All Forum Posts by: William Boudle

Is there any legal recourse to get access to escrow accounts and mortgage? Additionally what are some issues that arise regarding occupancy. 

My wife and I own rental property in NH and had begun getting divorced a few months ago with an interstate battle. She moved back to NH while I was in Florida. 

During this time she took all the escrow money and changed the password to the mortgage company. I asked to return the money but the request was denied. 

Fast forward to now, Florida waived jurisdiction and 

A business with somewhat low entry capital is mold remediation and testing. In Florida I imagine you have a good bit of that.  The work sucks, but the pay is pretty great. 

Added bonus, you can find homes that have mold issues and do the remediation on your own. (This can save you big bucks, and mold homes are harder to sell, i.e easier for investors to buy.)

http://www.moldcareer.com/mold-training-certifications.php

I understand in obvious situations, like a duplex is a two family. In my particular situation, it effects our financing opportunities. The bank will not lend on more than a 2 family, and our terms change if it is a single family. 

More than a few we are looking at could "qualify" different ways under different circumstances. 

Is a 3 unit with 2 street numbers (but one is A & B making 3 units), and one unit unfinished, able to be considered a 2 family? It clearly was at one point.

Or how about a lot with two houses but one street address, and one needs to be finished to be rentable, but is being marketed as a multi-family? 

Is there anything that can be done to help sway these decisions either way?

I just want to follow up with my meeting for those of you who answered. 

This was not a meeting for me to get something out of it, other than his time and advice and an open door for future correspondence.  I.e building that circle of trust, so the option for private money is available later, without asking for it now, for now I will use hard money. 

We had coffee and he gave me two hours of his time and some great advice, though not necessarily what I wanted to hear! I laid out my elevator pitch and was honest about my current and future plans. 

He thinks I should scrap my "dream plan" and go for the opportunities I have right in front of me. Bird in the hand, forest for the trees, move the target closer, that kind of stuff, lol. Basically, like Robert Kiyosaki, he said it boils down to cash flow and laid out how I should increase cash flow sooner vs later. 

His advice was sound and honest, but sometimes it takes an unbiased third party to point out the obvious. Especially when there is emotion involved.

But best of all, he reached out afterwards to ask how the discussion went with my wife, and told me to keep him informed of how my discussion goes with my father (who's business he suggested I talk about taking over). 

So did I open the door to further discussions and begin developing a relationship? Yes, so I'd call it a win.

Thanks guys for your help. 

PS knowing I can ramble sometimes, I watched this Lynda.com video on elevator pitches and it helped boil mine down to 20 seconds or so. Hope it helps someone else.

http://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Giving-Your-Elevator-Pitch/157139-2.html

Thanks guys!

@Account Closed I really like the what would you do if you were starting over at my age (I like to think I'm young!) 

 You've hit the nail on the head. I'm just trying to establish a relationship. For some reason that seems harder to me than a sales pitch would. For a sales pitch I could provide numbers, charts, sales sheets etc.  But what I really what to convey is, "I would like the financial independence your life provides you and is there any guidance, beyond the cliche, that you could provide to help steer me down that path?"

I am having coffee with a wealthy man who I know at least dabbles in REI as one source of income and was a successful business owner before retirement.

The meeting is under the premise of "picking his brain" for information/advice regarding my plans, in lieu of my providing him web design & marketing services for his retirement business. He offered to pay, I said I'd rather talk with him.

Does anyone have advice on things to ask/say without sounding sales-y or directly asking for anything. My goal is to open up a dialog for the future, be it for private money, mentoring, or real estate referrals from wealthy friends. (His retirement business is one that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so he makes contact with lots of other wealthy people)

Would it be too presumptuous to bring our business plan etc? 

inbound marketing. hubspot has some great materials on it and free training that takes about 4 hours. They also have an awesome albeit pricey software suite to help with the task, but it's the blog, landing pages, email marketing all in one. Even all their free materials are great and will help though. 

What you're looking for are landing pages. Understanding about landing pages vs websites vs blogs will also prove helpful. Lead capture is typically done by landing pages from websites. here is BP doing it in action:  http://www.biggerpockets.com/pro

Note the clean page, lack of "clutter", the frequent buttons to sign up (calls to action)

A good way to encourage this is with an ebook or whitepaper download. Example "How to get the best price for your home in the Woodbridge VA Area", "How to avoid foreclosure in VA" Free download, just enter your email. Then you tell them all the ways, with the most important one being "Sell your house to an investor.... like me" No hard sale, you're looking to solve peoples problems. The idea is people want your expertise in solving those problems, then they trust & pay you.

Instapage, pagewiz and unbounce are some other landing page sites that come to mind.

Let me know if you choose one and how successful it is for you. (I love marketing!)

There's some decent ones on codecanyon that are more bespoke systems than Wordpress. Some that I've played with that seem good are the Real Estate Agency Portal 

http://codecanyon.net/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&term=r...

For Wordpress, themeforest has some good ones, in particular I like WP Estate & WP residence. They are set up to pull from the MLS with a dsidxpress plugin subscription .

http://themeforest.net/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&term=...

Theres another MLS plugin here: http://www.ihomefinder.com/ and I've heard that they even integrated into Hubspot. (A great platform for inbound marketing.)

Hi Kara, welcome to BP officially!

Do you go to any of the REIA's? If not you should.

As I'm sure you've already discovered, there's so much info on BP. Be sure to set New Hampshire as a keyword so you can see when people post about it. That's how I was alerted to your post.

Next Wednesday evening, there's an REIA meeting in Manchester.

http://www.nhreia.com/ClubPortal/ClubStatic.cfm?cl...

If you attend, come on over and say hi!

Also, I just read the book on Flipping Houses by J.Scott, (you can buy it on BP). If that's part of your plan, those books lay it all out in a nice concise package, and it's an easy read. 

If wholesaling is your thing, there is a podcast on it tonight. Just be sure if you find any good wholesale deals, you call me ;)

Hi Josh, welcome to BiggerPockets.  There are a couple good meetups in Southern NH. 

My wife and I similarly bought a duplex and lived in one half a few years now and are ready to being phase 2. :)

Listen to the podcasts if you haven't already. They're great.

Check out the NHREI meeting next Wednesday.

http://www.nhreia.com/clubportal/Calendar.cfm?club...

Also a great group of people network at a meeting recently started by @Gal Peretz in Nashua. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1027138307313023/?...

Are you looking only for Buy & Hold or SFR flips as well?