Financial Freedom One House At A Time
I had an opportunity this week to evaluate some qualities one needs in order to be successful as a full-time investor or real estate professional. It started Monday morning as I was heading to the office for our weekly staff meeting. The project at forefront of my mind was completion of the rehab on a flip that was about to sell. We were running behind on it and…
I did something a little gutsy this week. I decided to do a Facebook live video were I walked the viewers through a house we had just gotten back from some vacating tenants. What made this move gutsy was the fact that I had no idea what the condition of the property would be. I just turned the camera on, unlocked the door and began filming. The house was…
Investing isn’t restricted to buying a stock or a piece of real estate. It’s more than that. Investing is a thought process where you use money and knowledge strategically to create more money. This was perplexing for me, at first. I grew up believing that you were a slave to the dollar and money was something that ruled over you. But one of my teachers, named…
So, you’ve been telling everyone that you buy houses, and you’ve finally found someone who needs to sell their property quickly. After you inspect the house, you realize it needs work. But there could be a good profit if you fix it up and sell it. You get the seller to the kitchen table and structure the deal of the century. The seller accepts, and you close the deal….
I was having lunch with a good friend and investor named Emmett, recently. We talked about the current market and strategies we’re implementing, and we discussed what we see our other investor friends doing. One of those friends hasn’t done many deals lately because she got her start when the market was at the bottom. Now that the market is moving so much, she is afraid it will…
I had two recent experiences that were the epitome of poor customer service. One was at a recent closing where the real estate professionals were bantering back and forth so loudly that the attorney and the buyer (the actual customer who is paying everyone’s salary at the table) couldn’t hear each other. The second was at a big box store where I had a less-than-enjoyable time picking up some…
The phrase, “One size fits all,” is something that should never be applied to your contracts. It’s very important that your documents fit the individual deal you’re working on. If you get on the internet and get a generic contract, it may have verbiage in it that’s not compatible with the laws in your state. You don’t want that. Each time you write a contract, the situation…
The other day, Ashley and I were shopping for appliances for a flip. Normally it’s not a big deal. We use the same stove, dishwasher and vent hood on almost every house. But this time, it was after Black Friday, and everything was on sale. We pointed out some different appliances we liked to the salesperson. But on each one, they tried to up-sell us. And each up-sell added…
On a recent workday, I walked out of the door of a house we’d purchased the previous week and got into my truck. To quote Peg from the PBS show my kids watch, “Peg + Cat,” “I’m free-e-king out!” When I arrived at the house, we found it was still completely full – as in, the seller hadn’t moved yet. You see, they’d had until the day…
This morning I watched a video presentation by world-renowned motivator and educator Brian Tracy. He spoke of a study performed by the Harvard Business Review that included interviews of Fortune 500 CEOs. One of the questions asked was, “What was your biggest failure and how did you react to it?” This question stumped the CEOs. They would often look perplexed and ask what the interviewer meant by…