Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

         Way back in the mid-90s, I went to a workshop taught by the great Pete Fortunato.

          Several times during this event, he mentioned deals he’d negotiated or financed with the help of what he called “financial friends”.

          At the time, I had two thoughts about this: first, “Why does a guy who’s been in real estate for 30 years and is probably richer than Croesus need other people’s money to do deals?”.

          And second, “That’s great for him—he has decades of experience, so I bet he both knows a lot of people and is able to impress them with all the deals he’s done. I wonder how long it’ll be before some of these ‘financial friends’ find me?”

          As time has passed, and experience and observation has filled in the blanks, I’ve discovered the answers to both questions.

          First, no full-time investor EVER has enough cash to do all the deals they’ll ever find.

          At the height of my father’s real estate empire, he had $40,000 a month in positive cash flow but was still buying 2-3 houses a month—one for cash an ... Read More…

Begin by teaching them about the lifestyle choice they’ll get to make each day of their lives: the choice of being rich, poor, or middle class. Once they make that decision, show them how they can use real estate as a vehicle for reaching their chosen destiny.

Let’s face it… for almost everyone starting out, investing in real estate is just another job. Part time, yes, but still a job that takes additional time away from family and friends. Rare is the first-time investor who has the available funds to jump into rehabbing or buying rental units without another job to support them. Most of us get started as real estate entrepreneurs by doing real estate “on the side” in the evenings and on weekends while keeping our day jobs to meet our families’ financial needs.

My wife and I got into the real estate business almost accidentally. Out of necessity, we would buy junker houses to live in because that was all we could afford. Then we would fix them up while we lived in them. As the family grew, we would buy another house with more bedrooms and baths and fix that one up. All this was happening while our children were young.

I got started as a real estate entrepreneur when a friend of mine who rehabbed houses talked me into buying a house at auction to renovate. My wife and I bought that first investment property and went about renovating it ourselves. Very quickly I was declared by the family to be an “absentee father.” My wife ... Read More…

You got into this business for freedom, right?

Money freedom , yes. But also time freedom, and life-on-your-terms freedom.

But here’s a truth a lot of us don’t realize early enough—and it handicaps us:

Independence isn’t…Independent

At every stage of this country’s history, it’s been groups of people, acting together, that have secured the blessings of liberty for themselves and others.

From overthrowing British rule to ending the practice of slavery to suffrage to the civil rights movement and on through today, new freedoms have only come when enough people got together for a common cause, organized to achieve what they wanted.

Guess what? Personal financial freedom is ALSO a team sport.

No one builds wealth in a vacuum. No one protects their property rights to it by themselves. And no one makes it to the top without a whole bunch of people who have  their back.

Wanna do new things without messing up? You need vetted education and advisors.

Wanna scale? You need team members and financial friends.

Wanna get past the inevitable mistakes? You need partners and allies.

Wanna keep what you’ve built? You need a team that fights for your rights when the government comes knocking.

That’s us.

COREE isn’t just some “club”.

We’re a community of real people building real freedom—and making sure nobody takes it away.

We teach each other, challenge each other, help each other.

We h ... Read More…

Think back for a minute—what was your first thought the first time you saw one of those handwritten signs at the highway entrance? You know, the one that says, “Handyman Special Must Sale [sic] $87,000 555-5555”? Or the first time you saw a bandit sign that said, “I Buy Houses Close in 7 Days”?

Unless you happened to have encountered one of these messages for the first time after you’d already started studying real estate, your reaction was probably a mixture of:

• Suspicion (“Is this for real? Who tries to buy houses by putting a sign on a telephone pole?”)
• Confusion (“Handyman’s special WHAT? What are they trying to sale [sic] me, exactly?”)
• Mistrust (“How can they possibly buy a house in 7 days when it took my bank 45 to close?”)
• Curiosity (“Who puts these things up, agents?”)

Today, of course, you completely understand the goal of such marketing, because today you live in a bubble populated by other real estate entrepreneurs who eat, breath, and sleep deals. Now that you understand what a handyman’s special is, and that a 7-day closing is in fact possible with other people’s money, your emotional reaction is more likely to be one of jealousy (“Dang, I wish I’d put my sign there”) than of confusion.

But—and this is important—You. Are. Not. Your. Customer.

Your customer, especially your SELLER customer, is NOT familiar with the worl ... Read More…

Most real estate investors eventually experience a deal that should have worked. The numbers penciled out, the assumptions were reasonable, and the market supported the strategy. 

And yet, somewhere along the way, the outcome fell short of expectations. Maybe the partnership became strained, maybe the timing was off, or maybe a decision made under pressure created ripple effects that weren’t obvious at the time. When that happens, we usually explain it in familiar terms: inexperience, bad luck, or lessons learned. But after working with hundreds of business owners and real estate investors, I’ve noticed a quieter pattern that rarely gets discussed. Many of these outcomes weren’t caused by bad math. They were caused by decisions made under stress. 

Every investment decision is made by a human nervous system before it’s made by a spreadsheet. When uncertainty rises—interest rate changes, compressed timelines, or volatile headlines—the body responds first. Heart rate increases, attention narrows, and urgency creeps in. From that state, even disciplined investors begin to behave differently. Some move faster than they normally would, pushing deals forward to avoid missing out. Others slow down too much, delaying decisions because everything feels risky. Still others avoid looking closely at problems, hoping they resolve themselves. These patterns don’t show up in underwriting models, but they shape outcomes all the same.&nbs ... Read More…

Running a real estate business can be incredibly rewarding — but it also comes with risk. Not just market risk or deal risk. People risk.

What happens if you can’t operate the business? Most owners intend to put a plan in place. Few actually get around to it.

And when something unexpected happens, families are left trying to figure out who runs the business, what needs to be done, and how to keep income flowing.

The good news? Making such a plan isn’t complicated. It just needs to be done.

The Two Phases of a Succession Plan

Phase 1: Short-Term Disruption (3–6 Months)

This is the “something happened” scenario — an injury, stroke, heart attack, or other temporary incapacity. In this phase, the goal is simple: keep the business running.

That means:

• Identifying someone who can step in temporarily
• Making sure they’re willing and capable
• Creating a way to pay them

How Do You Fund That?

If your business has reserves, great. If not — or if using reserves creates strain — there are insurance-based solutions designed to provide cash when you need it:

• Accident Plans – Lump-sum payments for covered accidents
• Stroke Plans – Coverage specific to stroke events
• Heart Attack Plans – Lump-sum support for cardiac events
• Cancer Plans – Financial protection tied to diagnosis
• Critical Illness Plans – Broader coverage combining multiple scenarios

These plans provide immediate liqui ... Read More…

My name is Robert, and I’m a Real Estate Association member. I have a confession to make:

I don’t want to quit my job. 

That felt a little strange to admit at first, especially because so much of what you hear online—and from a lot of real estate “gurus”—is about escaping your job as quickly as possible. Before I joined a Real Estate Association, I assumed that was the mindset I’d find there, too. I figured people might look at a job as something to get rid of as fast as possible. 

But here’s the thing: I actually like mine. 

Like a lot of people, I have a solid career, good benefits, and a financial life that already works. I’m not looking to fix anything. What I am looking for is a way to keep that stability going long-term—especially into retirement. I don’t want to replace my income today. I want to build income for later. 

That’s what brought me to real estate. 

I’m not chasing quick cash or trying to flip my way out of a job. I’m interested in building assets that produce steady, reliable income over time—ideally the kind that doesn’t depend on me working every day to keep it going. 

And that’s where being part of a Real Estate Association has been surprisingly valuable. 

It’s introduced me to people I wouldn’t have met otherwise—investors, lenders, vendors, and other professionals who each play a role in ho ... Read More…

I want to tell you about a client of mine who is a rehabber. A few months ago we sat down to clean up her books. One question I always ask my new clients is "How much have you been putting on your personal card?"

She didn't know. Not really. One of her subcontractors would send a worker to Home Depot for a missing fitting, a box of screws, another gallon of paint. She would just have them charge her personal card because it was faster than sorting out who should pay. She figured she'd catch up later.

When we went back through three months of statements, the number was just over $12,000. Twelve thousand dollars in one quarter!!!! Money she could have billed back to her clients as reimbursable expenses. Money she never saw again because she didn't have a system to track it, and by the time the job closed out, nobody remembered what was for which property.

Another piece that she didn’t think of…. because those purchases were sitting on her personal card and never made it into her books, she wasn't deducting them as business expenses either.

If any part of that story is resonating, this article is for you. Below is what I'd tell any investor, rehabber, landlord, flipper, wholesaler to put in place this week.

1. Get a Home Depot and Lowe's Pro account. Today.

This is the single fastest win in this whole article and it takes about ten minutes. Both stores offer free Pro accounts that let you:

• Attach a business card on file
• Pull purchase history
• Tag recei ... Read More…

What would happen if you were to step away from your business thoroughly?  

If that question just gave you the chills, then I have a few more for you:  

• Do you feel your business owns you instead of you owning the business?  
• Do you see poor communication in your team?  
• Do you feel compelled to be involved in every business-related decision?  
• Do you have a problem getting the results you desire from your staff? 
• Are you an entrepreneur looking to scale your business but don’t know how you’ll manage any more than you’re already doing?  

I was once told (while struggling with some of these questions myself) that your business is not measured by its success when you are there but by its success when you’re not there.  

It’s true. However, many real estate investors run businesses that cannot operate without them or, more likely, that they cannot release to run without them.   

Every business needs structure and organization, which grows as the company grows. 

For your company to grow, you must add more people to your structure. These people depend on your business for their livelihood, as will you. Think about it:   

When you first started, the entire burden was on you. You were the system. That is not a reali ... Read More…

Just this morning, I was having yet another conversation with a fellow educator about the frustration we have with students who have the brains, education, and resources to make deals—but who, month after month, do everything BUT make deals. 

We discussed people who spend big bucks on courses, set up their LLCs, draft land trusts, buy marketing/accounting/management software, attend REIA meetings religiously, have a color-coded filing system, get their real estate license, start a buyer’s list, concoct every conceivable question about every conceivable scenario in a deal… 

…in fact, do everything that it takes to be a successful real estate entrepreneur except make offers. 

Many of these people are successful in their other endeavors; many have good jobs, nice houses, great kids, you name it. But they can never seem to get to the point of actually buying a property, no matter what we tell them or how much time passes. 

What many of you seem to be waiting for is that NEXT bootcamp or the NEXT investor meeting or the NEXT meeting with their coach. 

And what you’re hoping for is that you’ll read something, hear something, or learn something that makes all the fear go away, makes you completely sure of yourself, and makes you 100% confident that the next step you take is the right one. 

I’m here to tell you, from the perspective of almost 2 decades’ experience, that the day you’re waitin ... Read More…