Archive for March, 2008
SREC Short Sale Video Overview
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 | Real Estate Investing, Short Sales | 16 Comments
Josh Cantwell of Strategic Real Estate Coach begins his blog video series for getting you up and running and generating cash from real estate investing in Short Sales.
How The Referral Renaissance was born
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 | Real Estate Investing, Short Sales | 3 Comments
By Josh Cantwell:
As a mountain climber in my twenties, I was once taught how to dress a figure eight knot through the saying, “Start hard and finish easy.”
The same is true in real estate investing. The start can be hard, but if you make smart decisions, you can set your business up much sooner than you think.
You see I struggled to learn this business just four short years ago.
As a financial planner, I wore a pin-stripped suit sold mutual funds, retirement plans, IRAs and insurance. I was on the road all day every day driving to client appointments and businesses: prospecting, marketing, making sales, gathering new clients and managing customer assets.
In the fall of 2003 I realized that I needed to make a move. I didn’t enjoy what I was doing–– there had to be something better.
I began “treasure hunting” for real estate. I attended a few REIA meetings. I picked up some books. I looked at REOs. I bought a few courses on Ebay. I kept asking myself, “How am I going to get started with this thing (real estate investing) and how would I make money?”
My first breakthrough came when I attended a Robert Allen event. The market was hot and people were making all kinds of money in real estate, easy money –– but he recommended we take the time to learn about the preforeclosure niche.
Although we were short on knowledge, my business partner, Greg and I, forged ahead. We found a few pre-foreclosures and started negotiating short sales using the basic tools from a course we bought online.
It seemed to go so slow and there was so much uncertainty: I wanted some sort of magic pill that would make this business easier.
And then it happened . . . that AHAA! Moment that has been huge in taking us to the next level.
I was at a REIA meeting and I mentioned that we invested in preforeclsoures and short sales and that if anyone in the audience had a short sale lead and didn’t want to work it that I would take on those leads.
After the meeting I had a few people come up to me with their cards who said that they had what I needed . . . leads to preforeclosures.
Referral based marketing ––something that had been a cornerstone of my business in financial planning. . .
and The Referral Renaissance was born.
We began closing a deal a month. Then a deal a week. Then two a week. All of a sudden it seemed like the “closer” for the title company we used on our deals had his own desk in our office ––he was there so often.
In Robert Ringer’s Winning Through Intimidation he shares his LEAPFROG THEORY. He states that the pursuit of success is not determined by how long you’ve been doing something ––what matters is TAKING ACTION. Those people that take action can LEAPFROG their competition no matter how long their competition has been around.
We did just that.
Through referral based marketing we jumped over and ahead of guys who had been investing for 20 years. In six months we were buying and selling more real estate than they had in the past 10 years.
A referral based marketing campaign will do that for you.
Does it take time? Yep. Do you have to have confidence in approaching people? Yep.
Is it easier to just send out postcards or bandit signs? Sure.
You see, there’s no magic pill.
But if you start hard, and learn center of influence marketing (referrals), you’ll not only finish easy –– your business will flourish.
Time equals money in more ways than one…
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 | Real Estate Investing, Short Sales | 5 Comments
By Josh Cantwell:
Have you ever kept track of the activities that make you money? Do you know what they are?
If you took a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle and put the revenue producing activities on the right side and everything else on the left, which would have more stuff?
Let me take an educated guess . . . the left side of that page should be loaded with the minutia that makes up each of your days. That’s because in the real estate investment business there are only a few revenue producing activities: buying houses, selling houses, OR developing systems to do both –– That’s it.
Now you might think that everything you do in your business is a revenue producing activity, after all, everything is interconnected, right?
Wrong.
Here’s a short list of those things we consider to be non-revenue producing activities: checking emails, paying bills, rehabbing houses with your own two hands, surfing the Internet, reading real estate books, putting out signs, sending out marketing, figuring out title issues, putting lists together, answering the phones, writing case notes, calling contractors ––and I could go on and on.
You should be getting the point . . .
While each item on that list may be important to your business, they don’t necessarily translate into dollars. Revenue producing activities on our list include: buying properties; locating properties to buy or getting in front of people to buy their properties; developing new systems to expedite the buying process and put more leads in your funnel; conducting BPOs for short sale deals; coming up with new marketing strategies to build your buyers list; and selling properties by contacting your buyers list.
Everything else is a non-revenue producing activity that can be delegated to someone else. Accountants can pay the bills; assistants can send out postcards and answer the phones; Realtors can put out signs, implement marketing, stage houses and schedule showing appointments; contractors can rehab houses (probably better than you can anyway) and negotiators can call lenders to facilitate the short sale offers.
So what should be your objective? It should be to spend as much time as possible doing those activities in your business that are critical to it’s success –– in other words, doing those things that can’t be outsourced to others because they are too important.
How much time do you spend right now doing revenue producing activities? Make the list, check it twice. Then make a commitment to doing only those activities on the right side of the list. Understanding how to focus on revenue producing activities is difference between someone who owns and runs a successful business and someone who has a business that owns them.
How do you make sure you stay focussed on revenue producing activities?
Referral Renaissance is about to take over the market
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | Short Sales | 6 Comments
By Josh Cantwell:
Read on to learn how to get your copy of our new report that is so new (I literally just finished it) we don’t even have a cover designed for it!
One of the most exciting things to ever come out of pre-foreclosure and short sale real estate investing is about to take over the market.
As investors what is the one thing that can make or break your business?
Acquiring leads right? New opportunities . . .
What if you could get all the leads you ever wanted in the pre-foreclosure market and pay absolutely nothing for them?
Picture this. A Real Estate agent has a property listed at $400,000 only to find out the seller actually owes $456,000 and is five months away from the foreclosure auction. What’s a real estate agent to do? They need a buyer right? Need someone who is an expert at negotiating short sales with lenders right? Need someone with experience working these transactions out in a timely fashion.
Hmmm…… a buyer and someone who can negotiate a short sale.
Perfect opportunity right? RIGHT?! RIGHT ON!
Now think about this seriously. How many of these opportunities are out there? We are in the middle of the worst housing meltdown in a generation and homeowners are going into foreclosure at an alarming rate ––the highest rate of foreclosure since the Great Depression.
As a real estate investor for the past five years who has bought, fixed and sold at least 250 houses during that time, I have never seen a better time to make money in real estate than today. What? Some of you are saying. . .Yes, that’s right.
Here’s the reason. In the past it was much tougher to find possible houses to buy and sell. It was so tough to find a good deal to work. Whether it was a short sale or an REO those deals were really difficult to get into your pipeline.
Today those deals are available in abundance.
Real estate agents and other referral sources have almost an unlimited number of short sale candidates that an investor can pursue. Real estate agents all over the US have listings that are over leveraged and in foreclosure. Title companies and real estate attorneys know people going into foreclosure everyday. Mortgage brokers are trying to refinance homeowners in trouble.
They are just dying to find someone who will make an offer to buy the property and successfully negotiate a short sale and stop the foreclosure.
As an investor we are looking for these houses in which we can make an offer, gain control of the house and quick-turn it for a profit ––Buy and sell quickly and cash that huge profit check.
Why spend tons of money on new leads through direct mail, postcards, voice broadcast, billboards and signs when all the leads you’d ever want are free and waiting for you?
Just ask.
Real estate agents are anxious to get to the closing table ASAP because most of them ––the ones that are left––haven’t been to the closing table or received a commission check for months.
When I started teaching other investors to do this business back in 2004 I never imagined getting new deals into my pipeline would be so easy.
And the properties come with a built in real estate agent who can sell the property, too.
The Referral Renaissance, a report that I just completed, will be out today –– that’s right TODAY. Forty pages of rock solid content about how to build a ridiculously profitable real estate investing business without spending a dime on marketing and advertising. Click here to download your copy NOW from FreeShortSaleStuff.com.
There have been over 20,000 people who have downloaded The Short Sale Manifesto since May 2007. Over 30,000 people will get this new free report about building a lucrative and rewarding pre-foreclosure and short sale business by referral only.
The foreclosure crisis will not last forever nor will the short sale referral. The window on this opportunity will one day close. Once the market rebounds the number of short sale candidates will slowly decline as will the opportunity.
Have you ever worked a short sale with a real estate agent? Did it work out? How did you do? Make money? Crash and burn?
Let me know your experiences here on the Strategic Real Estate Coach blog by commenting below and I will get you all your answers.
Here’s the question I hear from new real estate investors all the time:
Monday, March 24th, 2008 | Short Sales | No Comments
By Josh Cantwell:
How do I get started?
Most investors looking to pursue real estate just don’t know where to begin.
What courses should I take?
Where do I find money to start marketing?
Where do I find money to fund deals?
What niche should I focus on?
With today’s market there’s no doubt that the foreclosure arena is the niche to be in, but arena is pretty broad –– which one of the many aspects of the foreclosure business should you pursue?
Rehab’s?
Subject to’s?
Short sales?
REO’s?
Auctions?
Let me help you clear some things up.
The number of foreclosures is sky high; Banks are going under left and right. The number of houses in some stage of foreclosure is at the highest rate since the GREAT DEPRESSION.
We’re talking Herbert Hoover, the Stock Market Crash of ’29, and the Dust Bowl years.
It’s that bad.
Subject to’s are almost impossible to complete right now. Why would anyone take over a house subject to when the value of that property is declining and the mortgage on the property is increasing because of foreclosures costs?
Auctions . . . lenders are buying back nearly 97.5 percent of all the houses that go to auction. Once the opening biding starts the lenders are out bidding just about every investor at the auction because their loan balance is so incredibly high.
REOs and Rehab’s can be a great opportunity, you just need the cash, or credit and the expertise to be able to buy right, rehab right and sell right. New investors often times lack the expertise to complete such complicated tasks.
Short Sales . . .there has never been in the history of our financial markets a better time to get involved in this niche. Banks are looking to unload their inventory of bad loans in a hurry. Investors are getting houses for 50 percent of their values and quick-turning them for profits to retail buyers and wholesaling them to other investors.
If I were starting out today I would forget subject to’s, forget auctions and head straight for short sales and REO rehab’s. The markets dictate where the money can be made. You just need to understand the market and the cycle.
Right now, everything is lined up to give those who take the time to learn about short sales and rehabs an amazing opportunity. Money is still cheap to get; buyers can still get loans because the Federal Reserve has continued to cut interest rates.
If you have not yet read The Short Sale Manifesto, now’s the time.
Go to www.shortsalemanifesto.com and download your free copy.
No reason to start by paying thousands of dollars for a course you are not even sure you will use or need.
START WITH THE MANIFESTO and your journey to capitalizing on a niche many think they know, but few understand, will be on its way!
Recent Posts
Categories
