Dealing in benefits I was out door knocking recently, and I came across a seller in a precarious position. You see, she was thousands of dollars behind on her mortgage, she was older and the house was too much for her to take care of. Oh, and she was two and half weeks away from being foreclosed on. When I first knocked on her door, she admitted she…
King me The other day, I was having some alone time with my 8-year-old, and he wanted to play a game of checkers. As we got the game out, which was one of those nice wooden ones, I noticed that we didn’t have all of the wood playing pieces. My son looked at me sheepishly and confessed that he had lost some of them. But he told me…
One-sided This week I got a call from an agent to go look at a potential deal. It was a 5-bedroom/ 3-bath house with over 3,000 square feet located in a very desirable area priced at only $100,000. When you see deals like that, you stop what you are doing and get to the house as soon as humanly possible. It wasn’t hard to spot which house I…
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should I was talking to an investor friend, recently, who was facing a conundrum. You see, he had become very specialized in one area of real estate. And the strategy he’d been using to buy on auction platforms, do minimum rehabs and resell was no longer working. Referencing the book by Spencer Johnson M.D., my friend said, “My cheese moved.” …
Transactional versus relationship-based deals Real estate deals can be lumped into two basic categories. They are known as transaction-based and relationship-based. Transaction-based deals are the ones where you really don’t meet anyone in person. You buy these properties in places like auction sites, the MLS and foreclosure auctions. This deal type is attractive because, for the most part, you can buy them from the comfort of your home…
Did we buy an alligator? Real estate investors are known for being risk takers. As a matter of fact, most of the time the reason an investor gets into trouble is because they estimated too high on what a property would sale for once they fixed it up. The outcome for this speculation is that the investor gets too thin with their numbers and overpays for the property….
Make sure they understand People tend to naturally say “No” to things they aren’t familiar with. This is a reality real estate investor must overcome in order to get a “yes” on a creative deal structures when talking to sellers. You do that by making sure they understand what you’re proposing. Take owner carry-back financing for instance. Most people are accustomed to the idea of making payments, especially…
Site unseen We’ve been getting calls lately where sellers want us to make offers on their houses sight unseen. (Yes I know I misspelled the title. You’ll understand why shortly.) We always tell them we can’t do that because it’s like buying a truck without popping the hood or taking it for a test drive. You really can’t tell much just from looking at the outside. Ashley and…
Man on a wire Real estate investing is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the faltering soul. To be successful at it, you have to be willing to ride the roller coaster while pushing forward. Take what happened to us last week for instance. As I was leaving my house after lunch on Monday, I get a call from one of the pre-foreclosure…
Empathy versus sympathy Empathy and sympathy are two very similar words that have related meanings. They both have to do with understanding someone else’s feelings. That being said, you have to focus on one versus the other when it comes to making offers. The late, great, Zig Ziglar has a story he uses to illustrate the difference between the two concepts. He talks about when he sold Saladmaster…