you could:

1.Pay fines of up to $250,000 and some jail time...and

2. The agent/company who helped you make the bid can lose their NAID# and ability to make any HUD bids for any customer in the future. So, your agent probably won't let you do that once they find out that is your goal.

Also, the listing agents are also on the lookout for investors trying to do this.

Oh yeah, and other investors, like the one you just bought a house next to, are also looking at that property, and when they find out you got one and are not living in it, since they were waiting for the "extended period" may not have an issue with turning you in to HUD.

Mark Ferguson's blog has more info on this. In short, you don't want to do it.

When I was in grad school, I would just pay 6 months rent at a time when financial aid disbursements came out. I knew I was not an ideal tenant based on my "job" i.e. I didn't have one, so I knew I needed to sweeten the deal - I signed a longer lease and paid 6 months at a time. Worked for me at that time and I even got a discount on the rent.

-When your contractor specializes in "Cheap and Cheerful" it will always end up NOT cheap and far from Cheerful.

-Get W9 BEFORE the first draw or you can guarantee asking for it all year.

Reserves, if you feel like you have enough - double it.

sorry, just read your profile, saw you were licensed.

Please refer to my last paragraph :)

I'm also a little confused. Are you also licensed? If not, then referral fees are not kosher.

I used to get many leads from investor friends that could not get a deal together with their lead, but the seller(lead) still needed to sell, so I listed them and sold them retail. Because the investor friend was unlicensed, I was unable to pay them a referral fee per RESPA guidelines.

If your agent friend wants to be in the loop, why don't they have an agency agreement in place with their investor connection?

Now, I have heard of some agents who referred out their investor clients to another agent for 25% on the first transaction and 5-10% on any subsequent transaction for a certain period of time (1year etc.) It's all negotiable, just get it all in writing.

I inherited two tenants that were also tooo busy to clean. We also inherited a slight bug problem, and by slight, We gave each tenant 30 opportunity to cure. We had several (3) different exterminators come to treat and they all said that these two unit were the source of our problem. After 30 days, one of the tenants really tried, but she is older, disabled and needed help. Since she actually put forth effort, we helped her. Asked her if she would be okay moving to a different unit in our building and we raised her rent $40/mo and added a once a month cleaning person. She was so happy and grateful - also her payments are always first of the month and she has lived there for 10+ years. We will be checking in on her monthly to make sure she is at least making an effort. The cost of moving her was 50% less than evicting since we had one unit ready it seemed like a win win at this time.

Now the other tenant - she was just lazy and disregarded the opportunity to cure. When presented with the health code, and the written statements from the exterminators, she left on her own will - and left a 20yd dumpster worth of filth behind her. So while we didn't need to spend $300 to evict, it did cost me $350 for clean out and another several hundred on make ready.

in your agency agreement, you may want to add verbiage like "this agreement is valid only for properties actually shown by agent" or you can exclude a geographic area like a zip code, or wherever you are marketing. Best thing you can do, and it seems like you have already done so is communicate your business plan.

I'm currently in the process of doing the exact same thing, but my 15yr fixed rate is obscene (8%).

This property was a pretty beat up foreclosure and the bank holding it offered the financing, 15% down and 8% fixed. I just finished rehabbing it and we will be 100% occupied (6units) on Dec 13th

The refi has almost tripled my COC return and even projecting 2% increases every 5 years it still keeps my COC over 20% till payoff.