Update

So, the 4th of July is upon us, meaning summer is just blowing by yet agian.

Anyway, I have been pretty busy of late.

I had an offer accepted on an estate property back on June 11, well on Saturday I finally got the signed contract back, so now I can market it. it is in a great rental area and I expect this one will get lots of interest.



More info HERE


I have gotten about 10 emails asking for more info and one investor who wants to take a look...need to move fast on this one. The owner will bolt if she sniffs wholesaling of the deal, so assigning is out, a double or simultaneous close is how this will be done. Prefer a simultaneous close to save about $2,500 for what a transactional lender will charge me.

* I was contacted by an investor in Florida who is selling 12 properties in Erie PA (his hometown), which is about 90 min. from me. Waiting to get details from him, but there might be something to salvage out of the list. Some rented, some vacant, some singe-family, some multi-units.

* Contacted an investor looking to unload a Sec 8 rental in a so-so area. Long-term tenant in place, rent is $600/mo, a cash buyer would net about $450/mo after taxes and insurance...have not gotten any takers on something like this yet.

* Got a message thru RealEstateInvestor.com from an investor who has 10 properties in the Pittsburgh area that she wants to sell ASAP. Like the Erie properties, some rented, some vacant, some singe-family, some multi-units. Posted some leader ads to gauge interest, nothing so far.

I have also continued to work on my website to make my property pages better. Feedback I have gotten thus far has been positive...just want to make it easy for the investor buyer to say "I want it!".

That is all for now.

What do you know, it's the middle of June already

Well, I have certainly failed to be anything close to consistent with my posting. Not posting kinda defeats the purpose of having a blog. At least something is better than nothing, so if I cannot do it everyday, I will work on doing more than what I have been (that should not be too hard, huh?)

Ok, so the property that I got under contract for $7,500 was of absolutely no interest to anyone. I got a couple of tire kickers, but that's about it, except for the guy out of state who anted either a BPO or an appraisal done. Oh, and he wasn't going to pay for it. Uh, no.

On Friday I got a much better property under contract, or at least i think I did. We came to a verbal agreement on the purchase price, I signed the papers and my agent sent them on to the seller's agent to get signatures. I have not gotten anything back as yet, so that's why "I think" I got it under contract on Friday. The tough thing about this one is it's an estate so some extra eyeballs will be reviewing it AND one of the parties to the estate got scammed in one of the big mortgage fraud scams around here, so doing a straight assignment is a no-go for this deal. I can do a double close, but I did not exactly account for this in my calcs, so I may need to take a little less to get it moved.

It's a pretty sweet deal. It is basically move-in ready as a rental and is in a great area. It just needs some cosmetic work and maybe some electrical work. The house is old, but the fuse box has been upgraded to a breaker panel, except they ran the line off the fuse box instead of removing it altogether. Not sure how that will go in the permit inspection. If that is ok with the inspector, then rehab will be something around $4k-$6k.

The ARV is in the $85-$90k range, I got it for $33k and it should need under $10k to get it going. if I can move it for $40k, I will be happy.

After talking with some other investors, though, I will be moving my focus from SFH to multi-family, especially duplexes. The SFHs are not moving very quickly in general, so I need to change my approcah a little bit.

So, that is what is new on the REI front. On the internet marketing front I have been doing some work as well.

With moving to a virtual investing model, using the internet has become key. A natural extension of this is to incorporate affiliate marketing into what I am doing. So, last week I kicked of my first full-fledged campaign. I will look to promote real estate products, but that is a more specific niche, so my first campaign is for a product that will have broader appeal...buying a car.

If you are looking at buying a new car, a used car, or determining whether to lease or buy, check out this product and learn some great money-saving tips...www.CarBuying-Advice.info.

As part of my campaign, I have created 5 Squidoo lenses, please take a moment to check them out and give them a rating.

1 www.squidoo.com/NewCarBuying-Advice
2 www.squidoo.com/UsedCarBuying-Advice
3 www.squidoo.com/BuyingACar-Tips
4 www.squidoo.com/BuyingAUsedCar-Tips
5 www.squidoo.com/TipsForBuying-ACar

I have a goal of getting a campaign like this set up every-other-week, so by Labor Day I will have 7 campaigns out there beginning to generate some income to supplement what my wholesaling brings in. Wish me luck in this!

In the bag

Well, that lead that I got just before leaving for the cruise has finally been put under contract.

When I got the lead, the seller (who lives out of state) stated there was maybe $7k in work needed to make the place perfect...uh, no. More like closer to $20k. He was asking $20k, but stated he was willing to listen to any and all offers. Sweet, that's music to an investor's ears.

Anyway, so we stopped by on Sunday (when we could finally get in) and wow, not at all like it was described. On the way over I was thinking an offer of $18k would be my plan, then I saw the place and that number very quickly changed to $5k.

Prior to making an offer, I set him up for a low offer by asking him when he last saw the property and letting him know that there was far more work to be done than he thinks.

I offered $5,110 and he said he was hoping for a min. of $10k, but conceded there may be more work than he thought and asked if I would split the difference. Done, $7,500. I should be able to sell this for $14-$15k, which will be a sweet payday!

I have a couple of investors who have expressed an interest, plus I have about 3,000 others on a couple of lists that I can send this out to, so I should be able to move this quickly. I have a tentative close date of 5/18, but will gladly close earlier if at all possible.

Here is what $7,500 can get you in Western PA...$15k if you want to own it :)

Awesome!!

Wow! So many good things are starting to come together.

Ok, first thing...if you ever go on a cruise, go on a Celebrity cruise. We were on the newest ship, the Solstice. What an experience. The one downside to being on this ship, according to experienced cruisers we were with, is now we are spoiled. This ship is so much nicer and the food and service so much better than other lines that we will be disappointed with a cruise on any other line. And seeing the other ships in ports we went to, I would have to agree that our stateroom would not be as nice for the same level of room. Most of the staterooms on Solstice have verandas, while nearly all of the other ships we saw had very few. Need to have that outside access.

The purpose of the cruise was not merely for a vacation, it was primarily a chance to mastermind with other real estate investors. There were about 20 other investors within our group from across the US, so the ideas and future opportunities presented were well worth the cost of the trip...plus the weather was waaaay nicer than in Pittsburgh.

Mark Evans and Ed Zimbardi's group (my group) and Jim Toner's group (from Pittsburgh, funny) basically combined to mastermind about the business, the current market, other opportunities, etc, so it was good to see what goes on in other parts of the country and get some ideas about how to approach opportunities in the future.

I made a bunch of new contacts and a partner to do deals in Atlanta. They call it Hotlanta in the summer, but that could be used to describe the real estate market down there as well. With all of the foreclosures that have hit that area, the number of below market deals is mind-boggling. Pittsburgh is a really good market nearly all the time, but the deals in Atlanta are so good right now that I hooked up with a JV partner and a couple of agents and will look to do deals down there as much as possible. If you have an interest in Atlanta, feel free to let me know.

Finally, the property I got a lead on just before leaving for the trip is still available and should be a really good deal to pick up. Unfortunately there is no access to the house until Sunday, so I am slowed down on it anyway. Oh well.
Better late than never :)

Feeling good, but the timing!

So, in the last week I have made a couple of new agent contacts, which is bringing me many more potential deals than I was getting from my original agent. Awesome.

BUT, even better is I have gotten outside my comfort level as far as the areas where I am looking. For whatever reason, it has taken me quite a while to consider looking in areas that I am now excited about investigating further. Part of it is, to be honest, that I am from the burbs, so some of these areas are not where I would ever go because of some things that would make the news. These areas are not anything approaching war zones, but from my perspective they apparently were close enough to keep me away.

Now that I have gotten in there a little bit more (and have investors who like to buy there, which certainly helps), I am feeling really good about the prospects of making some serious money in the near future. In a way, the cruise that we are going on this weekend is coming at (I can't believe I am actually saying this)... a little bit of a bad time.

Don't get me wrong, I need to get out of this crappy weather ASAP and the time I will have to hang out with other investors and my mentors for a week will be incredibly beneficial. But there are some things that I am on the verge of that I need to put on the back burner for a week. Oh well. If they are not there when we return, there will be others, but an earlier payday beats the crap out of a later payday. I guess we will just use our tax refund as a sort of payday if we need to.

Hasta la vista!

Here is where I will be for the next week

www.celebrity solstice.com

I need to be better

I need to be better about posting here. I have a tendency to let things get in my way and then I do not post for a while. One of the big things right now is I coach a HS rowing team and we practice in the evenings, so I end my day by 4:30 and usually do not get back home until 7:30/8:00 and by that time the last thing I think of doing is going here to post...but that will be changed (though I make no guarantees that it will be everyday, just better than it has been, so no hate mail, please)

So, the last few days have been fairly productive, not counting the weekend. On Friday I met with a couple of investors I know and a mortgage broker and real estate agent. We discussed forming a group of sorts to do some other things to create passive income within our businesses, kind of an outlet for getting our buyers and sellers matched up more quickly. I know I have RTO buyers looking in areas I do not go and these guys have properties in these areas (or can find something since they know the areas a lot better than I do).

I spent time talking with the agent and now I have him looking for properties for me that would be of interest to other investors since I am focusing on wholesaling right now. He is also sending along RTO properties, but those are not as high on my priority list. He has been in the business for over 20 years and is super proactive, something my other agent was, let's say not-so-much.

Oh, and it appears an agent I have worked with for nearly 2 years has flamed out on me. I have not heard from her in about 2 weeks. My guess is that as her business has grown, she is not so interested in looking at the low end of the market quite so much anymore. Oh well.

Yesterday I met with another agent who also works with investors and I have him looking for properties in another part of Pittsburgh (East End out to county line). He invests some himself, so he knows what to look for in an investment property.

I have been talking to an out-of-town investor regarding a property that he bought to rehab then decided to sell instead because he is too far away. He was in town over the weekend to take pictures, but I was not able to meet up with him, so I asked for him to send along any pictures he has so I can see if it is worth pursuing. Not in the best area (maybe a 2 out of 10), so I may pass on it since I do not have anyone looking to buy in that neighborhood.

On the IM front, I have been using One Week marketing to create some Squidoo pages for an affiliate product campaign, no money yet but I still have some work to do to get everything optimized to drive traffic. I also got my Butterfly Marketing 2.0 materials...maybe I will get some time to read through it here...







but somehow I seriously doubt it :)


We leave Easter Sunday and the cruise is 7 days. Sun, sea, sand, warm breezes...everything that is not in Pittsburgh right now (I thought it was Spring already).

Anyway, lots to squeeze into the rest of my week before our little getaway. I am going with other members of a Mentoring/Mastermind group I belong to, so there will be some good stuff learned anyway that I can put to use as soon as I return. Looking forward to it!

Whew!

My days are slowing down, which is good. It turns out the big stressor was getting my websites up. For the first go-round of websites, I wanted to do them myself so I could learn about the process. As I move forward, whenever I upgrade what I have, I will definitely outsource that work.

Anyway, on Saturday I got my main site up and running, so now I have 3 self-made sites and 3 purchased sites. There will certainly be tweaks to my main site as I go along, but it is good enough to have out there (as far as I can tell, links and autoresponder work properly). Now most of the effort on it will be to drive traffic, but there will be some content updates from time to time as well, but the heavy lifting is finished. Whew!

Feel free to check out the sites and let me know if you see anything that needs to be fixed

www.TAERealEstateInv.com (main site)
www.WholesaleDealsInPittsburgh.com
www.PittsburghREI.com

My other sites
www.SellYourProperty-Fast.com
www.EliminateYourRent.com
www.Vitrual-Bird-Dog-Deals.com

Anyway, now that I have gotten the websites up, I can now get really down and dirty with my real estate activities and work more on some internet marketing projects. I am taking my business from an old school model of working pretty much in an offline manner (posted ads, MLS listings from my agent, networking) to more of a virtual model, so some of my real estate activity has slacked a bit in the last couple of months...time to get it back up again.

I have gotten some good stuff put in place, now I can put them to use to make more money. Of course, they share this week with me getting my tax stuff together for my CPA since we will be on a cruise on tax day :) , my deadline is a little bit earlier than usual.

Do today, enjoy tomorrow.