Commercial Real Estate Investment Articles

I have been asked a lot lately about my experiences with local real estate clubs. These experiences may be similar to clubs you have in your area, or they may not. I got involved with a real estate lunch club that met twice a month at Denny’s. The first thing I noticed was that the club President spoke badly about Carlton Sheets, Ron LeGrand, and all those “TV guru crooks.”

Here are a couple of real estate investing tips for beginners that will get you started in the right direction. You can do a no money down deal with no cash, no credit, no income, no nothing, except some general knowledge backed with a desire to succeed by going out there and taking ACTION!

33 Ways to Find Motivated Sellers

Donald Trump makes billions of dollars purchasing run down or vacant properties and building fantastic structures on them. Warren Buffett makes billions of dollars buying “troubled” companies and turning them into financial powerhouses. Little ol’ me makes millions of dollars by purchasing hard-to-sell houses and making them dream homes.

Here is some more motherly advice I forgot to say to the newbies in my earlier Advice for Beginners (Part One)

So you wanna be a rehabber? Before I give you my Top 10 List, I want you to know that I have been an active real estate investor for only two years. I started by visiting Creative Real Estate Online. It has been crucial to my success.

Okay, here it is. Now get ready to laugh your butt off. I’m a foreclosures expert, right? So I’m asked to speak to a group of recent seminar graduates who, after finishing the program, really don’t know all that much. The chairperson of the group asked me afterward if I would be interested in going in with her on two real estate investments that she had found. I would put up the money, and she would do the rehab work.

Getting motivated sellers to contact you is what real estate investing is all about. One of the ways that we have been successful is to locate potential deals using death notices in the obituaries. Before you call me a creep or a hearse chaser, give this area a little time and attention.

After being in the single-family house business for the last 28 years, I was looking for a way to make my operation more efficient. And along came the Internet. WOW, what an improvement to my business! Here is what we did.

Here are four rules that have been very helpful to me in both my business and personal life. They were told to me by a long-time real estate broker and investor in California years ago.

I am in the process of starting up my flipping and rehab business right now. Here is a secret that I have found: Find some houses that have been rehabbed in the past. You can do this by simply searching the public records at the county recorder’s office.

I’ve been running an ad since last Sunday on a house that I am selling. I’ve had a mix of calls between owner occupants and investors. I’m fascinated with the investor calls.

These are the tools and techniques I’ve used successfully when looking for pre-foreclosure and REO properties. I hope other real estate investors find them as useful as I have.

This is a “no brainer” technique that allows you to gain access to more tired landlords and close more lease option deals. I wish I could tell you how I came up with this idea, but I truly don’t remember. I have been using this successfully for over two years. If you play the lease option game, you should get a kick out of it.

Last weekend, my folks had a garage sale. I was just sitting there thinking, and all of a sudden it hit me: Why not make up some signs that say “We Buy Houses” and see if I can get any leads? That’s exactly what I did.

As most of us know, one of the toughest things to overcome for our buyers is the down payment. Especially when that down payment needs to be verified. I have on two occasions now successfully overcome this problem both legally and ethically.

Let’s assume you have run an ad geared toward generating calls from sellers. The first question is: How is the call answered? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to sit around waiting for my phone to ring, so my phone is answered by voice mail. The caller is required to leave a message if he wants to tall to me.

I was inspired by recent posts concerning an FAQ sheet to give to tenant/buyers about the lease option. I started thinking that a Q&A sheet like that would come in very handy for sellers as well.

I have been promoting lease options for almost a year now and have been working my butt off getting tenant/buyers to take the properties I have and finding the ones they want. It has been a waste of time to find specific properties for tenant/buyers. So I had a chat with my favorite lender, and we came up with a plan.

Five years after buying and giving back about fifty units–and newly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property–not your cash.

In real estate investing, as in many aspects of life in general, we are salespeople. Learning sales techniques can increase our ability to produce a better income for ourselves by allowing us to make better deals, whether buying or selling.

Here is a great tool that works for buying and selling, but we’ll concentrate on just the buying side.

Fire-damaged homes offer great profit potential but also pose special concerns and hidden risks for investors. I would not recommend a fire project for the first time investor, but I would suggest that experienced investors and renovators should not overlook an opportunity that has few competitors.

My partner, Rick Vesole, and I do a lot of lease option type transactions. I recommend that you always record every such real estate transaction you enter into on tape. Real estate is generally thought of as the most expensive thing people will buy in their lifetimes. As such, people tend to get skittish afterward. It can save you thousands of dollars if you have “proof” of your intentions and theirs.

As far as advertising and promotion goes, I have my own radio talk show called “RENT TO OWN.” In fact, it is also a small radio network. At various times I can be heard in six metropolitan areas in Florida, broadcasting on four radio stations.