Financial Freedom One House At A Time
Do outbuildings go with a property? We had something happen for the first time this month that had to do with an outbuilding located at a property we had recently purchased. It was a great learning lesson, and I’d like to share it with you. The sellers of this house where in distress. They had been relocated for work and had listed their house, but they hadn’t sold it…
Lease option vs. lease purchase I got a call from an investor recently needing some help with structuring a deal. He was in the process of buying a property and wanted to do “one of those lease option, lease purchase things” as his exit strategy. As we talked, I realized just how easy it is to get those two terms confused and how freely people use them synonymously….
The money is in the meter drop How would you like to make $10,000? Now, before you blurt out an answer, I’d like for you to consider a story that my good friend and mentor Gary Harper tells about a cabby he encountered. The title of his story is “The money is in the meter drop.” And it goes like this: Gary was in the big…
Pistols and pit bulls Ashley and I were presenting at a Real Estate Investor Association (REIA) recently, where the topic was talking to sellers. During the presentation, we made mention that Ashley goes door knocking without me. This led to the normal safety questions from the crowd, which almost always includes, “Aren’t you afraid someone is going to pull a gun on you?” That night, that question came from…
A reason why agents forget about investors Ashley and I saw something last month and again this month that we haven’t seen in a long time. While out door knocking on the pre-foreclosures, we saw realtor signs in front of some of the houses being foreclosed on. This happened a lot after the crash. Sellers would try to list their properties to get out from under a mortgage…
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…
A big fat jacket Last week, we made an analogy between how you protected yourself from the elements as a kid when you played in the snow and how you should use that same logic to protect your assets. Both should be done in layers. We talked about layers commonly used to protect financial assets — things like corporations and how the corporate shield is a great line…
Protection in layers One of things I remember about growing up in North Georgia was the excitement associated with the prediction of precipitation. Snow as a kid was just awesome! And the snow days I remember the most happened during the blizzard that hit us in 1993. It happened right around my birthday, and we got hit hard. There was so much snow that I could jump my…
They think differently than we do Ashley and I were out knocking the pre-foreclosure doors in Whitfield county yesterday. While we were there, we had an interesting experience that I would like to tell you about. The first couple of houses we went to were your normal $125-140k house in nice neighborhoods. I say “normal” because that’s the price range that the average person lives in in our…
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….