All Forum Posts by: Timothy W.

I'm glad this was brought up because it raises a topic that's near and dear to my heart.

As far as this one deal - it closed and if there's anything that basic physics can teach you it's that what works once, can work again. You simply decide if you want to do it again. Personally I decided not to.

I actually avoid bird dogging, property scouting, and wholesaling in general. I only do them when I need to. Why? It's not true Real Estate Investing, as Ryan said. It's being a Real Estate Entrepreneur - a self employed one (what side of the quadrant is that again?). It's merely marketed as Real Estate Investing because that terms sells educational courses better than entrepreneur. Entrepreneur has a risky sound to it and for good reason.

An investor invests capital for a return. Bird dogs, property scouts, wholesalers etc. generally don't have the capital to invest - thus they do these deal chasing activities. An entrepreneur gathers resources to create value. That's what bird dogging, property scouting, wholesaling is - gathering property, information and investors to make a deal happen. Each of these activities is a singular event leading to a singular payout. None of it is passive income.

Why do you think so many new "investors" are having such a tough time in this current market? They're trying to act like "investors" when they need to be acting like "entrepreneurs". You couple that with the naturally low success rate of entrepreneurs and your bound to get the nonsense we see now. Can't put the cart before the horse unless fate provides you a windfall.

Here's the worst case scenario of this - I had a wonderful gal I was teaching basic cashflow investing to. She's a well paid software programmer who left a near 6 figure job to become a full time bird dogger because someone told her she should be a full time investor and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working out. I explained to her that she didn't escape the rat race. She went from an excellent job to being self-employed....or rather glamourously unemployed. She escaped the software programming rat race for the self employed real estate rat race....and she didn't even like bird dogging! She preferred programming! But she listened to somebody who told her to be a "full time investor" and drank the Kool Aid. I then explained to her that she could be both an employee and an investor and grow her passive income - and truly exit the rat race on truly passive income that exceeded her expenses. The look in her eyes when she realized that her job wasn't necessarily a bad thing that she should be ashamed for having was priceless. Did I sell a bird dogging educational course? No. Did I sell anything - yeah, $100 of training (but I paid for lunch and gas so it came out to $60...lol). Did I do the right thing? Absolutely.

Remember what Rich Dad taugh Robert Kiyosaki - make your money in business; hold your money in real estate. I doesn't matter if you make your money bird dogging, making toothpicks, contracting, or selling Prepaid Legal. These are all entrepreneurial pursuits - make money there. Invest (hold) your money in real estate investing. True real estate investing is investing earned capital for a return - buying cashflowing property, holding private notes (not brokering them), whatever it is you do.

Adam,
I don't know of any free ones. Skip all the service magic crap and go right to the industry standard for commercial project bidding - Dodge Reports. www.fwdodge.com You will pay for the service but it's relatively small to the information you receive and if you're serious about commercial bidding - it is the resource for commercial bids.

Another tip is to go to the websites of colleges and municipal services and look for their call for bids on projects. They will post them on their sites.

Tim

Dotty,
You have to take care of yourself - especially in the political environment in the state of Illinois. Assigning contracts (aka wholesaling) is more clear cut to me legally, it is what I do when I do anything approaching bird dogging and it "feels" better to me. Think about it. If you aren't confident enough in a deal to put it under contract - do you really think you should be bird dogging it? Now I go further, get private financing and rehab the properties.

"Now I've never seen any birddog prosecuted for passing leads to someone else, and I personally work with birddogs all the time." Actually, one person that I know of was. Can't remember the case and can't remember the state but it did happen. I'm sure someone will google it. As an fyi, in private discussions with select REIA leaders in Illinois I have learned that the state regulators advised them that REIAs had better start self-governing the information that they disseminate on "investing strategies", or the state will step in and do so for them.

Tim

Alright since someone gave a negative of one movie, I have to give a huge positive for Rambo. Very, very awesome action film. It will be hard for some though as you must be able to handle scenes of extreme gore and the harshest scenes of inhumanity I've ever seen in a film. Then, naturally, Rambo dishes out violent retribution to the bad guys in a very severe way. It was awesome.

I have to admit that prior to this film, the only thing I'd heard on human rights abuses in Burma was a recent protest by buddhist monks during which the military beat and killed some of the monks. I did a google search after watching the film and apparently BBC journalists have been smuggling out information on a genocide there for some time, but it's been widely unreported as yet.

Tim

I tied up one property using an unsigned letter of intent to purchase the property as the earnest. I'm not kidding - the seller wrote that into the contract as acceptable earnest. You'd never believe the power of confident asking.

"Lastly, I am the cofounder of a website called REI Events, which is real estate investment on-line calendar and scheduling tool."

Lastly? That brilliant piece of work is the next Youtube...lol

Good to see you here Matt. As far as the name - just ask the 3rd silent partner what he thinks.

Here's the best part of Cloverfield :wink: :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RllSZW_YLk8

Ben,
Just out of curiousity - why look so far away? I'm seeing sfr's in lakeland, fl listed at 25-45k. That's not far from where you are now. What are rents there? Would these cashflow?

I have a friend who bought a French Chateau for 5 million that's worth 12 million. She isn't paying a mortgage. Your screen name is the terms she acquired the property under. ;-) When you can pay cash - alot of properties positively cash flow easier...

Reminds me of a TV episode of Just Shoot Me where two executives bought a racehorse called "Tax Dodge".