Real Estate Investing Blog

While a great deal of real estate investing advice is focused on finding the right properties to buy, it’s essential to know how to sell properties as well. Because the homes that you’re buying aren’t really going to be staged - in many cases you’re going to be looking into short sales and working with the banks more than you’re looking at homes that are on the market - that means that there’s more that you’re going to want to know about getting things “just so” so that you can draw in the buyers.

Clean is beautiful.

At this point, however, it’s important to keep in mind the cleanliness of the outside of the home. Pressure wash the driveway and the siding. Clean the windows. When someone is looking for a home to call their own, one of the things that’s most important to them is that knowing the place isn’t going to require a ton of elbow grease.

Curb appeal.

Part of the reason why you’re going to be looking at cleaning everything up is to create the right appearance for the home - something that will draw in prospective buyers. Creating curb appeal is the next step in the process. Grooming the lawn, improving the landscaping, getting rid of any overgrowth: again, all of these steps give you the opportunity to make sure that buyers like what they see even before they make it inside - making it easier for you to sell properties.

Fix up the inside.

If you’re going to hope to sell properties, it’s important that once they are inside prospective buyers are going to like what they see. When you’re able to add a fresh coat of paint, buff the hardwood floors or replace the carpeting you continue to reduce the amount of work that a buyer will need to do once he or she makes the purchase.

Stage the home.

Home staging is a way of making an empty house look like a home. Even if you just rent furniture for the open house, showing that the home is a place where people can live will help you to sell.

In all of these cases, the reality should be clear. Selling properties - on a lot of levels - means making an effort to ensure that prospective buyers like what they see. Their first impressions can make a really big difference to your real estate investment profits.

When single family properties are the foundation of your real estate investment business, one of the things that you will quickly discover is this: without a plan to sell, it can be extremely difficult to turn a profit. No matter how great a deal you are able to get when you make the commitment to purchase a property, if you don’t have a plan for that property, it’s difficult to really complete the process.

Now, in some cases, what you will find is that the best way to profit from a property that you have purchased is to lease it out. Sometimes - particularly when there are a lot of homes on the market - there are enough people who are looking to rent a place that is larger than an apartment simply because they do not have the money they need (or a high enough credit score) to buy a place of their own.

Of course, being a landlord and having tenants isn’t for everyone. If it’s not for you, then it is absolutely essential that you have a plan to sell the single family properties that you have invested in - and that the plan you have involves more than just having a real estate agent list the property for you.

Here’s the thing: selling a single family home is nowhere near as simple (at least not in most markets these days) as adding the listing to the MLS and putting a sign on the front lawn. If you want a property to sell, you need to be sure that you have a plan to make that property stand out.

In part, the plan for selling a property is going to rely on how well you are able to stage the property and create curb appeal. In part, the plan is going to be affected by whether or not you have a way to create a different kind of open house for those who are interested in seeing the home (while it’s not a suggestion that I would make, think in terms of the new show Date my House that’s on network TV). Understanding what will make your properties stand out is what will help you to sell - and that’s going to help ensure your success.

When you’re looking at getting started in the field of real estate investing, you’ll find that there are a number of things that you should keep in mind.

First, when you’re getting started with real estate investing it is essential that you make a commitment. On one hand, making a commitment is all about knowing that real estate investing is something that you want to do; on the other, it’s making a commitment to learning the skills and tools that will help you out along the way.

Similarly, when you’re getting started with real estate investing, it’s important to focus on your strengths but to be willing to work on your weaknesses. Essentially, what that means is this: your strengths are important, but it’s your willingness to learn and your ability to put those practices that you learn to work for you.

Ultimately, however, getting started in real estate investing however is all about having the drive to succeed. It’s your drive to succeed that will help you to evaluate prospective deals, create killer marketing materials and to reach all of your goals.

Below is just an exerpt of the first assignment given to new ForeclosureMillionaireClub.com members.

I am using this particular one because I think this new real estate investor is starting off on the right foot - - with a very successful principle.

“It is not enough to do your best; You must know what to do, and THEN do your best.” - W. Edwards Deming.
_______________________________

Michelle, I’m turning in my first assignment. I’m new to real estate investing. Haven’t gotten my first deal yet, but I’m marketing to pre-foreclosures to get my first deal. Here are my answers to the assignment:
 
1. My goal over the next 6 months is to complete at least 6 profitable RE investment transactions. My goal over the next 12 months is to make at least $250,000 profit from my RE investment transactions. This will allow me to seriously look at quitting my full-time job and go full-time in real estate investing.
 
2. I have not closed my first real estate investment deal yet. I’m currently marketing to pre-foreclosures to fill my pipeline with potential RE investment deals.

3. I have not made any money in real estate investing yet. I’m actively working to change that everyday.
. . .
6. I’m currently generating my leads through a post card campaign to pre-foreclosures.
 
7. With one-on-one mentoring I’d like the mentor to give me the things I need to be doing on a daily basis to acquire my first RE investment deal and more deals after that. I’ve been in at least one mentoring program and realized I wasn’t being told about the things I needed to be doing everyday to land my first deal. I was being trained on stuff to do after I land a prospect. I’m learning though….

Alan,  Michelle here.  Wanted to let you know I have received, and read your homework.At first blush, I have to say, your ‘goals’ are very realistic.  Which means to say that you have come to them with some thought.While I realize that at this point you haven’t had the chance to digest all the information in the members area, I want to acknowledge you for getting out and prospecting already  - - -  even though you’re not sure of your step-by-step.

If you missed Tom Kish’s teleseminar talking about how to obtain $200,000 of unsecured lines of credit, you really need to listen to the replay here. 

We had an oversubscribed call—980 registered and only 453 teleslots.  So, we convinced Tom to allow us to make the replay of the call available for a short period of time. 

Listen, who would like to be able to write a check to buy a house, make repairs, pay for marketing or closing costs without the money coming out of your own bank account or the loan going on your credit report. 

Business Lines of Credit can be what helps you over the hill.  There are a couple really great avenues for obtaining business lines of credit.  You can find out right now how Tom does it.

 

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When it comes to real estate investing, it’s hard to come up with any point that’s more relevant than this one: evaluating deals before you make them is essential.

In other words, before you make a commitment to buying any given property, it’s important to look at the ways in which the purchase would benefit you. You need to look at the current state of the real estate market in your area: remember, there’s no such thing as the real estate market, there’s only the local real estate market when you’re evaluating deals.

Think about it for a minute. In some areas, back in the 90s home prices skyrocketed, and now those areas seem to have prices that are falling lower almost every day. Other areas in which prices were rising at a much more reasonable pace may still be seeing corrections, but not such drastic ones.

Even when you consider short sales and pre-foreclosure deals, your ability to get the most out of your real estate investment is going to depend on how closely you looked at the market when you made the purchase. Though you could be purchasing a home for half of its market value, by the time you factor in market conditions and changes that you would like to make, you’re likely to discover that there are some deals that just aren’t as good as they first appeared to be.

When you’re in the habit of evaluating deals before going into them, you’ll find that you can have greater confidence that you’ll get the results that you’re looking for.

When you make the decision that you’re ready to move into a career of real estate investing, it means two things:

1. You have finally gotten past the stage of coming up with a new excuse for why it isn’t the right time each and every time you think about real estate investing.
2. You are ready to start looking into a mentorship program that will help to ensure your success in real estate investing.

The challenge, of course, when it comes to finding a mentorship program for real estate investing is that it can be difficult to know what to look for. Here are some thoughts:

• Make sure that you’re looking into real estate investing mentorships with those who are successful in the field
• Take the time to ensure that when you sign up for a mentorship program you will be getting personalized attention. If you participate in mentor calls, make sure they are ‘live calls’ giving you the opportunity to ask questions.
• That you are placed to a small group of individuals not 500 callers at a time.
• Be sure that the mentorship program that you’re looking into is for people who are committed to success. Why settle for looking into mentorship programs that just anyone can participate in?

It’s important to make sure that you’re going to get the attention that you need and that you will be working with someone who wants to see you succeed as you pursue real estate investing.

I invite you to the ForeclosureMillionaireClub.com mentoring program as your place to find all this criteria met.

When you’re looking to buy multiple properties in order to grow your real estate investment business, it’s essential to make an effort to get ahead of the curve. In order to do that, you’re going to need to know the best means of getting motivated sellers to call you, and you’re going to have to know how to act quickly.

In order to act quickly, you’ll find that the best plan has little to do with signing up to receive lists of pre-foreclosure properties (after all, when you receive those lists, so do many of your competitors). Acting quickly - and getting ahead of the curve in the process - also has little to do with sending letters when you think you’ve found the right address for someone who’s in the pre-foreclosure period.

Focus your research on notices of default as they are posted in the newspaper. Spend time at the local courthouse to see when notices of default are filed. If you can call rather than sending a letter, do so; if you have a way of meeting with them face to face, you’ll be in a better position to form a connection and build a relationship.

When you want to get ahead of the curve in your real estate investment business - and you want to be able to take advantage of the increased income potential of buying multiple properties - the best thing that you can do is to determine the best way to act quickly.

When you’re looking to generate wealth with real estate investment, one of the things that you’ll discover is that when you don’t have a great marketing plan, it’s a lot harder to accomplish your goals.

So just what should you include in your marketing strategy? What are the key components of a marketing plan when you wand to be sure that you are in a position in which you can succeed?

1. Be sure that your marketing materials target the person that you want to reach and grab his or her attention.
2. Keep it personal, explain in the text of your marketing why you want to work specifically with them, one on one.
3. Be clear within your marketing materials about the action that you want your prospects to take.
4. Make yourself accessible - particularly in the event that they have questions.
5. Be honest within your marketing materials.
6. Pay attention to the emotional - not just the rational needs - of those who you are trying to reach with your marketing.
7. Be sure that your marketing is focused around answering this one simple question: “What’s in it for me?”
8. While you are marketing your product or service, it’s important to consider that marketing should be about the recipient, not about you.

Those key elements will help you to do a great deal more with all of your business marketing; just be sure that you’re also taking the time to follow up and, if at first you don’t succeed, make a few changes and try again!

After all, marketing - just like real estate investing in general - is a practice, something that you get better at over time.

When it comes to real estate investing, it seems that everyone thinks that they need to have a surefire “in” - a way of getting started that won’t involve all that much of a risk or a great deal of financial backing. It may even be fair to say that one of the things that many would-be real estate investors are looking for a way of testing out the process to see if everything that they’ve heard is true. For them, the best plan may be to invest in pre-foreclosures.

The home, when you start looking into it, is in a state of default: the bank has filed the initial foreclosure papers, but the full on foreclosure process hasn’t happened yet.When you make the choice to invest in pre-foreclosures, you’re the one who is able to negotiate the sale - with both the current homeowner and the bank.

Additionally, when you look into investing in pre-foreclosures you will find that you’re able to follow two key rules of real estate investment success:

1. You will be able to have a defined niche for your business rather than trying to get a feel for a wide variety of investments;
2. You will be working with motivated sellers when you focus on pre-foreclosures.

The key path to success in real estate investing involves those two key rules. When you’re trying to do a little bit of everything it’s difficult to do it all well; when the homeowners are motivated to sell, the work goes far more smoothly. As a result, if you’re looking to get started in real estate investing, you just might find that investing in pre-foreclosures will be the path to your success.