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.
• Get some of your profit when you buy.
• Cash flow
• Very flexible;

Example: Do you want to do monthly payments simple interest or monthly payments & amortize or no payments and will pay in full when property sells.

• Can make offers with confidence because money is a phone call away.
• Can structure quick and more profitable exit strategies.
• Saves you money.
• Cheaper than a partner.
• Fund the purchase of defaulted paper.
• It is the foundation ... Read More…

          I think that for almost everyone, there are 2 sets of priorities in life: the things you HAVE to do (go to work, clean the house, pet the dog, pet the husband, etc) and the things you don’t have to do, but which bring much greater long-term rewards (flip enough deals to quit the job, buy a house, train the dog, train the husband).

          The first set of goals is relatively easy to accomplish, if only because day-today life doesn’t proceed very well without them. The second set is more difficult, because, in all honesty, your life won’t change much if you don’t flip a house this week. That particular lack of change should, of course, be viewed as a BAD thing, but if everything else is going OK (you haven’t lost your job or been faced with a giant medical bill or something), it’s not a bad enough thing to spur you into action next week.

          In an already-full life (which I think most of us would agree that we have), it’s often difficult to find the time to do something that will eventually lead us to a better life; it’s so much easier to tick off the “must dos” and put off the “wanna dos” until tomorrow.

The Must Dos in Your Life vs. the Wanna Dos

          For example, the “must dos” in my business life include ma ... Read More…

Myths about Land Trusts

By: Mr. Land Trust^®, Randy Hughes 

I write and teach a lot about the many benefits to using a Land Trust to hold title to real estate investments. There is a lot of misinformation in the marketplace about Land Trusts and a lot of bad advice given regarding these title holding trusts. After using these trusts for more than 40 years, I have found that the myths outnumber the facts. In this article I will dispel some of the myths that I hear over and over.

MYTH: Only bare land can be put into a Land Trust

TRUTH: Any real estate (or real estate related asset) can be titled in a Land Trust

MYTH: My lender will not let me close my deal using a Land Trust (LT)

TRUTH: This depends on if you are using borrowed funds from a lender that must qualify you in the secondary market. If you must meet secondary market guidelines it is true that you must close the deal in your name, but you can put the property into a Land Trust the day after closing. Once you have 10 secondary market loans (the maximum allowed) you must use a portfolio lender and they will let you close using your Land Trust.

Note: Bank of America WILL let you close four secondary market loans using a Land Trust to take initial title. However, you must use an Illinois Land Trust and the property must be in Illinois.

MYTH: Do I have to get a tax ID number for my LT?

TRUTH: The answer is no. Nor do you have to register your Trust Agreement with anyone.

MYTH: You can't do a Short Sale ... 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.  It’s the contractor’s job to know their business well enough to make a good estimate. If they don’t, it is their problem not yours.

Ask for three references from the last three major projects that the contractor has rece ... Read More…

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 investors are almost an unbeatable pair!

This short article is not meant to give details of each technique, but rather to show when you could consider either of them.  If you don’t understand how to document and pro ... Read More…

 When it comes to acquiring properties, rehabbers have different potential avenues to pursue for good deals: buy direct from property owners, purchase from a wholesaler (who is flipping the contract to you via assignment or a double close), buy at auctions, etc.

 When a wholesaler flips a real estate contract, he is transferring the rights of a purchase agreement to another buyer (you). The process involves finding a property for sale, signing a contract for the real estate, then flipping that contract to a new buyer to make a profit.

 Rehabbers looking for good real estate leads, i.e. identifying motivated sellers who are prepared to sell  their property below current fair market value, can be very expensive. High qualify leads can cost hundreds of dollars each. Unless you have a highly sophisticated lead-gathering system in place, you can spend large amounts of money and wind up with bad or no results. So, one big advantage of buying from wholesalers is that they do all the legwork finding deals, for which you pay them a fee. That way the rehabber can concentrate on what he does best: rehabbing (repairs, painting, cleaning up).

 A. Dealing with Wholesalers

Suppose you find a property you really want to fix/flip, but it is under contract with a wholesaler? Now what? Here are some options to contemplate:

1. Tell the wholesaler that it is vitally important that you deal directly with the property owner, and to be able to view the property fro ... Read More…

For decades, I’ve heard Pete Fortunato going on and on about his “financial friends” and “allies” and how important they’ve been to his enormous success in the real estate business.

As a relatively new investor, my limiting thought was, “Great, Pete, you’re a million years old [he was probably 45 at the time] and you’ve been doing this forever, and you have rich friends who’ve ALSO been doing this forever, who know that you’re super-experienced and able to perform.

Also, you’ve helped them with YOUR money or deals, so they help you with yours.

What in the world has this got to do with me? I don’t have the track record or the relationships with people with money that you have, nor the money to help THEM with THEIR deals, so move on and tell me how to buy houses with no money!”

Because I Just. Didn’t. Get it.

I thought that a “financial friend” was something like an actual friend or family member, who might, I don’t know, give you a loan at 0% interest just to help you get your first deal—a sort of angel with a checkbook who’d do whatever it took to get you the money you needed.

Or that it was a person in a mental rolodex of people who had money—like private lenders, or hard money lenders—who could be ‘convinced’ to give it to you IF you qualified and IF you were able to sell them on your deal.

And now that I’ve seen hun ... Read More…

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 strategy, who are the “other people”? Remember, leverage can work both ways - for and against you! And what do other people want so badly that they’re willing to part with their money and hand it to you? Were you just handed an umbrella on a sunny day?

When banks control the environment where your money lives, they win every time. 34% of all American income goes to servicing debt. If time is money, that means a full one-third of the day is spent working as slaves to a bank!

Think of how many folks you know who are in debt u ... Read More…

Insurance for “Subject To” properties is a commonly misunderstood challenge.

A “Subject To” deal is when you agree to purchase a property subject to the existing mortgage along with all other liens attached. The existing homeowner deeds the property to you and you take over making the payments to the lending institution. You do not assume the loan through the bank. It’s a popular creative investment strategy for real estate investors.

When it comes to insurance for “subject to” deals, some rules of thumb usually apply:

1. If you (or your entity) own, or have a financial “stake” in the property, be the “first named insured”. The first named insured is the primary recipient of any potential claim benefit or liability protection only.
2. A “loss payee” will have its interests protected in the event the property itself is damaged (a mortgagee is inherently BOTH).
3. If you decide to keep the “homeowner’s” policy in place and be named as the additional insured, be advised: if it is discovered that the ex-owner, the first-named insured in this case, no longer owns the property, expect the insurer to deny the claim based on the fact the policyholder no longer owns the property. Even if you manage the claim to be paid, you are not the entity to receive the proceeds, as you are not the first-named insured. If you did not attempt to be added as a loss payee as well, chan ... Read More…

Try not to roll your eyes too much when I say this: I was scared shirtless of seller negotiation for YEARS. It’s absolutely true: I have a constellation of nature and nurture traits that make my choice of professions kind of hilarious.

I’m waaaay on the end of the introvert/extrovert bell curve. My Meyers-Briggs profile is INTP. My DISC test says that my “I” is a 25 out of 100. If you don’t know what any of that means, it means that I am naturally extremely introverted.

Add to that the fact that I have a tendency to get very anxious over uncertainty—I try to run every scenario and every outcome mentally before I do anything—and you don’t exactly get a recipe for someone who’s a “natural negotiator”.

In the beginning, before I really understood seller psychology, or how to deal with the objections they throw out to offers, or, for that matter, how to deal with rejection without feeling like I must have messed up somehow, I literally lost, I don’t know, hundreds of deals to the fact that I couldn’t get out of my own head long enough to actually tell sellers what I’d like to pay them for their houses.

Drew LOOOOVES to tell the (sadly, true) story of my negotiation strategy back then: I’d talk to a seller on the phone, make an appointment (often without really knowing what the seller’s bottom line was), go see the property, then tell the seller I’d have to get back to ... Read More…