Back by popular demand, Robyn Thompson is returning to Baltimore to update us on new and exciting ways to Find, Buy, Fund, Manage and Sell your Investment Properties! Robyn will deliver NEW CONTENT sure to please our local investors. Investors in April raved about the pure content Robyn delivers! Robyn wants EVERYONE to attend this event! Click Here to see your options.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Robyn Thompson Returns to BWI
plus Foreclosure Bus Tours

An investor friend of mine had a creative idea to get his property to move. He’s put a tenant in there, and it’s already cashflowing. He’s basically created a package deal for those interested in becoming a landlord.

Dumfries, MD, Townhouse.
3BR, 2.5 BA, 2 levels
Has paying tenant
Rent $1,150/mo until 2010
HOA + Taxes + Insurance = $221/mo
2% to Buyer Agent (~$3,100)
Price $155K (Firm!)
2008 Tax Assessment $171K
New HVAC, new hot water heater, new applicances, new wood laminate floors, new carpet, updated electrical and plumbing. Inspections welcomed, selling “as is”.

Get Contact info below (serious investors only)
Use the Mortgage Calculator from Bank Rate to estimate cash flow

Anyone know what the current rates are for rentals? (aka non-residential properties?)

In this issue of PC Magazine (May 23, 2008), there is an article title “The Best Sites for House Hunting” This article reviews eight web sites to buy or sell a home. Although the article is written for the residential home owner searching for a new home, this is an excellent resource for investors looking to get fast and easy web comparables (comps).

The article also lists six blogs titled “Other Useful Real Estate Sites” that are worth checking out. These are listed on page 3 of the article.

What is your favorite way to get comps on the web? Do you have a favorite real estate blog that you check regularly?

Some experienced investors will buy a property without ever looking at it. However for more cautious investors, they want a good look at the property. But what if you are still at your day J.O.B., or don’t have time to look at it? There is one way to look at a property with out stepping foot into it. The answer is photos. But what if the seller hasn’t listed photos? The answer is to hire a realtor to enter the property, and take photos for you.

Here is an excellent way to sell a property quickly. Make it easy for your investors to preview the house without ever stepping inside. List the things that investors want to know: ARV, Asking Price and Repairs. Supply a list of your comps. If they are good comps, why not support your asking price? If you have a list of repairs, list the estimate you give for them.

Here is a good example:
Posted May 16, 2008 5pm
CMDI Logic has the following property for sale:
9306 Grazing Ter
Montgomery Village, MD 20886

Add a bathroom!
Finish the basement!
Modernized the kitchen!
This is a 3-level property with a basement. (Don’t let the tax record fool you, it is 3 B)

-We estimate the rehab at an ultra conservative $35,000
-ARV $270,000+ (Plus means you’ll likely make more)
-Asking $155,000
Photos, Comps, Contact Info for CMDI

Not all investors, sellers, or listing agents take the time to take many photos. They also don’t list all the information so that buyers can quickly evaluate the property and decide if it meets their business model. Many deals are hidden in the MLS. If you have a day J.O.B. or a lifestyle that prevents you from entering all the properties, how do you “look” at them? In this slow market there are many Realtors trying to create cash flow by entering properties and taking pictures for a small fee. I have heard about these Realtors, and I met one at the May DC-REIA meeting.

If you are a selling a property and want to sell it quickly, make it easy on the potential seller. You’ve already done your homework, pass those numbers. The quick evaluation of your property will make it sell quicker. If you are purchasing a property and photos aren’t available, find a Realtor who is willing to do your foot work.

If you are a Realtor or know of a Realtor that would like to offer this service to investors, please feel free to post you contact information in the comments.

If you would like to contact the Realtor I met at the DC-REIA, enter you name and email address below. You will receive an e-mail with her phone number. Her fee depends on how far she needs to drive. As you know everything is dependent on gas prices these days.

Every time I talk to a potential seller, I shorten my elevator speech and try to gauge what parts stimulates their interest. I keep a lot of my old material so I can see how it has changed over the years. I was reviewing my business cards that will be in my course packet (The Internet Real Estate Investor, June 2008) and I saw patented REI talk that I no longer use.

I am no longer investing, and most of my verbal advice is to my close friends and family. I no longer use catch phrases like “problem solver”, but rather I use something more appealing and resonating to everyone like “We can help you”. There are no longer “sellers”, instead they are “home owners”. It’s not so much about ME the company Sprietzer Investments, LLC which proudly states my name, and that I want to use your property for my financial freedom. It’s about YOU (clarified for you REIs as the potential seller) working with Simply Sold Home Buyers. Simply (no hassles), sold (not take over payments, subject to, pre-foreclosure, foreclosure - we can talk about details later if you are interested) home buyers (we sell your home, not your property or house). It’s not about purchasing “at a discount”, but purchasing at “at a fair market value, that has a high risk of staying on the market”. It’s the same thing, but a world of difference in leveraging expectations and negotiations.

At my day J.O.B, my co-workers are pain staking in the clarity of their speech and stating every detail so the fine distinctions are not blurred. [I just emailed someone "Isn't water vapor density actually clouds?" And I know the answer isn't going to come back "yes," or "no", but the short answer of "It depends". Followed by a long winding speech that expounds on the matters of "What is a cloud?" and "If it falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a noise?"] Giving details before giving your brief summary is a recipe for people to ignore your message. Your marketing, whether it is written on a flyer or heard through a 24-7 pre-recorded message must grab the attention of the home owner within the first few moments. Because there are too many other life and technology distractions to get to your point “We Buy Houses.” to help YOU.

You might think that being efficient and being lazy are two different things. I love to work all the time. What I don’t like is doing repetitive tasks. This is when I procrastinate, and I appear lazy. Maybe lazy isn’t the right word. A smart worker is lazy enough to be motivated in making work quick and easy. Maybe the phrase should be “proficient at time management skills”.

So how can you work smarter, not harder? The answer is using a system that is simple and easy to use. If you can’t create one, purchase one. When I did real estate investing, I had a day J.O.B. in cubicle-ville. I didn’t have the privacy or time to answer phones. I bought peace of mind by getting a website and 24-7 Live Operator service. I recommend this to all part-time, full time investors as well as business owners. All you need to do is answer a few questions, and have leads instantly sent to you (email, text message, or fax). You can get started quickly with our proven pre-recorded messages to screen out the curious, and our proven call scripts to capture seller information. You can customize both for your individual needs. So what are you doing today? Working hard or hardly working?

As a real estate investor who still has her J-O-B, I know how difficult it is to run a small business on the side. The biggest tip I can give you as a beginning investor is to learn how to manage your time.

If you can’t set aside 15-60 minutes to attend to your business daily, you might as well not bother wasting money on another course packet. We all have our reasons why we can’t carve out more time. Some have small children, some have sick or elderly family members to take care of, or some have health concerns that prevent them from working full time. I’m telling you, if you can’t take 15 min. daily to comb through a message board for deals, how will you be able to screen a house to know if it’s worth buying?

I don’t mean to add more analysis to the problem of paralysis through analysis. I don’t want you to not get because you don’t have a plan. Just don’t spend tons of money on marketing, if you don’t have the time or resources to follow through on the leads it generates. A great tip I got from a real estate guru was, figure out what your mental hurdle is, and then find a solution to leap over it.

That’s one of the reasons why I got a 24-7 live operator answering service. What if I spent all that money on marketing and then lost the deal because I didn’t answer the call and dumped them to voicemail? What if the caller decided to hit the next ad in the paper for “We Buy Houses”? What if I couldn’t answer all the caller’s questions? What if they get cranky because my mentor asked me to ask all the questions about their financial situation? What if my boss or co-workers overhears me taking calls in my cubicle? What if I go away for the weekend, or have someone comes into town, how do I handle my calls and still live my life?

Once I had the phone service, I didn’t want to lose it. When you put ads in the paper, send out postcards to absent owners, or put up bandit signs, you get a lot of calls that don’t turn into profits. In fact about 90% of the calls are people that are either 1) trying to figure out if you’re a real business 2) trying to make up their minds if they should sell their house 3) they are calling for a relative or friend. They ask a ton of questions, waste a lot of your time, and you don’t get any profit from it. The excitement of hearing your phone ring and hoping it’s a deal, wears off. Hearing your phone ring brings dread of repeating yourself in answering the same questions over and over again.

Having a phone service kept me active in my marketing. If you’re paying $110/mo for a phone service, you better use it. Plus, there are setup charges (around $100). I didn’t feel it was an option to cancel and start up my marketing after the summer, or after the holidays. (By the way, the 24-7 Live Operator Answering Service I offer is only $49.99/mo, no setup charges, and the same per min. charges I’m charged. I’m able to price it this way by having multiple investors share the same line. They forward their number to mine. The first question the operator asks is “What number did you call? We keep track of this for marketing purpses”. This number ties the lead to you. The operator asks questions about the property or takes a message. You get instantly emailed (and text messaged if you want) when the call is completed.)

Because my system makes it so easy to analyze deals, it was a shame to not market regularly. I had a bunch of bandit signs in my garage (How many of you have them just laying around? Don’t be shy, you know you’re out there) I started putting my own bandit signs up on a Friday and taking them down on a Sunday. This reduces the risk of fines, and you’re less likely to lose signs to vandalism, weather and government officials. Bandit signs are one of the biggest marketing bang for you’re your marketing buck. Putting them up yourself lowers the cost of this marketing media, but it’s a pain. First there is traffic. There’s the honking and yelling of drivers. There are the looks the cops give you when you’re putting them up. Have I mentioned darting across traffic as you run through medians at night to put them up? Because of this I found a way to outsource this chore.

I have been an investor since 2003 and continue to hold my day JOB. I know some of my tips here are a plug for my services. I created them for my own use, they worked excellent for me, and so I endorse them to other investors. Even if you decide not to use these services I hope you see the logic in managing your time, outsourcing dreaded tasks to free up your time and automate your REI business.

Guard your email address with your life and don’t ever give it out to strangers!  Okay, I admit, this is an impractical suggestion to avoid spam. You can’t do much on the internet without giving out your email address. Who doesn’t want to get added to a wholesalers email list so you can purchase great properties at low prices? When you give out your email address online, you’re probably going to get on someone’s email list. However, there are ways to get what you want out of the internet and prevent getting spam in the first place.

1) Create disposable email addresses.  You can do this by signing up for a free account (like Yahoo, HotMail or Gmail).  Use it for signing up for promotional items and things you only want one time.  You could also use it for all your retail shopping.  By using this method, promotional ads will never make their way to your main email inbox.

2) Use forwarding email addresses.  This is a more high tech solution for eliminating spam.  If you have a hosting company who hosts your website, see if they offer forwarding email addresses. (You can find an excellent hosting company on our website that offers this with their regular hosting package.  On our website, check out the ad on the left column for Blue Host.)  This way you can have hundreds of addresses, but you only have to open one email account, because all the addresses get forwarded to that location.  Name the forwarding address something that reminds you of the site.  For example: for Amazon.com use something like: amazon@reiwebsolutions.com.  If you get spam from this address you can delete the forward or filter it directly into your trash/bulk/or spam email.

3) On your website don’t list your email address.  Spam bots crawl through websites collecting email address for spammers, so by not having an email address on your site, you won’t be spammed.  Unfortunately, this will make it difficult to have people contact you. You can put a secret message in your email address like removethiswhenemailing to let people know they should remove it prior to emailing you.  For example: Kay@removethiswhenmailngREIWebsSolutions.com

This is an awkward, but an easy way to prevent spammers from getting your email address.  The plus side is that your clients who find your website can still email you.

4) A better way to list your email address on your website is to try tips 1 & 2 stated above.  If you have technical skill, or if you hire a web programmer (like REI Web Solutions) make your email address non-readable by using java script and other tricks.  For an example of a clever trick, view the source code on REIWebSolutions.com.  On any of our pages, look at the source code and do a find for “javascript”.  You will see something like this:

<script language=”javascript”>
function m_sfcon (u) {
pre = “mail”;
url = pre + “to:” + u;
document.location.href = url + “@YourDomainNameHere.com”;
}
</script>

Copy and paste the above code between the “head” tags in your website.  Change “YourDomainHere” to your domain name.

Then on any of our main page, look at the source code, and do a find for “Email Us”.  You will see something like this:

<a href=”javascript:m_sfcon(’info’)”>E-mail Us</A>
Use this notation rather than the normal href  “emailto:” tag, in the body tags of your website.  Replace “info” with the word(s) you use before the @ symbol in your email address. If none of this made sense, use the other methods I suggested, or hire a web programmer to do it for you.

5) Lastly, to get rid of existing spam, Use a spam filtering software.  Most host accounts will offer this.  Even free email programs like Yahoo.com, have good email filtering program.  Each mail program has a different way of handling spam email, do a Google search or use help to find out if your mail program has a filtering program.  Your hosting company may also have options to filter spam before it even ends up in your email inbox.  Blue Host (which you can find listed on our website) has an excellent service for scanning email for spam before it ends up into your inbox.  See their site for more details.

You can’t avoid spam altogether, but you can greatly diminish the amount that shows up into your inbox, and the time it takes to sift through it by following these tips.

If you’ve read about the “Law of Attraction” and seen “The Secret” you may be interested in Steve Pavlina’s interveiw of creater James Ray creater of “The Secret”.

If you haven’t bought “The Secret” yet, I found this offer on Steve Pavlina’s site:
–Save $5.00 - The retail price of The Secret Extended Edition is $34.95. You get it for only $29.95.
–Free Shipping in the USA - Enjoy free shipping anywhere in the USA and reasonable shipping charges outside the USA.
–Free Bonus Meditation - You’ll receive a free bonus Law of Attraction meditation MP3 download from Marie Diamond, one of the teachers in The Secret.
–30-Day Money-Back Guarantee - Try The Secret for 30 days, and if for some reason it doesn’t fulfill your expectations, you can return it for a full product refund.

As you may know “The Secret” can be watched for only $5 on the internet. You can also view the trailer before purchasing.

I came across this article “10 Business Lessons From a Snarky Entrepreneur” and thought it had wisdom for new entrepreneurs.  This article is a companion to 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job and  10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed. There are 10 positive lessons that Steve learned from more than 12 years as an entrepreneur.

My favorite top 3 are:
1-Network selectively.
5- Fail your way forward.
6- Become so organized it disgusts people. (I’m not there but I understand why I need to be