2010 July

Archive for July, 2010

Where did the money actually go?

July 31st, 2010 |

Author: joe

Thanks. In California we use real estate agents not attorneys. I ALREADY closed and have the HUD statement. It only shows my buyer costs as the 200,000 + the 16,000 as shown in the original CONTRACT. The question comes up that I am not being provided the details on how the 200,000 was divided up. I know that the 2 loans are less than 200,000. I’ve factored in all of the commissions and an estimate of closing but still fall short. I thought someone here could provide insight to me on where that money went.

Posted in Index |

No Comments »

What documents are needed on an appointment?

July 31st, 2010 |

Author: joe

EJ, I had two brief cases, one for buying one for selling. They had all the docs I needed for either purpose. I also had a small supply of cards and docs in a box in the car, just in case I spilled my coffee.

I don’t remeber anyone ever asking me if I owned my home, many asked where I lived and I told them the neighborhood.

I can’t think far enough back to remeber what my first seller asked me. People do ask basically how successful your are at what you are doing, maybe in not so many words. To avoid this in the early years, your opening presentation should be made with specific descriptions of what the process is. By saying this is what WE do, we do this and we do that, etc. implies others might be helping or assisting you, and there are others. You might explain who your team members are. Explain that your deals close at American Title and that CIndy takes care of all the closing documents. Having had a convesration with CIndy first might clue her in to your presentation so if they call, she won’t say "who?" This is a third party influence for you, people know or should relize that if others who are knowledgable in RE are working with you, that’s a credit to you.

If you go through your presentation smoothly and act with confidence, taking command of the situation, you will will see that you are knowledgable, calm, in control, having the aswers and they will then have confidendce in you. They may never ask how many deals you have done. If they do, say this is my first one in this area with the team I work with and they all have years of experience in this business…etc. This is basically what I was saying about your contract question EJ. You will gain alot of confidence as you practice.

One other tip, something they do in realtor classes, sit down with a friend and role play doing your deal and actually fill out a contract in front of them explaining the contract and the entire deal. Ask them to sign when you hand the pen to them and point where with the other hand. Little things matter. Do that ten times, in parts, so you get it down without messing up. You will gain confidence as you go along, I guarantee it! It may sound corney, but it works.

Another point. No matter what startegy I use or what type of loan I was doing, I always used the SMAE basic verbage, deal after deal. I also made comments and answered questions, but when I go over dislousres and the crust of the deal, the 100th guy hears exactly the same thing the 10th guy heard and the 1,000th guy. If anything at all pops up and they say I said, I can immediately go over exactly what I said on the spot! When a judge hears me saying what I said, he is fully aware of what is going on, he believes that what I am saying is what I said because he can tell it in the manner of my speech. Be consistent!

It takes practice! Good luck, Bill

Related Blogs

Posted in Index |

No Comments »

WTF!!! I wish I was illegal

July 31st, 2010 |

Author: joe

Originally posted by Vikram C.

Bryan, your idea of "fair and balanced" is bizarre. The very first sentence in the wikipedia link that you gave refers to the CIS as an organization that advocates immigration reduction.

Read the article in full and tell me whether or not you think it is one-sided. Let’s chat more then

Posted in Index |

No Comments »

Simplify Your Craigslist Marketing With SearchTempest

July 30th, 2010 |

Author: joe

I’ve used Craigslist off and on for the past year to find buyers for properties, build a cash buyer’s list in my local area, and find motivated sellers to make offers to. The reason why I say “off and on” is because I could never find my groove and work Craigslist consistently. Mostly because I thought it was a drag to scour through all of the ads. In the past I’ve seen some tools that are supposed to make it easy to find the types of Craigslist ads you’re looking for and send follow up emails with a click of a button. I’ve never used any of those, but I recently learned of a free tool that has made working with Craigslist much more bearable. Whether you outsource this work (I do!) or do it yourself, SearchTempest is definitely worth a look.

SearchTempest.com makes your searches easy…you can:

search multiple cities at once
search by distance from a specific city or zip code
save your favorite searches

I suspect there’s more to the tool that I am yet to discover, but those perks right there are enough for me.

A little over a week ago, fellow BiggerPockets blogger Jason Hanson suggested a Craigslist marketing strategy that involved contacting absentee owners/landlords about doing lease options. He even put out a 30 day challenge encouraging people to give it a shot which was a great idea! Maybe lease options aren’t your thing, but SearchTempest can you help you with a number of other real estate investing strategies such as virtual wholesaling because you can find motivated sellers in numerous target markets with a simple click of the mouse.

One of the things you’ll want to do when using SearchTempest is take advantage of negative keywords (in fact, you can use negative keywords on Craigslist as well so this isn’t unique to SearchTempest). For example, let’s say you’re looking for deals in the Arlington area of Jacksonville, Florida but you don’t like to deal with condominiums or townhouses.

What you’re going to do is type in “Arlington -condo – townhouse – townhome” in the “What” field and of course complete the other criteria such as minimum and maximum price and bedrooms. The negative keywords are super helpful because you’ll remove a ton of ads that you don’t want to waste your time looking through.

I hope this small tip is helpful to you for your Craigslist marketing efforts! If you make it a regular habit to do your favorite searches via a tool like SearchTempest you should definitely get some solid leads and deals!

Simplify Your Craigslist Marketing With SearchTempest

Hi everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but it’s god to be back! I just had a quick question. I am a software developer looking for a good marketing person to team up with to work on some cool web/mobile/voip apps targeting investors. I got the tech skills to create the products, but I need someone better than I am to package it up and push it through the right channels.

So I ask, what forum should I post in searching for such a person?

Thanks,

Josh

Posted in Index |

No Comments »

My First Deal!

July 30th, 2010 |

Author: joe

Great to hear about someone’s first investment. Getting past the first one helps in opening one’s eyes to what it takes and what the possibilities are.

Sounds like you have also found a job that can provide further education and opportunities to buy as well.

Related Blogs

Posted in Index |

No Comments »