All Forum Posts by: Maurice George

There's a house for sale near me owned by the trust, they bought it in 2/17 for 110k and listed it yesterday for 65k. Seems weird to me!

This post is more of a pondering than a question... I was thinking this morning, after getting my 30th email from one "guru" or another trying to sell me a system or information.

Here are a few of the systems I have looked at:

1. Cameron Dunlap - Some good information, a pretty decent platform with iFlip, but WAY too much money for what they are offering. Seriously, $97 per month to have them host your URLthat you have to buy and then they only allow you to have 2 subdomains on your account. GoDaddy (or any other) .com runs approx $15/year, Zoho mail will let you use their mail for FREE with your URL so you can have you @yourdomain .com from them for no additional cost, up to 10 users... heck they even let you customize it with your own logos and offer a custom login screen mail.yourdomain.com with your logo... The real benefit that I see with the iFlip is the CRM and the Lead manager, pretty nice, but you can use the BP calculators to do much of the same things for leads... $1000 for "No Fee" Transactional Funding" and $297 so he can sell you a $50 Financial Calculator and a walkthrough that you can find on YouTube... If you don't know how to do TVM calculations there are even quick apps for your phones that do them without the convoluted calculator steps and they are at most $14.99.
2. Cody Sperber, the "Clever Investor" - He is pretty clever, at picking your pockets. The "all new" M5 system uses an integration of Instapage (free and pay options) and Podio (free) they also use an SMS integrator etc... could be a really powerful system if they actually trained you how to use it effectively. Not worth the money otherwise.
3. Capital Rehab Group - Their $47 DVD set including the "vault" of private lenders and the "7 House Flipping Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About" is a total joke... Their approach can be summed up this way: Step 1: Find a cheap house on the MLS. Step 2: Paint and Cosmetic repairs. Step 3: Sell on MLS below market value. (there I just saved you $47 dollars) The "vault" is a reprint from a service like "Private Money Goldmine." The so-called "7 secrets" are all on YouTube and in BP... nothing new just repackaged claptrap.
4. Preston Ely - what is there to say?... it was a joke.
5. Private Money Goldmine - This is essentially a list of Hard Money Lenders, my favorite was Steve Snyder, I tried contacting him via their information - yeah, wasn't until I found him here on bigger pockets that we actually connected.
6. Kent Clothier - Great idea, quite expensive. I understand this guy really is active and he is the brains behind Memphis Invest... He has even done a podcast on the science of flipping episodes 58 & 64. My bog problem with his program is the $1495 price tag though the $199 annual fee seems reasonable enough. They do offer a 30-day money back guarantee though I am oft leery of programs that cost a fortune and offer to give you your money back...

There are more but these are the most active at the moment as far as I can tell...

All told I think it is quite possible that these "Gurus" make much of their money from selling information and peddling dreams more that they do in Real Estate. They each claim that their programs cost them 10's of thousands of dollars to create and therefore, you are getting an amazing deal... but even it cast them $100,000 to create the system, they sell is at $1000, after 100 suckers, I mean customers, they are breaking even... Because they hype the systems and talk a smooth game, they will easily outperform their $100,000 every couple months, and the hoops that you need to jump through to get a refund leave many unsatisfied and frustrated without their refunds. Think about it... 500 people sign up a year, that is half a million in revenues without working more than a few days a year... No properties to flip, rehab or rent, no contractors, tenants or other annoyances to bother you... just cashing fat checks every month... And that is not even counting the 50/50 split money from deals done by students after they pay upwards of $20,000 for "Mentoring."

Be careful out there... 

~James

@Mark Ferguson has a great point. If you only had 2 showings and no offers, you are either in a horrible market - and no amount of commission is going to help that, or your house is way overpriced. Remember, what you have into it has almost no bearing on what it is worth or what people are willing to pay for it. And even more important than that, if your buyer is getting a mortgage, the lender will require an appraisal, so if it doesn't appraise out, it doesn't matter what you list it at. 

I have used flat fee listings before I became an agent, and they are a much better way to go than straight FSBO, in my experience. But, if you aren't offering a commission, which is divulged in the MLS, no agent is going to show your home. They are required by law to show any house their client wants to see, but there is no law that states in what order they have to show those houses. You can bet they will show your house dead last, and only if the buyer still hasn't found a house.

@John King - excellent point. I belong to 4 different MLS systems, and each one of them has a different listing contract for their area. Some are worded better than others in laying out gross commission vs. co-op. One is worded so poorly that I sometimes have to correct my own agents on how they complete it. They'll have the same amount in both the total gross and the co-op. So I ask them - do you want to get paid when this sells?

So, @Jeff Moore it may be a total of 6%, with 4% to be buyer's agent, and your agent retaining 2%. Again that assumes you don't have a cheap property. Just ask him about it - I'm sure you won't be the first.

You can Google two of the more popular attorneys that investors and wholesalers use. Fawad Khan and Stacy Santola. 

Peer, I am also looking at investing in Enid. Have you ventured further down that route? If so, how has it gone for you?

Eli, I am excited to hear that the biggest employers are not oil related. I am however concerned about the effect the oil industry will have on the rental market in light of upcoming elections. Have you noticed any correlations over the past decade between the oil industry and the rental market? Would love to hear your insight!

@Maurice George How do you know your getting market rent? Maybe raise rent a bit, if the current tenant moves out add value by charging a pet registration fee and monthly pet rent, a few bucks extra for washer and dryer hook up. Look at principal reduction over time. As previously suffered, maybe rent to own with an agreed price and charge more in rent, but give buyer a portion of that as credit. Saves you commissions and you collect more cash.

@Maurice George, a small local bank might do that. Any larger regional or national bank, or any servicing company working for a bank, will not.  All decisions by those banks will have to be supported by new appraisals and by financial analysis.

@Maurice George No, they won’t just reduce them. Anything less than the full balance owed would be a short sale....which will only happen if the house is worth less than the amount owed. 

@Maurice George Those fees are small for most foreclosures. If you’re trying for a short sale there is no avoiding the full short sale process. You need an experienced short sale agent.