All Forum Posts by: Michael Lerch

@Laura Winka  Hey and welcome to BP! I love lease options. I do wholesaling up in Grand Rapids, but I really like doing lease options more I think. It's like getting the best of both worlds in 1 deal if you can pull off a sandwich lease option. I will say that a lease option (especially a sandwich) can be a bit tricky for a beginner since there's a lot of variables so make sure you learn all you can first!  There's lots of great people on here that have written articles and respond to questions so don't hesitate to ask! You can also find mentors as well which is always a plus when you're starting off and don't have a lot of time.

@Jeffrey Townsend  Hey there! There's lots of resources on here to help you decide what niche of real estate investing best suites you. I would stick with one thing at first and learn the ropes - get some experience - make some money. 

Then kick it up a notch and do 2 more, then 4, then 8, heck just scale it up to whatever you're comfortable with. You can always branch out and do more buy and hold or more flips and wholesale deals, but put most of your time on what you would consider to be your bread and butter so you can maximize your strengths. 

I would suggest something Brandon Turner and others have mentioned on here and that's house hacking... not sure if that's what you meant with flipping a duplex, but starting off it's great! I wish I had done it.

@Michael Miller  welcome back! Dust yourself off and make your comeback! 

@Melissa J Semear  good for you on deciding not to start in debt. I'm not putting down what some of these coaching programs have to offer ( ok some of them I would lol) but if you have the money to get a leg up on the learning curve great. For the rest of us that have drive to take action, the smarts to ask questions, and learn from free resources like bigger pockets, in my opinion, are better for it.

Dive in Melissa. Pretty much everything you need to know is right here on BP. We also do a REI club in Grand Rapids that is meeting this coming monday that is full of new and experienced investors. Just search West Michigan REI Club and you'll find us :)

Hi @Stephan Haas ! Kalamazoo has some things going for it, but it seems to be a pretty good rental market. Especially because of Western U. Now... if we're talking Portage just outside of Kzoo that's a good flip area to look into as they have great jobs from Stryker, Borgess, and plenty of other manufacturing/engineering companies. 

Be sure to flag me down and say hi at the meetup next monday if you come up ! @Nathan Emmert hope to see you there too!

I'm still trying to figure out SEO myself, but keywords, anchor text, and content seem to be key. Start a blog on your website, get biggerpockets pro and stay active on the forums, and getting help along the way is always great! 

I use investor carrot and it's worked well in my market. I went with it because I didn't want to have to worry about all the SEO stuff in the creation of the website. It's actually Scott's website struggling investor that tipped me off to it.

For Grand Rapids real estate attorney I'd go with David Hall at Kreis Enderle. I spoke with him about lease options, land contracts, and land trusts. 

Here's his info

http://www.kreisenderle.com/professional-team/david-c-hill/

I'm sure he could help or at least point you in the right direction of who can.

@Jack Nguyen This is a strategy I've tried in the past as a wholesaler here in Grand Rapids. My execution was probably weak at best, but like @Wayne Brooks  mentioned the strategy of spamming out offers to 90 DOM (or other) reeks of wholesaler. In the end I think I managed to spam out 10 offers and no agent ever responded... except one who just wanted to troll me. I guess I can't blame him it was a monday after all. 

Getting a license may or may not help you seeing as the market here is pretty decent and investors are making offers on everything,  but I think it would add some credibility to your offer seeing as Grand Rapids is hit pretty hard with wholesalers from all the gurus that go on tour through here all the time and the agents know it. Dealing realtor to realtor might help. It also depends on your exit strategy if you're aiming for rentals, flips... or a rental rehab flip (not as much competition, but requires more capital). 

I didn't hit my goals for 2014. Not even close, but I think my eyes were bigger than my plate so to speak. I didn't do bad, in fact I did better than I did in 2013, but I set my goals unrealistically high.

How do you go about setting goals for your business without getting your head stuck in the clouds?  I don't want to underachieve, but I'd like to actually hit my goals too. 

Just curious if you guys use some sort of checklist or formula for setting your goals based on what you did last year?

Depending on what you're looking for, Grand Rapids is chock full of seller finance and subject-to deals. I'll keep an eye out for ya if you can let me know your criteria.