So this is my last weekend as a resident of Champaign and I’m en route to Saint Louis .  As I pack up the necessities, I am reminded that I keep way too much stuff around that isn’t necessary.  Thank God for CraigsList, as I was able to sell my couch, bed, and desk (never doing U-Haul ever again, plus when I move from STL I’m starting fresh with all new shit).  But during this sale process I practiced my negotiating skills on these buyers.  I emphasized in the CL post that I was a motivated buyer, I had in all caps MUST SELL NOW and etcetera.  But I didn’t list a price anywhere, I just told the people to reply with an offer.  My (queen) bed sold really quick for $60, funny thing is I only paid $100 for it back in college.  A forty dollar 7 year rental sounds pretty good right.  The item I was most surprised about was the couch, which I got $80 for.  The girl that bought it responded to my ad and said she’d pay $125 for it.  I was like WTF (had I listed a price I would’ve priced it at $40)!  So then I said, if she picked it up within a few hours that same day, I’d let it go for $100.  When she arrived we settled at $80.  This whole scenario just reminded me that a product is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.  I wish these real estate property sellers would realize this fact.  Too many people balk at my offers with the response, “You’re offering me less than what I paid for it”.  My mental response is “that is completely irrelevant, so let your house sit on the market for another 200 days, I couldn’t care less”.

So anyway, although I’m leaving town I’ve made some major strides in the last two weeks:

• I’ve found a way to revamp my (efficient) offer making process for MLS offers (video coming soon), although this new method is completely compliant, I’ll probably still piss-off some of the local Realtors but…I don’t really give a shit.
• I’ve also fully launched my Property Scout network, though I need to step-up the promotion of it.  CraigsList, I think may be the only way for recruitment.  However, I’m officially a registered employer via a local temp agency in town.  I think I’m going to see if I can work with them on this.  Perhaps, I should look into Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.  Why not?
• In return for some Mozenda Screen-Scraping, a guy out of the UK hooked me up with some web-hosting and a bomb-ass Real Estate WordPress theme.  The site is www.ChampaignDeals.com check it out and let me know what you think.  I still need to tweak it alot and complete it with some custom content.  But I’m thinking I can throw some wholesale deals on that site, get other local real estate professional to contribute to it…perhaps make it accessible only if one completes a squeeze page…etc.  I’m liking this barter thing…so if anyone else wants to trade services, get @ me.
• I also have a new partner in crime.  About a week ago, a young lady gave me a call out of the blue (why was that color selected for that saying anyway?…but I digress).  She is from Chicago and fairly new to the Champaign area and wants to get into Real Estate Investing.  She was asking me if there were any REI clubs, mentors in the area, etc.  I gave her some contacts of other investors that may want to mentor her, and also told her about my property scout program.  After a few days, we had a few more phone conversations and met in person.  This girl is on point!  I think she’s more of a hustler than me…which is saying a lot, if I don’t say so myself.  So since we’ve decided to team-up, she’s going to take over most of my marketing tasks.  And I’m going to tell her everything I know.  Which is actually a lot, contrary to popular belief, I just have ran into all kinds of bad-luck with closings…but anyway.  She told me that she has read tons of books on investing, as she speed reads (yes…speed reads. If that doesn’t say you’re sharp as a tack, I don’t know what does), but ‘doing’ is the best education of all.  So I think this is the start of something really good.

That about sums up the last 1.5-2 weeks.  Oh, I also have got some Internet Marketing stuff up my sleeve too.  As well as an eBook about the whole DIY yellow letter thing.  I get a lot of questions about this process, still.  In the ebook I’ll go into much further detail.  All of my wholesale flip situations haven’t changed status, still a bunch of BS holding those up.  So anyway, the kid has still been on his grind.  I hope yall didn’t think I gave up.  By the way, I’m bringing accountability-monday back.  I forgot why I stopped anyway…

- Peace Out

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So I’ve only got 20 days left in Champaign and I’m changing my focus a bit (actually it would’ve been 10 days left, but my apt complex doesn’t pro-rate. So I’m here until the end of month).  I’m going to focus more on getting my property scouts in place and setting up training videos for them to review.  I need to focus more and more on WORKING SMART.  It’s become more and more clear to me since I left my 9-5 that i hate working!  At first I thought I just hated working for someone else….WRONG.  I hate working even for myself!  I didn’t get into real estate to create a job for myself.  I’m in this to make money work for me.  And real estate is just the beginning.  There is so much other stuff regarding internet marketing that I haven’t even exploited yet, it’s ridiculous.  But I have to tackle one thing at a time right.  So right now it’s real estate and I’m in the process of putting together training videos for my property scouts so that I don’t have to indefinitely be a broken record when recruiting new scouts.  I’ll just say, “Watch the videos. If this is up your alley, cool.  If not, peace out.”

So I’m on the way to the courthouse to create a training video for my scouts to pull probate records.  Funny thing is, I’m going to try and get my Flip Mino inside.  All of the notices outside the courthouse only say that you can’t bring in a cell-phone.  They say nothing about cameras, video cameras, etc.  Plus I already asked about taking my laptop inside and they said that was ok.  So…I’m thinking what’s the difference between my laptop cam and my flip cam…there shouldn’t be.

Yesterday, I took a spontaneous road-trip to Chicago to use the road time to chill-out and brain-storm and listen to my “4-hour work week” audiobook.  This was a great decision.  This book comes highly recommended by many entrepreneurs and I now know why.  In this short month, that I’ve been full-time, I’ve been doing a few things wrong.  One of the main things is letting little things leech my time.  For instance, up until this morning, I had Yahoo.com set as my browser homepage.  Almost 4 times a day, I would get distracted by reading some unnecessary article as a result of just opening a new browser window, this probably eats at least 10 minutes per hour. I now set Google as my homepage.  Next, I’ll have to work on not checking my email so often.  I already don’t watch the news, so I’m good there.  The part I like most so far, is avoiding phone calls and meetings.  Because half of the time, they’re absolutely unnecessary, as an email will suffice and be more to the point.  Those of you who’ve read the book know what I’m talking about.  I’m only half-through and it’s already opened my eyes to some of the pointless tasks that I consume myself with daily.  Such as numerous phone calls with people that aren’t adding to the bottom line (I literally just had a phone call with an end-buyer insurance agent, while typing this, concerning his access to a property.  I have no idea why he called me about this as he should correspond with the seller directly. I gave him her contact information weeks ago. He just murdered 5 minutes of my life.)   Same with email.  I’m going to start trimming the fat.  You don’t get my time if I don’t like you and/or you’re not talking about putting money in my pocket.

So a quick synopsis of my current situation:

2 closings tied-up with a bankruptcy
1 closing scheduled for end of this week (I have a feeling this isn’t going to happen)
3 new properties under-contract, no end-buyer yet

Welp….off to the courthouse.

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Yoooo! So I’m running out of money fast and my deals are forever getting postponed.  So I’ve made the decision to move back to my Mom’s house back in Saint Louis.  Funny thing is that it wasn’t a hard decision at all.  I’ve been in Champaign for almost 5 years and am soooo sick of it, it’s not funny.  Not to say Saint Louis is that large of a city, but at least there’s more to look at besides corn during the growing/harvesting season.  And plus, I don’t spend as much time with my Mom as I should since my Dad passed away as I should, so this will be a good thing.  Literally, about 85% of what I do in Champaign can be done virtually anyway, so I’ll be straight.  Plus, I’m thinking about expanding into South STL anyway.  If I can get a no BS realtor on board, I’ll be good (they’re extremely hard to find).

So, the 4/19 deal didn’t happen, of course.  But it may not be dead.  Who knows.  I have a strong feeling that the seller doesn’t really know how much she owes on the properties in her portfolio.  So therefore, she has no grounds to say that she can sell a property for 40K, when she doesn’t know that she owes 44K and doesn’t have 4K to bring to closing.  And besides that, despite her property portfolio being in “Lis Pendens” status, she’s not eligible for a short-sale due to the fact that that her and her husband (soon to be ex) make too much money.  This situation is extra Sticky due to a pending divorce and such.  But, I’ma stick with it.  Besides, I do know she ordered the  mortgage payoff amounts of each property late last week.  So maybe later this week, we’ll know where we stand.

On a much brighter note, I had my first meeting with 3 property scouts about 4 hours ago.  It went pretty well.  I’m developing a training program at this moment that will help in guiding them towards the right kind of properties and property owners in the right kind of situations.  The program that I have is sooo lucrative for the property scouts, I think I’m onto something.  Anyway, we’ll see how that goes.  I’ll keep yall posted.

- Peace Out

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YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! What’s happening my real estate peoples? It’s been a long time…I shouldn’t have left you without a dope beat to step to. I took a month off from blogging and folks started coming out of the wood-work about me not blogging. I didn’t know I had that many people that cared. *Tangent* how does one come out of the woodwork anyways?. But I digress.

This last month has been full of so much stuff, I don’t know where to begin. This real estate game is one of “ups” and “downs”. That is for sure. Why didn’t anyone tell me this? One minute you think you have a deal…the next minute, your end-buyer backs out with cold-feet….you discover leaking pipes…mold…etc. WTF! Oh well, if this stuff was as easy as Carleton Sheets claims, I guess everyone would be doing it. And I surely don’t like doing what everyone else is doing. Following the crowd is for lames…and broke people. And I don’t like being either.

Let’s see where do I start? Well, as of 3/31/2010 I’ve been officially unemployed. I’ve taken the plunge and there is no looking back. I’ve only been unemployed for less than a week and this shit is the best! Why didn’t anyone tell me how good this would be? Anyways…I’ve been working soooooo hard it’s not even funny. Because, I quit my job with absolutely no money saved up and this wholesaling thing has got to show it’s ass soon or else I’m going to be washing windows on the corner of Mattis and Bradley (there is nobody else washing windows at that intersection, so I think I could clean up). You may be surprised or dumbfounded. You may think/say….”why did you quit so soon, without money saved”? Well the answer is real simple. I’m single, I have no kids, and if things don’t work-out…..so the eff what! All I have to worry about is me. That 9-5 job that I had was killing me softly. And plus…life is short. I knew this, but things were really put in perspective after the Haiti earthquake…and then the Chile earthquake two weeks later. Seriously…literally after those two events, I was officially done with doing anything in life that I didn’t want to do. Life is too short for the B.S

So, in a nutshell, I have 3 deals that are pending, 1 that I’ve yet to find a buyer for. And I’m working on #5 as I type.  And besides all of that, I have 2 short-sales going.   However, nothing has closed yet. At the quickest, I have a deal scheduled to close in two weeks. And since this real estate world is extremely flaky…I’m not counting on anything closing on time. Closings are a big deal now…since I need closings to happen to cover living expenses and such. But oh well, I’ll just continue to work as if I have zero deals lined up…this has been working for me thus far.

Oh well, that’s it for now. As soon as I get some cushion capital-wise…I will step my blogging game back up. I have soooo much to inform to disclose it’s ridiculous! I mean stuff that most people put in eBooks and in programs for a fee. But I’ll tell all for free ninety-nine. But at the moment, I’m like “who cares about blogging, if I don’t get these deals in place I will definitely get evicted…and squirting windows for-real”. But even still, I won’t let this much time pass again before I update.

- Peace out

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Another week has passed and I spent about 15 hours working on my offer-making machine.  Good news; I’ve got it done and it’s ready to kick-out offers (on expired MLS listings).  Bad news; the Option-Contract that I was planning to enclose as part of my offer is garbage.

Originally, I was thinking of just mailing a short letter with a complete standard MLS contract.  Then I had a change of heart and felt the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principle would be best.  So, I’m opting to send a short letter with an option-contract, perhaps the simplified approach will be better.  I had found this very simple Option-Contract on a forum about two weeks ago and I made some tweaks to it to fit my preferences.  I setup the mail-merge with it and my cover letter, I was feeling like the best thing that ever happened to real estate.  The best that ever did it.  So my gut told me just to shoot over the option-contract to my lawyer just to cover my bases…and I’m glad I did.  I received an email response that was about 5 paragraphs long, the cliff-notes basically explaining that the document was trash.  So…I’ll be stalled on the 40 offers until I get my shiny new option contract back from my lawyer.

The beautiful thing is that I have about 500 expireds to choose from.  I could just pace the offers at 40 each week or maybe just push out more per week to make up for lost time.  This has been a weekly goal for about a month now.

Once I have my new option-contract, perhaps I’ll post in detail of how I created this automated system I now have.  Surely at least one person may learn from it or get an idea for something better.

P.S.
I’m going to step-up my fitness regimen a bit.  I was looking at a measurement that I made back in January of 2009, and back then I had a weight of 210 lbs and percent body fat of 19%.  I then measured myself again about a week ago and now have a weight of 200 lbs and a percent body fat of 17.2%.  Not much of a change.  However, I haven’t really been pushing that hard with workouts.  It’s kind of hard to do so when you’re not specifically training for something.  Very hard.  I can’t wait until I have time for triathlons and such.

- Peace Out

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So I’ve been working a lot on getting my wholesale deal straightened out lately.  I haven’t been giving a lot of detail about it because I don’t want to speak to soon about a deal that’s not completely wrapped up.  But just to give a little info, I found a buyer for the house, have accepted a deposit, and have completed the assignment agreement.  The only things that worry me is that there are about 5 title issues that the seller will need to clear before we can close.  The buyer is ready to go, he wants to close in two weeks, which will be about three weeks earlier than the contract states.  I’ve been assisting the seller in getting to the bottom of his title issues, on one hand I don’t have the obligation to do so, but on the other hand if this deal doesn’t close I’m back to square one.  Nooooooooobody wants to go back to square one, especially me.

I spent about 3 hours in the county recorder’s office today, just looking at the liens that are tied to the property.  I even found one error that is on the title, which is a good thing.  There is a lien attached to the wholesale property that really belongs to another house.  Someone who wrote the note for a different property, put the correct address and wrong PIN.  The PIN which belongs to the wholesale house.  To be honest, I was proud of myself when I found that.  Sherlock Holmes is my kinfolk.  But anyway, I printed out all of the liens on the property (at the very low price of $1 per page!) and made copies and gave them to the seller.  I explained all of the liens and told him where to call for more information.  My worst fears are that since some of the liens were a surprise to the seller, the ones that aren’t errors will of course come out of his sale price, then at closing when he see’s what I’m making on the deal, he may refuse to close unless I fork over some dough.  This happens sometimes, surprised?  Me too.  I first heard of this two days ago as it came straight from the mouth of my lawyer.  I don’t want no parts of that.  That’s why I have new customized, titanium contract and addendum’s for all of my deals going forward.

Anyway, I’m praying that this deal will close.  Because I have have WHOLE LOTTA marketing to do with the proceeds.  You’ll see!  Then when it closes, I’ll give an in-depth analysis of what I did right, what I did wrong and I’ll do for next time.

- Peace Out

P.S.
I need to be in NYC next year to watch the ball drop in person.  Enough of this watching-it-on-TV stuff.  Happy New Year!

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Today in my 9-5 jungle, the company layed-off 30 people.  I think I just barely avoided the cuts this time and aint no telling if/when round-two comes around.  It’s not like I already didn’t have a fire lit under me, but this just added some gasoline.  Aint shit safe, when your livelihood is dependent upon a company you don’t own/control.

The company I work for had already implemented a company-wide furlough for December.  These lay-offs were completely out of the blue.  I’m glad I’m not out of work yet, but am sad for those who are now unemployed.  I mean, everyone can’t be their own boss and get into real estate investing…some people are stellar employees versus employers.  Where are they to turn when many other companies in the area aren’t hiring?  Damn.  I’m now witnessing what I’ve been reading about for the past year regarding the economy.

Before today, I had already mentally constructed backup plans for if/when I get fired/layed-0ff.  First-off, I’m thankful that I don’t live beyond my means.  Although, I do dump alot of cash into my business, it’s an investment that I just haven’t realized any returns on as of yet.  I don’t have LCD TV’s, motorcycles, XBOX’s, gold teeth, or none of that extra stuff.  I’m single with no dependents, a 98 Pontiac Grand-Am (paid for), and a month-to-month apartment lease.  If I were to lose my job tomorrow, I would most likely expand my strategy to acquiring rentals on owner financing.  There are a plethora of landlords that are looking to sell their rentals.  I’m sure a deal could be found with one or more of them.  And I’m confident that I could creatively out market them and fill the vacancies.  Why aren’t I doing this now?  I don’t have the capital for a necessary cushion to allot for the operating expenses of rental units and to take losses from time to time.  But if I didn’t have a choice, the risk would be moot.  And plus, with 45 hours a week freed-up, I’m confident I would make things work out.  Network more, partner-up, use OPM, etcetera.

But, as of now, I’m still sticking with the original plan.  And that is to wholesale until I have some capital stored and then transition to buy-hold strategies.

I’m going to get in touch with the lady landlord tomorrow that I’ve been dealing with.  I’ve given it some thought and I’m going to tell her over the phone that we don’t have a deal unless she can come down another 10K.  She probably won’t like that at all.  Then I’m going to FedEx a contract that’s for 15K less than what we verbally agreed upon.  Sounds pointless, but who knows…she might just sign-it and call me.  Besides, if I’m going to strikeout, I’m going to Babe-Ruth-point to the left field wall and swing out of my cleats.  Why not?

- I’m out

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So I ran into a snag with the property that I’m looking at.  I took a second look at it today, but this time with one of my buyers (who also happens to be an appraiser).  There are high-tensi0n lines in the backyard and apparently this will be a huge flag for a lender (FHA especially).  So, even if I get a cash buyer to wholesale to, they may be stuck with the property when/if they attempt to sell to a retail buyer.  This limits a buyers’ exit strategy severely, therefore it limits me.

Now that this power-line issue is clearly a hurdle, I may need to renegotiate the selling price.  I need to get a bit more wiggle room on this one so that the power-lines in the back yard won’t be such a deal breaker.

Now that I’ve had more time to reflect on things, it’s now clear that I don’t nearly have enough cash buyers.  I’m very glad that I don’t have this property under contract yet, because I would’ve contracted too high of a price.  I’d rather the seller sell to someone else than for me to wrap the property up under contract and have to bail.

To get more cash buyers, I’m going to exploit CraigsList on a national scale.  I’m thinking of using an auto-posting software, such as CL Bot Pro, to post ads about Wholesale Properties in Champaign, Illinois.  Also, to complement those efforts, I’m thinking of hiring a University of Illinois grad-student to perform some extensive research on the residential real estate rental market in Champaign, Illinois.  Perhaps, have the student compile some information, statistics, and record a video presentation that would be PRO-invest-in-Champaign.  Post the video to CraigsList, a dedicated squeeze-page, and elsewhere on the web.  I think this would do the trick for drawing buyers to this market.  Actually, the more I type about this…it’s a done deal.  I’m about to do it.  I only have 363 days, no time to waste.  I need to launch a separate website for this or perhaps just give my Schwaps company blog a makeover and incorporate these changes.  Perhaps, also create an eBook incentive for the sign-up.  I’ll polish this idea over the holiday and I plan to have something up by next Monday.

I just remembered that I’m supposed to be doing Accountability Mondays’.  Okay, this time I’m putting this in my Outlook calendar, so I won’t forget again.

I’m out!  Happy Turkey Day!

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It’s been a while since my last post.  Took some time to reflect on what I’m doing, what’s working, what isn’t and to restrategize.  No burnout, just always striving to work smart. The hiatus is over.

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I’ve got an action packed 7 days approaching:

Tomorrow I meet with the lady I mentioned in my last post whose house I targeted with one of my direct mail letters.  My Realtor/Investor colleague and I took a look at the property last Friday.  Man was that thang tore-up.  It will need a new roof, new windows, new kitchen, a new whole bunch of stuff.  But the good thing is that this is the worst house on the street.  All of the neighboring houses look great.  I have some comps, a CMA, and an estimate of repairs to accompany my offer.  So this should take the shell-shock out of the offer.  I think she is expecting an offer close to retail minus just a few thousand in repairs…I hope not.

Tomorrow evening, I’m meeting with the Tax Lien investor who I created the screen-scrape for of the County Assessors’ website.  The scrape just referenced each property by parcel number and extracted the homeowner name, property address, mailing address, market value of land, market value of building.  He mainly wanted this done so that he’d know going into the tax sale which properties have a building attached.  In the past he had inadvertently purchased the tax liens on ponds and vacant land.  I even went a step further and computed some ratios for him in excel, a tax/value ratio.  The lower the ratio the better as in a small amount tax lien could possibly result in a high dollar property.  There’s also some other stuff that I hooked up too.  I think I’ll do a BiggerPockets.com post about Tax Lien research and such on Thursday.  The sale is this Wednesday morning and I’m going to check it out.  I’m interested to see how this goes down. I’ve heard of the fast pace of these things.  I’ll get some video footage if I can.

I now have 5 different classified ads out and because of my nifty tracking methods, I know which paper is yielding the best results thus far.  And that is the American Classifieds/Thrifty Nickel.  My phone is blowing up with people calling from this paper.  And I must say, I love the ad that I placed.  I took the idea from a Preston Ely ebook I purchased a while back.  The ad says:

I Buy Houses CA$H, Quick Close, All These Other Ads Are Jokes! Call Justin @ 217.123.1234

The bad thing is that alot of the people who are calling on this ad, have properties way out in the sticks.  I wasn’t expecting that.  I can’t spread myself all over central Illinois researching different areas and trying to become an expert in them, just not feasible.

I had this one guy who owns a rental in the boonies call me 7 times today.  That’s right SEVEN times.   He left a message the first time and couldn’t wait for me to get back in touch with him.  I was thinking I had a really motivated seller on my hands.  I call him back and this kid wants 3k less than full retail!?  I told him that he may be better suited for a Realtor (I don’t have time to waste), but then he started rebutting and says maybe we can work something out.  I really think that this guy is desperate but just doesn’t want to show his hand.  He kinda already did by calling me SEVEN times in an 8 hour time span.  We’ll see about this one.  I honestly couldn’t care less (for some reason very positive things happen for me when I don’t try too hard).

Next Monday, I’m going to the REBarCamp in Indianapolis.  This event is basically a conference where real estate professionals come together and exchange ideas and techniques for implementing web 2.0/3.0 into their business.  I see it as a marketing workshop.  Should be enlightening.

It’s 10:35pm and I’ve still got a gang of stuff to do before I call it a night.  I burn so much midnight oil, I should buy stock in this s**t. Peace Out

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Accountability, Business, Internet Marketing Assembly Hall, CareerBuilder, Champaign, CraigsList, property scout, Real Estate, saint louis