All Forum Posts by: Jeff Filali

@Chinmay J. Why would you want to get into a business that owns you?  My family has been in the restaurant industry since the early 80's and I owned my own for a few years myself.  Biggest mistake of my life.  You will become a professional babysitter and will end up working 100+ hours per week and have many, many headaches.  Sure, everyone runs the numbers and thinks they can do it and hire good managers, etc.  Good luck with that plan. 

Take your money and grow your real estate business!!

I'm sure there's many on here who would write it off and others who wouldn't dare. LOL

If you ask the same question to 3 different CPA,s you'd probably get 3 different answers:

1. NO; Not unless you actually purchased a property;

2. MAYBE; Followed by 10 questions about exact details of the trip;

3. YES; Call on a few properties you "looked at" and put in written offers through an agent.

2005 Cadillac Escalade - PAID $6,500 Cash 2 1/2 years ago and have put well over 100,000 miles on it since.  Its setting on around 280,000 miles now, but runs great and have had minimal problems.  Most people think its a lot newer.  I have ZERO desire to ever pay car payments again.  Worst investment you can buy is a new vehicle.  I'll drive it until it has a major problem and then buy another one 4-5 years newer and will be able to get a lot of my money back selling the current one.

Don't get discouraged, activity creates activity.  But as others have said, DM is very low response, you may send 50 per week and only get 1-2 contacts per month from that.  However, it only takes 1 good one to make some good money.  Good luck and stay motivated. 

Also, reinvest and expand marketing as you grow and try different ways, they all work different in various markets and different people respond better to different approach.  One of the biggest mistakes I see newbies make is they finally close their first deal, sometimes 60-90+ days into it and they go spend the money on non-marketing.  The first house I flipped, I reinvested all the profit into blowing up my marketing, that helped me grow very fast after that. 

Figuring out how to separate all your marketing so you know your customer acquisition cost on different ways of marketing will help you get more bang for your buck.  At first just using 2 different phone numbers (cell and GoogleVoice, etc) is a free way to help you track which form of marketing the lead came from.  As you grow, you can have multiple phone numbers, emails, websites, landing pages, SEO tracking, and really track exact cost of acquiring deals.

I hope you're right and oil continues to ramp back up. It would be great for the entire state of Texas and Oklahoma.

No, I considered it on one because I had multiple people asking if I'd do it.  But I ended up selling it instead.

IMO, there's nothing wrong or unethical with doing that and to the tenant willing to do it, as long as everything is disclosed up front, you're helping them. As @Kevin Siedlecki said Running water, working plumbing and heat should probably qualify as livable.

Provision Roofing in BA

Ask for Rico Watkins

http://www.provisionroofingok.com/

I use a "Contract for Deed" aka Land Contract and a simple document called a "Memorandum of Land Contract", both are notarized with both seller and buyer signing both docs and both are filed with the county.  This protects both parties interest and lets anyone who searches know who the responsible party is.  I also go ahead and sign a deed transferring title to the buyer and have it notarized, but I do not file this, it goes in my safe deposit box just in case something ever happened to me prior to them paying it off.

We come across properties in Sedgwick and Butler Counties all the time.  Just let us know more specifics on what you're looking for and we'll forward any leads on to you on properties that don't fit our own portfolio.