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Housing Bubble: Fact or Fiction?

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The housing bubble has been inflated because of the media… PERIOD!

Think about it. People watch the nightly news or pick up a copy of their local newspaper and it’s “doom and gloom” everywhere you turn!

But do you remember back a few years ago when it was “the hottest real estate market” in history? The truth of the matter is that the “housing bubble” that everyone was panicking over is more hype than it ever was reality!

If you actually take just a few moments to do a little research and come to your own conclusions, you’ll see that the media is defining our market not necessarily the facts.

Sure… no one would disagree that the housing market has slowed across much of the country and that some areas are harder hit than others. Of course, if you’re in one of the areas that was hardest hit, you still may very well be feeling the pinch. Continue reading →

Finding Buyers

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“Do NOT Make Your Buyers Feel Like Hairy Monkeys!”
by R. Preston Ely

Times they are a changin’.

Whereas in 2005 finding a buyer for your wholesale deal was as easy as Alyssa Milano in Poison Ivy II, we are now faced with a much more challenging predicament. I have personally coined this annoying situation as “Reality.”

“Reality” sucks. We all know this. Normally I can effortlessly bend it to my will, but it’s actually putting up a pretty good fight this time. You see, what I want it to do is put things back the way they were a couple years ago. A couple years ago, if I so much as sneezed I would have rehabbers (buyers) lined up around the block thinking that was a secret signal that “the deal was in,” or something. Here’s a typical scenario from “back in the day” (which was a Wednesday by the way):

Rehabber #1: He sneezed. It’s on!

Rehabber #2: Oh hellz yeah. It probably has at least $9,000 of equity in it just like the last one. I’m paying cash.

Rehabber #37: You guys are idiots. He has a cold. It doesn’t mean anything (as he secretly shimmeys his way closer to me while butting everyone else in line).

Rehabber #1: How do you have that much cash?

Rehabber#2: I refinanced my house and pulled the equity out.

Duh. Where does anyone get money from these days? Idiot. I bought my house in 1999 for $125,000,and it just appraised for $750,000. I did a 125% LTV cash out re-fi with negative amortization at .0027% APR so my payment is only $1.75 a month. They wrote me a check for over $600,000. Cool huh? Have you seen my new boat?
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Hard Money Loans: How to Get the Best Rates

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Whether you’re a seasoned real estate investor or brand new to investing, you will – at some point in your career – need to turn to hard money!

Many people turned away from hard money except on the REALLY UGLY properties for much of the early 2000s or if they had pretty beat up credit. This was because conventional lenders were giving money away for all intents and purposes! Virtually anyone ““ first time home buyer to seasoned investor ““ could get 100% financing on their properties and it didn’t seem to matter how many properties one had!

Well”… welcome to the new market: The “conventional” lenders (like Chase, Indymac, Countrywide, etc.) have tightened their reins, and for good reason!

Before we go into how to get hard money, let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of hard money versus conventional financing! Continue reading →

Embedded Commands

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by Bill Twyford

The key to success is knowing how to communicate with others. Whether you are a real estate investor, work at a fast food restaurant, or are a doctor, without good communication skills people won’t like you. Have you ever met someone and didn’t like them, but didn’t know why you didn’t like them? They just “rubbed you the wrong way.” Subconsciously you did not like their communication skills. My goal is to teach you to master your communication skills so that you can have others eating out of the palm of your hand.

Sounds good, where do I begin? Embedded commands. What the heck are embedded commands? Embedded commands are patterns of language that bypass conscious reasoning and speak directly to the subconscious mind. Embedded commands influence people at the subconscious level. This allows you to direct people to take specific actions.

Our subconscious mind is in a constant search for patterns. Using one embedded command at a time is not a pattern. You have to basically, bombard your customer with command after command to get what you want. Our conversations have become so routine that our mind has virtually fallen asleep. Our subconscious mind runs on auto-pilot. Continue reading →

5 Steps to Successful Real Estate Marketing

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There are essentially 5 steps to being successful in real estate marketing. Before we go into the 5 steps of real estate marketing, I want to encourage you to become a student of marketing. The moment that you are able to find your own deals – on demand – the more money you will make! It’s a direct correlation. When I started out in real estate, I didn’t understand how to “really” market for deals. I was depending upon real estate agents, local real estate investing groups, etc. I did a lot of deals, but I realized I wasn’t making the kind of money I knew I could in estate.

Follow these five steps to successful real estate marketing and you’ll be on your way to filling your own funnel full of five-figure deals.

  1. Define Your Target Market:
    You must be focused… If you run in too many directions, focusing on too many real estate markets, you’ll always be skipping around, never getting ahead. You need to learn overcome objections; you need to know how to handle the different situations that arise. Once you master one market, then you can duplicate your system across market after market. For instance, you may choose to start working with foreclosures or out of state owners. Once you get the real estate marketing system in place for one, add the other. Then, you can simply duplicate it over and over again!The single most important thing to remember is that you MUST target motivated sellers…. PERIOD. Continue reading →

Foreclosure Help – Are Lenders Stepping Up?

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The real estate industry, or more appropriately, the mortgage industry is facing daily changes. As you probably know by now if you’ve read the newspaper or watched television in the last three months, the sub-prime mortgage market has made some huge changes… Second mortgages are quickly going by the wayside in exchange for loans with mortgage insurance, which is now tax deductible*.

If you do the math, even with PMI, loans often end up costing the borrower less than the hybrid loans of recent years.

But… the changes affect the new loans, not the existing mortgages with which sellers are facing foreclosure in record numbers. And this is the major reason the real estate market has flat-lined, depreciated, or ____________ (fill in the blank with your market). Let’s face it… homeowners got bad loans and the mortgage industry was getting wealthy. So, let’s not feel too bad for the lenders :-). They not only did it to themselves, but to homeowners and investors. Have you ever heard the saying, “Pigs get fat… hogs get slaughtered… Continue reading →

Getting Started in Real Estate: Finding Focus

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 Before we get into the nuts and bolts of your real estate investing business, it’s important to start with some basic goal setting! Yes, I know that it’s no fun but it will help with your mindset and will get you focused on the right track.

Let me guess, you’ve read a book, bought a home study course (or 2, or 3 or even more!), or just got back from a 3 day “bootcamp”. Your mind is spinning with ideas and you want to do everything and you want to do it right away. I can relate. I left my first training years ago and wanted to:

I got home and tried to do all of these things all at once. I sent letters to people in foreclosure. I bought a subscription to a data service to market to private mortgage holders. I drove through neighborhoods looking for abandoned homes. I worked morning, noon and night and ran from house to house chasing anything and everything. I desperately wanted this to work and I desperately needed a real estate deal ASAP! Continue reading →

Real Estate Investing Tips: 5 Key Components

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Real Estate Investing is simple, but not necessarily easy!

This past weekend, I attended one of the biggest Internet Marketing seminars in the world. I could go on and on and on with ideas that I had that apply to real estate… like how to use video on your real estate sites, processes that can streamline the lead generation, and on and on and on… (I’ll be sharing some of these new ideas with you over the next few weeks)

But, I want to share with you a conversation that I had with a friend, mentor and a brilliant marketer who happened to be teaching how to use audio and video on your websites… I told him that I recommended his program to several people because he makes it SO easy… Then, he said something interesting to me that made me think.

He said, “Heather… it really is simple. You see, people can complicate anything! It’s like telling someone how to drive a car. It’s not complicated at all. Just open the door. Sit down. Turn the car on and put it into drive. But, people always make things harder than they need to be… They start asking thinks like ‘which door should I open – the left or the right?’ or ‘Do I unlock it with a key or click the button’ and on and on we go. Twenty minutes later, we’ve still not even been able to get into the car.

I liked that analogy because it applies to real estate. There are really 5 things you need to know – or steps – when it comes to real estate.

Here are the 5 Real Estate Investing Tips you need to know! Continue reading →

No Money Down Real Estate – Apartment Investing

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There are a lot of late night TV infomercials out there saying you can buy real estate using none of your own money or “other people’s money” but what they don’t tell you is that its up to you to go out and find someone who has money and convince them to lend their money to you… and if you don’t have any experience investing in commercial real estate, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to find someone willing to lend you their money for you to learn.

95% of Real Estate investors fail because they aren’t able to get enough private lenders. Most new investors are never even able to get their first private lender. Continue reading →