Investing in a below market value (BMV) property is certainly a risk, but a calculated risk will reduce your exposure to a financial loss and could make you a huge profit when done correctly. Those that succeed in investing do so because they always invest within their capacity and they always carry out thorough research before investing. A professional property investor will always turn a below market value property into a lucrative investment.

In order to find below market value properties, many investors go online and subscribe to a service that provides detailed property listings for distressed properties. Many of these database-type websites will include property listings, products and services providers’ listings and networking capabilities all in an effort to arm BMV investors with enough information to make intelligent decisions on which properties to invest in. (more…)

How do I find buyers to sell my properties to? That is the ultimate question in today’s buyers’ market. Gone are the days of sticking a For Sale By Owner sign in the yard and receiving multiple offers within 24 hours.
No, today’s market dictates that you have a plentiful supply of ready buyers to whom you can sell your wholesale deals. In this article, I’m going to show you some of the very best ways of locating wholesale buyers. Generally, these will be buyers that are willing to pay cash for your deals.

One of the very best ways to find buyers is to figure out who has already bought similar property in your market. To do this, you’ll need to find a list provider like RealQuest.com, MelissaData.com, or even the tax roll in your local county. What you want to do is get a list of investor buyers that have purchased houses in the last 6 months within the area(s) where you want to sell wholesale deals. These will be absentee owners for whom their mailing address differs from the property address. You can use zip codes to narrow down the relevant area. Once you obtain this list, mail everyone on the list a postcard. Your postcard need not be anything fancy. I like to use the U.S. Postal Service’s system available through Click2Mail. Just send a simple card with message on the back of the card stating that you saw they bought a property in the area recently and wondered if they’d be interested in a deal you have available. Drive them to a website squeeze page to capture their contact information (so you can add them to your email buyers’ list). After they enter their info., direct them to the website where you display your deals. The big advantages to this method over all others are 1) you’re capturing their contact info, so even if they don’t buy a deal from you now, you’ve got their email and can contact them about future deals; and 2) you know that these buyers are legit because they’ve already shown the ability to close on similar property. (more…)

You are writing about your Realtor mentor or coaching program and you want to make sure you are including words that will help people find the information that you are providing on the Internet. It’s not as difficult as you may think. One great way to get started is by utilizing the Google Keyword Tool.

To find it, just type “Keyword Tool” into the Google search engine. It’s completely free and if you type in a keyword or phrase it will tell you how frequently certain key words are searched and how much competition is out there using them. Ideally you are going for a high search volume in the Google keyword tool. Next you can also type in the keyword or phrase that you are looking at into the Google search engine (with “parenthesis”) around it and at the top of the page in the results section it will tell you how many listings there are for that key word or phrase. (more…)

So your home has been listed for sale for awhile now and you still haven’t received any sold offers or maybe you want to sell your home but do not have enough equity to hire a Realtor. Not a problem! You have many options but for now I will tell you about the most common three.

Land contract AKA seller financing:
In this method you act as the bank, and yes you can do this even if you still have a loan on the property. Some advantages of this method you are helping someone realize their dream of home ownership and you with the help of a professional tax adviser and a good lawyer can collect an $8,000.00 first time home buyer credit up until November,30,2009. Some disadvantages if the buyer stops making payments you will have to file a foreclosure suit this can take several months and be very expensive.

Lease option AKA Rent to own:
This is one of my personal favorites you rent the property out to the tenant and sell them an option to purchase the property within a certain time frame and for a set amount of money. The advantages of using a lease option the option money is not refundable and if the tenant stops paying there is no foreclosure involved just a simple eviction.

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I think this latest down cycle for housing market has been fueled by the general greed of the different professionals in this industry. All the way from contractors who keep on building larger homes, to lenders who consistently try different programs to squeeze more loans out even with they maybe questionable and last but not least the Realtors who’s reputation (not always deserved) cares only for the commission check and not their clients. In spite of all the negatives surrounding real estate at this, the wanting to own your own home is still one of the goals for most families in the USA. Currently it can really be difficult to qualify for a home loan and once you are in, if you needed two incomes to qualify or you are not financially prepared for the maintenance that will be need and repairs that have to be made, it can be really difficult to keep your home especially when changes in your income happen.

I remember as a child back in the 1950’s, my parents had just moved up to Washington State where my dad was starting to work for the Army in civil service. We had been living in a large farm house that was a rental with two other families, when I was told we were moving to house on twenty acres, I remember being excited, of course I did not know what twenty acres was at that time. The house turned to be a shack out in the boonies. I thought the outhouse was cool until I had to use it that night in the dark. The only room that had running water or any type of sewer line was the kitchen, which is where we took our baths. I was confused why every wall in the house had newspaper as wallpaper and insulation, for heat we had a large stone fireplace which turnout to be the only thing that was not replaced. As a six year boy who finally realized what twenty acres in the country meant, the best thing was exploring the twenty acres of land which had endless opportunities for my brother and me to get in trouble, I mean play. Every weekend it seemed like my parents were out there doing some remodeling or working on something and as the years went by I remember thinking, it actually had become a nice house. (more…)

In their 2000 book Suburban Nation – The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, America’s most controversial and celebrated town planners quoted William Kraus and his three market segments that pioneer urban development. Leading the way was the “Risk Oblivious.” The descriptive elements attached to this group include artists and college students typically “…not well served by finished units with separate bedrooms but by lofts, which are large, tough, inexpensive, yet easily converted to yuppie housing upon the arrival of…” our second market segment “the risk aware.” This second segment unfailingly leads to the arrival of the third and final market segment, the “risk averse” aka the suburban middle class.

America has several urban examples that support this thesis. In New York we have Soho and Williamsburg and here in Los Angeles we can point to Echo Park (segment 1), Silver Lake (segment 2) and Los Feliz (segment 3). In her recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Alexandra Alter notes that, “Artists have long been the leaders of and urban vanguard that colonizes blighted areas.” She goes on to suggest, “the current housing crisis has created a new class of urban pioneer.” (more…)

Everyone is talking about it, blogs, Ezines, directories… sounds confusing but really we’re just talking about articles. Articles on interactive websites, articles submitted to directories, and articles sent in e-mails. Simple.
The tricky part is making sure that time you spend writing articles isn’t in vain. You need your articles to attract new clients, and if written properly they will. I learned some great article writing techniques from my internet marketing coach Janet Cole, and now I will share a few of them with you.

1. If you are intimidated by the concept of writing articles at all then sit down and for fifteen minutes write down what you would say to a new prospective client if they called you and said they were desperate for your help. Don’t worry about content or form, just write and you will find that in 15 minutes you will have likely exceeded the 400 to 450 word article you are looking for. This should ease some of your fears concerning your ability to write an article quickly.

2. Don’t go overboard and write lengthy articles thousands of words long. People have short attention spans and it just isn’t necessary.

3. If you are stumped on topics write down 100 questions that your clients have or potential clients may have then start answering those questions.

4. Make sure to include key words that are appropriate for your topic and are in small enough categories that it’s achievable for you to get a high website ranking and get noticed. For example, if you are a Real Estate Coach that specializes in helping new Realtors and the article you are writing if you include the phrase “Realtor training” as your key words you will have 136,000 competitors (at the time this article was written) utilizing that same phrase. On the other hand if you use “Realtor coaching” the competition drops to a mere 1,680. Granted Realtor coaching is not “goggled” nearly as much as Realtor training but when you are starting out it’s better to be the biggest fish in the pond before you jump into the ocean. (more…)

You need to have a firm understanding of what people want such as floor plan, yard, ect. for your particular area. You will need to invest a little bit of your time to get to know what the market is doing. I would recommend you do some driving and pick up every for sale pamphlet in your area.

Attending open houses in your area not only gives you a great ideas on how to make your house more sellable but it also lets you mingle with people looking for property in your area. Meet owners and see how they are presenting their property. This will let you see what you like and dislike about certain properties, locations, and even sales styles.

There are a lot of websites that can help you also, I use Zillow. They are quick and give you a list of comparable homes that recently sold in the area. This a quick reference tool it is not 100% percent accurate.

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Thinking now is the time to get a good deal on a home? Think again.

Banks are hiding their inventory of foreclosed homes to keep home prices inflated. How? By not foreclosing on homes that are delinquent on their payments, and allowing the homeowners to continue living in them rent/mortgage free.

What does this mean for homebuyers?

There is a bigger supply of homes than what is being reported, and you could be paying as much as 30% or more than what it’s worth once the rest of these homes hit the market.

What should you do?

Wait until after the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit program expires November 30th.

That’s right, I said wait until after it expires. Banks know there are a lot of people thinking now is a good time to buy, especially with an $8,000 incentive, so they’re keeping homes off the market to keep prices inflated.

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This topic has been hotly debated over many listservs today. There are many who think the bottom has not been reached and prices will drop considerably more.

That our economic times mirrors the last great depression but on a greater scale. They are advocating no house buying at this time. I cannot phantom our economy recovering without housing being involved in some form or fashion. But I cannot make a decision for anyone as to whether or not now is the time for them to purchase. I can say with certainty if you are looking to buy and flip, I would really take a second look before purchasing a home. There are some areas that are economically better off than others. (more…)