Archives for: October 2008
Time To Buy?
October 31st, 2008Despite conventional wisdom about when investors should buy, most investors are running spooked from our current market. With stocks at fire sale prices and falling house prices in most markets, you may be wondering, should I hold tight and not take any risks in this uncertain market, or should I jump in and "buy low"?
The good news is that if you choose to employ a long term strategy with real estate investing, then any market can be good for buying. It's impossible to know when a market will bottom out, and how far it will ultimately drop. But, if you use net operating income as your primary criteria for buying, then a house that will support itself supports itself, regardless of whether the price goes down in the months after your purchase.
A net operating income analysis ensures
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Raising Private Money For Real Estate Investing
October 30th, 2008If you've been watching the news lately you might have heard some of the breaking headlines about our current real estate and finance markets. Actually, it's kind of hard to miss. I know, because I don't usually watch the news and I am having a hard time avoiding all the gloom and doom. So, what does it mean to us as real estate investors now that money is tightening up for both our buyers and us as investors to buy houses?
Well, it opens up an amazing opportunity for those that are willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work raising private money.
Private money, unlike institutional money, is
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$9K Discount + $274 Positive Cash Flow with 10% Down on Pueblo Handyman Special
October 30th, 2008We have analyzed this deal to see how this particular single family home in Pueblo would be as a rental property. Read the article Income, Depreciation, Equity Build Up, Appreciation and Leverage in Deal Analysis for an overview of how I do the deal analysis below.
Where is this property?
It is located in Pueblo, CO. The property address is kept private to preserve the deals for our members. To work with our preferred investor friendly real estate agent/broker for this deal, contact us about Deal #3526 and they can give you the full details about this property and help you in purchasing it. This particular property was submitted to the Pueblo Real Estate Resources Website featuring real estate investor articles and local deals.
Run your own analysis on this particular property. Use our new, FREE Offer Generator real estate investor tool to change our assumptions and use your own.
How did we find this property?
We found this property from one of our real estate investor friendly agents/brokers or one of the real estate investor wholesalers we know in the Pueblo area.
Learn to find motivated sellers using marketing in Buying Houses with Oversize Post Cards. This CD is included as part of the 68 CD Ultimate Real Estate Investor Package that you get when you purchase any house we promote on the website through our recommended real estate agent or broker. To work with our preferred investor friendly real estate agent/broker for this deal, contact us about real estate Deal #3526 and they can give you the full details about this property and help you in purchasing it.
Property Details
- Bedrooms: 3
- Baths: 1.00
- Square Footage: 960 (see square footage estimates for info)
- All information is deemed reliable, but is pulled from tax records, real estate agent, zillow or the seller.
Income
- Gross Rent: $625/month (see Rent Estimates for more info)
- 4.00% Vacancy Adjustment: $25/month (see Vacancy Estimates for more info)
- Net Rent: $600/month
- NOTE: These numbers are for traditional rental income and NOT a rent-to-own. Rent-to-own analysis follows below.
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Setting Goals and Working Backward To Achieve Them
October 29th, 2008While most people associate goal setting with New Year's, I am going to share with you some tools for converting the goals that you set into metrics that you can measure and work toward achieving daily in your real estate investing business.
I realize that the chances of your goals exactly matching the example I am going to be using is small at best, but it is my hope that the concept of how to calculate out your own numbers will be clear enough so that you will actually do it.
So, in this example, I am going to assume that you want to purchase $600,000 worth of real estate in one year and that the median home price in your market is $150,000. If each house is $150,000 you can determine how many houses you need to purchase in the year to achieve your goal. In this case $600,000 divided by $150,000 per house means you need to buy 4 houses in a year.
4 houses in a year means that you need to purchase 1 house every 3 months. I calculated that by taking 12 months and dividing it by 4 houses.
That means that you need to find and close on one $150,000 house every 3 months... which is a very reasonable part-time real estate investor goal.
So, let's take a look at
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Is It A Deal? Getting The Info You Need To Decide
October 28th, 2008Working with tens of thousands of real estate investors, I get more than my fair share of e-mails giving me some very basic information about a property and asking me if it is a deal. The challenge I often have is that people do not give me nearly enough information to even comment on whether it is or is not a deal.
For example, let's look at the latest e-mail I received. The investor who e-mailed me said that he is looking at a package of townhouses that are bank owned. He tells me that the previous owner is being investigated for fraud. There are 5-10 of these townhouses in the package and they are asking $45,000 each for them, but they are short sales. They are currently rented for $700 each. The investor asks:
should I pursue these? The investor has not shared anything more about the deal with me including the area of the country, what other similar properties are selling for, or anything about their ability to get financing or buy them for cash.
First of all, I don't know anything about
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Using a Tenant's Move-in Walk-through as a Preventative Maintenance Opportunity
October 27th, 2008If you take the time to do an in person walk through with your new tenants when they move into one of your houses, you can get some additional mileage out of this time by giving your tenants some basic instructions on taking care of the property. Included in your lease should be a list of tenant responsibilities. In our leases, this always includes the task of changing the furnace/air filter monthly. However, many tenants have a hard time doing this which ends up costing us in service, cleaning and repairs.
While you cannot be there every month with your tenant to ensure compliance with this provision in their lease, you can
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Free Mentoring CD Download on Real Estate Investing Deal Analysis
October 27th, 2008I just finished uploading the free real estate course download this week for people that start and finish a Learn To Be Rich™ game this week.
This week's free real estate investing course download is Volume #3 of our Real Estate Mentoring Calls series where I discuss Deal Analysis Basics.
Just start and complete a game between October 27, 2008 and November 2, 2008 to download this course for free.
Or, if you prefer to just pay for the course, you can use the add to cart button below to order it on audio CD.
Until my next post,
James
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Landlord Basics: Pooch or No Pooch?
October 24th, 2008If you are just getting into the long-term real estate investing business, you will need to decide if you want to allow your tenants to keep pets. You may decide on a blanket policy – like no pets, no exceptions – or you may opt to allow only certain types of pets.
Personally, I don't allow pets. It only takes a few dog or cat accidents for a carpet to be ruined, and oftentimes the floor beneath it. Dogs and cats can also chew and claw doors and woodwork and can destroy landscaping. This can get very expensive. Aside from the repair issues, there may be liability issues as well. You would need to check your local laws, but a landlord could be held financially responsible if a tenant's dog bites someone in certain situations.
However, there are arguments for allowing pets in your properties.
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