All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Please forgive me for laughing, jc, but you have no idea how funny your post is.

Of course super deals are far and few between. If 20 people each made them 5 times a week, that would become fair market price and they wouldn't be deals any more.

Yes, I have bought houses with $100,000 instant equity. But those don't come along very often, and not one of them came off of bandit signs or yellow letters. (in fact 75% of them come off the MLS.)

I am buy and hold, so I never wholesale anything. I tend to be really happy if I can find a house that meets all my criteria for a good investment for 20% off the top dollar price. And even those deals aren;t all that common.

At 20% off, there isn't much room to wholesale. A couple of commissions and a couple of sets of closing costs and you'd be pretty close to the line.

You'd have to be getting them pretty cheap to resell them to some one who is also going to make a bundle on them. The guy who does the work and takes the risk is going to be the one to make the lion's share, and that isn't you if you are the wholesaler.

[[[[......I'm starting to wonder if all the fabulous money made in wholesaling as touted by these courses is really just a ploy to sell books....]]]]]

Ya think???

If they could make easy endless millions doing their real estate trick, why are they out giving sales seminars to the marks?

I never buy anything that I haven't seen with my own eyes (with the exception of a $100 limit for ebay, and then only from venders with flawless ratings).

Even bargain real estate is a lot of money.

Bargain real estate is sometimes really cheap for a really good reason, and I want to know the reason before I plonk down my cash.

I've never had any problem selling land. In fact, the last piece I sold, the agent had a buyer even before the listing agreement was signed.

Location is everything with land.

If the property is off the grid, is it in a hunting area or a recreation area? There are serious buyers for hunting land and recreational land, if your piece qualifies.

Home builders are not so likely to want a property off the grid, so you have to figure out who would want it and target your marketing towards them.

Where is it located, what is the surrounding area like, is there access, is the access paved? Is there water availabe?

I suggest that you buy the house, and then you won't have to move at all. If it is a distress sakle, the price should be good.

Yes, the landlord has every right to bring people though and to have the building inspected. He has every right to sell the property and you have no say in the matter, because it does not belong to you.

There is a possibility that the landlord will allow you out of the lease early. It doesn't hurt to ask.

Your lease is up next month, so you already knew you were going to be moving, so I don't get what all the tears are about.

I also can not see why on earth you want a licensed contractor to inspect. Unless you are buying the house yourself, it certainly isn't any businees of yours. If you have had an offer accepted on the house, and you are buying it yourself, then yes, you can ask to have a licensed contractor inspect AND YOU PAY FOR IT YOURSELF.

A generic contract is how you end up in court on the losing end of a lawsuit.

You need a contract that is specific to your state laws.

If you have any sort of landlord's association in your state, they may sell rental contracts that their own lawyer has vetted and approved. You have to pay for a copy of their contract, but it is cheaper than paying a lawyer to write a contract just for you.

Contracts are probably free to members, and being a member of the local landlord association is a good idea if you want to own a rental.

The 2% rule applies in areas where nobody wants to live, like OH.

If you want to invest in California, or any other place on the west coast, you are going to have to forget about the 2% rule and fiigure out a diferent way to make money with real estate.

Be aware that the figures that lead to the 2% rule are valid. It is quite expensive to maintain rentals, and if your rent money isn't going to cover those costs, you need to know where the money is going to come from.

You can make a lot more money in real estate in California than anyone else will ever make in OH, even if they work it for decades.

California might not yet be done with falling prices, but they've come down enough to at least be following the market closely and looking for opportunies. If you are serious about making money, you buy when prices are low.

There are always lots of tire kickers. It comes with the business. Not everybody who looks is wanting a place to live.

There are a lot of tenants looking for cash for keys landlords. They will come and try to charm you. If you hold firm with the application and they know you are going to run credit reports, they move on and try to find an easier victim.

I get a lot of lookers who lose interest when they see my application. It's not a hard one, but it makes it very clear that I am checking references, credit, and criminal. The majority of people who can't pass screening will not bother to fill it out.

Now, however, if you are not getting anyone to apply, there is something wrong. If you have a great place at a good price, some of the losers will try to trick you. If even the losers aren't applying, there is some problem.

Try to look at your place with a tenant's eyes. Does it have curb appeal? Is it move-in ready? No cleaning or repairs needed? Is it fresh and nice?

Have you actually looked at what the tenants can get for your price range. The tenants are going to take the best house they can get for their money. So even though you are priced the same as others, the tenants won't take yours unless it is the very best one for the price.

You've got your condo prices at the high end. So is it nicer than the others?

Decent people don't move during the winter in my area, but winter should not really be a problem in San Diego.

EricFoster,

I suspect that the short sale business is probably fairly regional. It's easy to see that foreclosures are more heavily massed in a few areas rather than scattered evenly around the entire country.

Historically, in Central Oregon, the very few foreclosures simply get listed with a broker and sell for full market value. That doesn't give banks much motivation to short sale.

Maybe with foreclosures increasing, the banks will change their attitudes, but so far, I see very few actual foreclosures.

It's not hard to realize that the banks are going to short sale faster in Chcago where there are 5,000 foreclosures, than they will in my town where there are 3 of them... with 2 inactive and none of them actually anywhere near town. They just don't have hte same kind of motivation.

The big bargains I have seen are things like divorce where the property has been owned for a long time and the single divorcee can not afford the payments. Those don't come along very often, and when they do, they are less desirable properties-- if they are something that anyone wants to own, they will sell for a slight reduction in price. No need to sell them for 30% off.

If the typical savings with buying a foreclosure are about 10%, I am not going to bother, because I can get 10% off the asking price on really nice properties by making offers off the MLS.

The market might change radically this spring. So far sellers are standing firm. There are lots of buyers with lots of cash waiting to see what happens. It could go either way.

I'm not seeing anythig happening that would encourage me to go to all the work of trying to push a short sale through. Buying excess inventory from small builders would probably yield the same savings and it's a lot less work.

Markets in Seattle aere supposed to be going up. I can't see too much success with short sale when the banks know that prices are going up.

However, I wish you good luck, and if you can get it to work, please come back and share.

If this is the drug center you are talking about, get your non-profit formed and get your government contract.

You get the contract before you start to build. Once you have the contract, if there is any profit in it, you will get your investors, because you have something firm, to show them in writing, about where the profit money is going to come from.

It's normal in commercial to get all the contracts signed before any build-out starts. So the government isn't going to think it is strange for you to want a contract before you build the center.

I'm wondering, though, how large that house is. The government isn't really all that generous and you might need economies of scale to make any money.

The government rarely buys buildings. Most often, they lease them, so you might run into a snag there. Also, you are going to run into problems with staffing and you'd better have a plan about how to deal with that.

Something else you want to think long and hard about is your liability exposure.

I'm not sure how much schooling you have. If you are graduating from a 4 year college, you are wasting your education to get a job as a receptionist.

If you want a low paying job with your 4 year degree, at least start applying for jobs as junior loan officer in established banks. It won't hurt you to learn how the money flows, and it is a good source of contacts. (please note: this is not a bank teller's job and bank teller is not on the career track for anything involving the loan department)

If you are just graduating from high school and you can type , use a computer, and work a calculator, instead of the front desk at the real estate office, go for the agent's assistant's job at a high volume office with one of the top sellers. You'll work your tail off, not get paid much, and you'll learn a lot.