Hi Derick, do you have any areas of specialization or particular interest?

It is the best way to create your own economy.There are two Special Forces brothers( active in Afganistan) who will be at Lonnie Scruggs Ultimate Mobile Home Bootcamp in Norfolk the end of October.We invite active military people to come to seminars as our guests for free.

Greg it will depend on the portfolio of the bank and how many performing versus non - performing assets on the books.The bank might not want to refi that type of product with too much of that type of asset class non-performing on the books already.They might have too much defaulted commercial all together.For value add plays typically occupancy is an issue.The lenders will want certain occupancy levels obtained for at least 3 months depending on loan type and typically stabilized for 6 months to a year or longer.If you buy an apartment building at say 50% occupancy using a hard money lender or private money and the going vacancy rate is an average of 10% then the lender wants 90% occupancy averaged out over time.When you refi you will only be able to go up to a certain percentage to cash out or can just convert with no cash out to the lower interest rate.Regular banks do not lend usually on sub par occupancy levels for the area.They see it as too risky and the say 60% occupancy can quickly go to 30 or 40% and they have a foreclosure or short sale on their hands taking a loss,plus inspection reports,attorney fees,appraisal and environmental review etc.

I assume so.I'm looking at a contractor who specializes in doing turns for a flat rate.

Whether the wording is enforceable or not, most bank will not honor a conditional endorsement and you need to have a special arrangement where you verify the endorsement before the item is paid.I believe Beneficial finance or maybe Houselhold used this idea at one time (maybe mid 1990's) where they sent out $5,000-$10,000 checks and people that cashed them had an instant second mortgage, maybe it was unsecured, but the homeowners believed it was secured by their Real property.

Depending on your tax situation it looks like you could be doing even better....specially if you did less all cash in deals and leveraged some with mortgages.

For less than a cup of Starbucks, a user can get the privileges to post ads for deals, buyer's lists, loans they are offering or seeking, or can advertise their company, product, or service.

You also need to take into account if your competition is waving the security deposit for qualified applicants,charging a pet fee or not,paying for any water,sewer,trash for the tenant included in the rent,including appliances,or giving a rent credit on move in, and many other factors.Rent rates can look good until you see how many landlords you are competing with,quality of the product,and incentives given driving down the net rent before debt service and depreciation.

I always wanted to know what a guru's product looks like and have sometimes been tempted to order his stuff.

Our fund doesn't buy self-storage so I don't know what the financing market for that product type looks like right now.