You are here: Home / Archives for Real Estate Investing Tips

How To Generate Leads Online

September 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Lead generation is the single most important factor in your real estate investment business.

You need motivated seller leads to acquire deals, as well as simultaneously building and nurturing your list of buyers.

Last week I found a cool little tool that will allow you to grab leads online with just a few clicks.  It’s super easy to use and think you’ll find this beneficial – check the video I made for you.

Here’s the link -

Link to The Super Cool Lead Generation Tool

Let me know how this works out for you -

Filed Under: Real Estate Investing Articles Tagged With: , ,

3 Quick Tips For Your Exit Strategy

June 15, 2010 By 3 Comments

When you’re just starting out investing in real estate – one of the most important things you want to know is your exit strategy.

How in the world do you plan to get out of the deal?

Sure it’s one heck of an adrenaline rush when you’re wrapping up a deal, day dreaming about the potential profit, the wind blowing in your hair while you cruise with the top down in your newly purchased ride or the delight you’ll get by giving your boss the middle finger because now you’re a real estate investor…

Hold on just a second – you’re only half way there.

Knowing how to get out of the deal is more important than any other thing you’ll learn as a real estate investor.

It’s easy to get into deal – especially nowadays – people are begging for options.

So, I want to give you 3 quick tips for nailing down your exit strategy so you’re not left holding the bag…

Exit Strategy Quick Tip # 1 – A Bird In The Hand Is Better Than Two In The Bush.

Have you heard this before?

It means if you’ve got a buyer today – take it.  It’s better than waiting on another buyer that will possibly bring you more money than the current buyer.

Wrap the deal up and move on to the next one.  There’s no shortage of deals, so turn your quick profit, and move on to the next deal.

Exit Strategy Quick Tip # 2: Target Your Marketing

Most everyone talks about marketing for motivated sellers, however you’ve got to have a separate marketing system in tact to attract buyers.   And remember the message must match the target market.  So, for example – let’s say you’ve got several wholesale deals lined up and all you need is buyers.  Appeal to the investor with your ad that says something like this:

Must Sell – Motivated Seller
3BR 2Ba, Brick Home In Your City
Appraised at $80K, Asking $45K.
Needs Work. Call XXX-XXXX

or you could say – Call our 24 Hour Property Hotline Toll Free at 1-800-XXX-XXXX

Investors are mainly looking at the numbers – so craft your ad to appeal to their greed.  By the way – what does every Real Estate Info Guru teach to look for when looking at House For Sale Ads?

The words – must sell, motivated seller, facing foreclosure.  You’ll get bombarded with buyers when using these words in your ads.

Exit Strategy Quick Tip # 3: Build A List.

The quicker you can start building a list of buyers, the more financially secure you’ll be.  For starters, I would recommend targeting investor buyers for several reasons -

1- they’re actively looking for houses.

2 – they can come up with the cash

3 – they don’t care what the deal looks like cosmetically.

Now – when I say build a list, I’m primarily referring to building your online email buyer’s list.

You’ll need your own real estate investor website which I show you how to build your own if your on a shoestring budget.  You can access those tutorials by clicking here.

Next, for $20 a month, you can get an aweber account to collect your prospects information so that you can send email newsletters, built in autoresponder messages, and continue to communicate with them with just a click of a mouse.

I recommend Aweber because it works.  After testing numerous autoresponder – email service providers, Aweber has the best deliverability hands down and you can test it with a 30 day trial for only $1 by clicking here.

Once you build your email list of highly targeted buyers – you’re well on your way to having the ability to sell houses in a matter of minutes.

Shoot me over your comments in the section below…

Filed Under: Real Estate Investing Tips Tagged With: , , ,

Getting Accurate Values and Why Agents Lie

June 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A few days ago, I sent you my top 5 resources for determining property value without leaving home.

And while these are important to save time – it should not be a substitute for knowing your market.

Getting away from the computer and getting real – accurate values and knowing exactly what’s happening.

You’ll be surprised that after a little bit of research and work from a couple of weekends- you’ll become familiar with your market, the current trends, and what to expect – and it will become second nature. It’s not hard – it’s just a matter of looking at the numbers.

You’ll learn more about your market by just getting out on a Sunday afternoon, taking a drive and looking at properties, pulling fliers from homes for sale, calling Realtors – just getting familiar with neighborhoods.

If we’re analyzing a deal we’ll want to look at the following:

* the comparable sales that have sold within the last 6 months (preferably 90 days)-
* current homes for sale in close proximity
* the square footage
* the age of the home
* the style (does it match other homes in the neighborhood)
* The Days on Market of the others for sale

I explain it in this new video along with why some Real Estate Agents Lie…

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V5rkbYZEY

Filed Under: Real Estate Investing Tips Tagged With: , , ,

Short Sale Real Estate Investing Tips

April 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Most of the real estate investing tips I share with you have come from personal experience from my own real estate investment activities.

I’ve never wanted to talk down or get on this “I’m better than you” guru kick.  The reason I started this real estate investing blog was to share what’s worked and what hasn’t which brings me to today’s topic of discussion.

Recently, I had a pre foreclosure deal that I had no clue if I could make it work, but the homeowner was on board begging me to do something to stop their foreclosure sale.

By the way – the sale was less than a week away.

I’m going to shoot you straight – I had no clue if I could do anything with the house because it was a little farther out than what I like.

I’m not a big fan of buying a house in the middle of nowhere.

You gotta have some traffic…

Anyway, they owed somewhere to the tune of $83K and the house in it’s current “as is” state was worth about $65K

I collected all the information to do a short sale, submitted the Loan Authorization to the bank and they immediately stop the sale.

Didn’t even send an offer letter, no proof of funds – just the stinking Letter of Authorization.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Banks don’t want to foreclose – they’re up to their eyeballs in REO’s and will bend over backwards in an attempt to make a deal work.

Anyway – here was my plan…

1. Get control of the house with an option or a contract.
2. Make no promises to the seller on what I could do.
3. List the house with a Real Estate Agent.
4. Get an enormous discount from the bank.
5. Get a buyer lined up while obtaining the discount.
6. Close on the purchase of the house
7. A few minutes later sell the house and walk away a big check.

Not a bad plan.

I know folks that are doing several deals every month from deals just like this.

My problem – I listed with the wrong Real Estate Agent.

In order for this deal to work – the agent has got to be completely on board or your wasting your time.   Stick with the Agents that are accustomed to dealing with investors and that don’t mind getting a little creative.

Wondering what happened?

Well, I de-listed the house after the agent kept calling me asking if what she was doing was illegal.

The Board of Realtors, the broker, and an attorney were all informed over my deal and gave clearance and said there was nothing wrong with the transaction.

However – it was just a little too much for her to grasp and she was never able to overcome the fear from doing something outside of the box.

I admit this was not your traditional deal but that’s what I deal with and that’s what I make money from.

(The Realtor is a great person, a real go getter and sells a ton of real estate.  I think the world of her and consider her a good friend – The deal just wasn’t a good fit)

Anyway, I de-listed the house and completely backed out of buying the deal because it seemed more trouble than it was worth since I was having to explain myself over and over again.

So, I didn’t make any money – but I did do something pretty cool.

Even though I backed out of buying the deal – I got the seller approved for a short sale somewhere to the tune of $51K and lined them up with a buyer and the last I heard it was set for closing.

So, the lesson here is simple – be sure to get a Real Estate Agent on your team that you can depend on and willing to do deals even if they’re outside the box.

And that they have the mindset to defend you.  (Sometimes when deals aren’t the traditional type deal – people will question you).  So be sure they have your best interest at heart.

And don’t be afraid to move on with the deal or with getting a new agent.

With this deal, I really didn’t want it to begin with, but still felt I could help.  After dealing with numerous phone calls and being woke up to someone questioning my ethics – I felt it was necessary to move on to the next deal, but I still wanted to help out the owner and that is why I did pretty much everything without compensation.

Keep in mind – Karma can be a good thing….

Filed Under: Real Estate Investing Articles, Real Estate Investing Tips Tagged With: , , ,

‘Down And Dirty’ Real Estate Investor Marketing Tips

April 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

One of the few things I learned in college that was actually beneficial and useful in my real estate investment business is the SWOT analysis.  A SWOT Analysis is nothing more than a method for looking at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, And Threats as you enter the marketplace.

By doing this little exercise it will help you to find competitive advantage to the marketplace and guide your real estate investor marketing.

One thing is for certain – we as investors can’t be everything to everybody – so it’s important to look at your marketing strategically and see what’s being done.

So, I want you to look at your competitors and see what they’re doing -

Analyze their Strengths, Weaknesses, the Opportunities, And the Threats.

And you’ll probably see that most of them are doing the same things – ie- running classified ads in the newspaper, going to the courthouse steps, maybe doing some bandit signs, etc.

Do they have a real estate investor website?

What is their offering?

Do they offer a free report?

Do they offer a free consultation?

How is their website ranking using keywords that someone in your local market would type in?

Are they partnering with other investors?

Do they offer any kind of free education (this could be free real estate investing info on teaching them wholesaling in order to get more bird dogs or how to stop foreclosure to homeowners, etc)

Are they using other businesses as a source for their leads?

What all forms of media are they using?

Are they using free press from authority sources like newspaper and tv?

And by looking at what they’re doing – how can you stand out?

Where is your opportunity in the market?

And if you go one step further and start calling some of your competitors when you get a deal, you’ll see how much competition that you really have.

Put on the shoes of a motivated seller and just sit back and observe at how they present themselves and how many look like they’ve just completed the weekend “get rich” quick seminar.

Ask yourself “how you can add more value” and how can you separate yourself from the rest of the ‘we buy houses’ crowd.

By taking a step back and looking at your real estate market strategically, I’m certain you’ll find a way to not only tap into the market but dominate it.

Ok maybe this wasn’t so ‘down and dirty’ after all, but will help you gain the needed edge your looking for.

Filed Under: Real Estate Investing Articles, Real Estate Investing Tips Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts