Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

This topic is near and dear to my heart. When I started my RE career, I heard about the necessity of finding private lenders. In fact, I even found two. But then I stopped. For four years I PROCRASTINATED. I didn't get it!!! For four years I continued to go to banks and jump through their hoops. I also had used hard money lenders but found them VERY expensive.

It wasn't until I quit my J.O.B. and found that banks wouldn't loan me money that I realized that I needed to bring private lenders into my life quickly.

When I took that step, everything changed for the better.

What are some of the advantages of using private money for your real estate investments? Well, if you haven't decided whether or not to use private money, I decided to lay it on the line here for everyone to see.

• You can get money fast & you can buy at a discount.
• No credit check & doesn't show up on your credit report.
• Unlimited funds
• Control because you set the rules.
• Help your friends, family & associate. Meet a great group of people. Read More...

          In my business of rehabbing and reselling house, it’s impossible to make any money without the right contractors: those who get the job done on time, on budget, and right.

          Novice retailers usually don’t have such people at their fingertips, so how can you build a team of good contractors? The answer is by following all eight of the critical prescreening steps below.

Ask the contractor how long they have been in the business. I prefer at least five years of experience in the trades. I want a contractor who has seen and repaired every strange, odd, and crazy thing that could be wrong with a house. Experienced contractors know how to estimate all tough projects and experienced professionals can give an accurate price to fix any problem.

Inexperienced contractors, on the other hand, under-estimate repairs to get the business, and then they try to push their mistake on the property owner by upping the price halfway through construction.  When this happens, you need to stand firm and say no. NO is the most powerful word in the dictionary, and a rehabber needs to use this tool.&nb
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Lease Options and Subject Tos, aka “Getting the Deed” are two very popular ways to purchase real estate with little or no money down. Acquiring investment real estate can be handled with many different approaches, but these two techniques can be implemented with little or no money down in most incidences.

A lease option is a technique which involves gaining ‘control’ of a property, but not owning it.  It is the right to possess a property now and purchase that property at some future date with terms you define when you buy it.

A “Subject To” is getting the deed to a property without getting a mortgage for the home.  Instead, the seller signs over the deed to his home ‘subject to’ the existing mortgage. The buyer in this case makes the mortgage payments on the old loan but does not need to get a mortgage themselves to acquire this home.

Both of these techniques usually require little or no money down.  In both of these techniques it is possible for the buyer to get money from the seller or the purchaser (or both!) in the beginning of the transaction.  These techniques, when used properly, will provide for huge profits.  They are both awesome and when used hand-in-hand by invest
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Brandon and Amanda Neely are the President and CEO of Wealth Wisdom Financial. They make financial planning more accessible through podcasting and through developing personalized financial strategies for individuals and couples, as well as profitability strategies for small businesses. They work virtually to help real estate investors all over the United States to create smart, stable financial futures. They reside in the Oakley neighborhood of Cincinnati.

“A banker is a fellow who will lend you his umbrella when the sun is shining but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.” - Mark Twain

Ain’t that the truth? Now, let me ask you one of the most powerful questions, “What’s the economic forecast?”

As investors, we’ve been taught to use “other people’s money” (OPM) as leverage to help us gain traction in real estate. Another powerful question: when OPM is your strat
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There is a Major Flaw in Real Estate Investing that very few people want to admit, and fewer still have the answers for how to overcome it.

The major flaw with Real Estate Investing is not the education. There are a tremendous number of great educators out there, who provide really great content. It is also not that you didn’t study the courses and didn’t learn from them. I know that many of you did genuinely go through the courses and then try to follow them, giving it your full effort. I followed that path too.

I have been a Real Estate Investor for over 35 years and an educator for over 25 years. I have completed over 2,000 Deals. What I found by working with (beginning and experienced) Real Estate Investors for that long, is that for most, fear comes up and stops them from getting what they want. There is too much of a gap around lack of money to get through the fear about how you are going to invest in real estate. For many, it is just too much to overcome.

This Real Estate Investment Business is so incredible, it provides so many benefits for so many people. It can provide an incredible living for your family and a secure financial future. It provides people with home ownership and incredible opportunities for themselves. It is truly a business
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Let me first tell you a little bit about my background. A few years ago, I was buying as many homes as I could with traditional financing. But when the banks started telling me that I couldn’t buy any more homes, I started buying homes creatively – thru “subject-to” and “sandwich lease options” methods. In the course of 18 months, I bought over 16 homes!

Yes, I owned 16 homes!!! I thought I had it made. I was making $100 - $200 net cash flow on each house. My passive income was growing, and I was steadily getting out of the rat race. I was a “Successful Real Estate Investor” now – or so I thought!

But guess what? I quickly discovered that while I might have been Equity Rich… I was seriously Cash Poor. I had lots of equity, but no cash to pay the bills!

(How many of you know - you can’t eat “equities”?)

But let’s look at my situation a little deeper… All that equity I thought I had in those 16 homes… was a HYPOTHETICAL MYTH. All the “equity” I thought I had&
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Many people think and have been taught that land is risky, expensive, doesn’t have cash flow and takes a long time to convert into profits. And in this article, I want to focus on the one thing I hear mentioned about land all the time and that irks me the most when I hear people talk about it. And that is that:

“LAND DOESN’T CASH FLOW”

While it technically is correct that land itself does not cash flow the same way a rental house cash flows, there are some distinct ways to make land cash flow.

And when I am saying you can make land cash flow, I am not particularly talking about traditional income land like Farmland or land with billboards or cell phone towers on them.

Certainly, that works too, and it is absolutely possible to take a piece of land in a city and rent it out as a parking lot, a storage place, or even as a place to put a cell phone tower or billboard on. There are many land owners who have made a nice steady income by buying a piece of land in rural areas next to an interstate and then either fixed or non-fixed (trailers or old trucks with advertising surface) and renting out the surface to businesses in the area forever. Just a few of them make more income a month than most people earn in their jobs. Read More...

The coffee shop is quiet for a change. The normal morning bustle has yielded to a lull, giving the baristas a chance to enjoy a break and catch up on some cleaning before the lunch rush.

I’m only partially aware of what’s going on around me because at the moment, I’m busy obsessing over my Ameritrade account. I’m WILLING the number to go up just a few more cents. The problem is it’s been going in the wrong direction for months.

My obsession is interrupted by my phone. It’s a call from a tenant living in one of my rentals who has a toilet that won’t stop running. She’s already told me twice and I keep forgetting about it.

With promises to stop by before the day is over, I barely hang up when I get another call, this time from an investor with a mobile home park deal that I’ve been putting off for weeks because I haven’t made time to look at the numbers and see if it’s a deal worth doing.

Meanwhile, my email pings to remind me of a wholesale deal I’ve been working on, and the seller is wondering when we’re going to close.

Just then, a commercial comes on the TV about the excellent investing
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Getting money from private lenders is surprisingly easy, once you understand how to find and talk to them, but there’s another very important aspect of private money that touches on legal issues that you need to know about. Let’s go over a few of the basics of how to handle private money right, once you get it:

1. Touching the Money.
2. Co-mingling funds.
3. When do the payments start and end?

1. Touching the Money

Sometimes when people hear the kind of interest I pay, they get so excited about loaning me money that they want to hand me a big check right on the spot. This is not the correct or legal way to handle the situation.

I know that some of you are so eager to launch this new phase of growing your business that you really want to grab that first check, but don’t do it.

Here is why: you have promised the lender that the money is secured by real estate. So, legally, you shouldn’t be in possession of unsecured money. Until there’s a deed ready to secure it against, don’t hold it, don’t put it in your bank account—don’t touch it at all. <
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We all know that developing an effective marketing strategy is essential to getting any business off the ground, especially as we roll into this changing market.

Educating yourself and discovering how to locate and motivate potential sellers to contact you is a must in making your real estate business a success. You must be able to locate prospects who want to do business with you.

You must find the sellers who need to sell, not just want to sell their properties. This is essential to your success as a real estate investor in any market, but will also determine how your next 12-18 months look: will you get lots of good deals in this softer market, or waste the opportunity?

Know this: marketing is also a numbers game. The more leads that come in, the more opportunities you will have to make deals. You won’t buy every deal that comes your way, but when you develop a “marketing machine” that brings in quality leads, you will be able to pick and choose the deals you want to do.

Let’s talk about QUALITY leads. You cannot afford to waste your money-making time on unqualified leads! Using a shotgun approach such as signage, business c
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