Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

 “I know if this deal goes south, it won’t be because you didn’t try everything humanly possible. I have complete confidence in you,” said my investor, Bruce Z. I thought, “What could possibly go wrong in buying a cash flowing apartment complex?” I appreciated the confidence that Bruce expressed and knew I earned that confidence with all the experiences I’ve had over the past twenty years. However, how does one gain experience?  Have you heard the expression, “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions”?

When I first started investing in real estate, I self-funded my deals. That is, I had the twenty percent down for hard money loans for my flips. I also had the ten percent down for traditional lenders to purchase rental properties. What I learned over time was that eventually one runs out of money; or at least I did. So, I had to learn different ways to finance my deals.

The success I’ve had using “other people’s money” (OPM) came from learning a few key issues that real estate investors look for. What do you need to keep in mind to successfully raise capital for your investments?

First, your potential investor should understand real estate investing, specifically the deal that’s on the table. My ninety-seven-year-old mother would gladly give me the funds for a real estate project because she loves me. However, she would not ... Read More…

We live in an age where there’s literally information and training everywhere. From association meetings to podcasts to YouTube to FaceBook, you can’t turn around without being exposed to the latest and greatest "wow factor" strategy or "new wisdom".

With all that success advice right at our fingertips, why is it that according to Inc. Magazine, more than 85% of people today don’t like what they do for a living? How can it be that the majority of Americans wake up every Monday morning dreading going to their place of business?

One clue is in the nature of the message that much of the modern-day success literature promotes:

"You should be outworking everyone around you"

• "You can manifest anything you want"
• “You have all the power to control everything"
• “Being rich and unhappy is better than being broke and unhappy”
• “The purpose of a business is to be profitable”

I bet you’ve heard every one of these things, and they certainly have their attraction. But I ask you, does any of it mesh with your experience in the real world? Or have you observed, in yourself and others, that the opposite of each of these things is usually the truth?

I’ve coached many men and women over the years that have reached what most would consider “the pinnacle of success” only to wake up saying, “is this it? Please tell me there’s more to life than this!” 

And invariably, what I found in coaching ... Read More…

A topic that Professional Housing Providers seem to discuss on a regular basis is how to make sure their tenants have renters' insurance … and … make sure that the insurance stays active. 

Most of the conversations I have had seem to have the same discussion points:

• Yes, the lease requires the tenant maintain renter’s insurance
• No, we don’t police the tenants to make sure they have renter’s insurance
• No, we really don’t know how to make sure the renter's insurance is in effect
• No, we really don’t understand why renter’s insurance is a big deal 

In VERY simple terms, renter’s insurance can help you remove a claim from your insurance history and probably save you money on your insurance program. If your tenants are without renter’s insurance ANY incident now becomes YOUR (the Professional Housing Provider’s) problem/issue.

As an example: you own a 4 unit, 2 story building completely leased. A 2^nd story tenant decides to take a bath and starts to fill the bathtub. In the process, they become distracted and eventually decide to nap while the tub is filling. They wake up 3 hours later and step into water on their floor. They rush to turn the water off but fail to notify you that there was an incident. 4 hours later, a downstairs tenant calls you to say they have water running down their walls. 15 minutes later, the other upstairs tenant calls to say they have water thru-out their apartment.

     I see it every day: budding entrepreneurs who have the EDUCATION to get going and (at least say they have) the MOTIVATION to get going but don't do anything today, tomorrow, or the next day that's likely to GET them going. It's a brain lock that we ALL get about certain things at a particular time, and it's about the fact that creating an entire real estate business from scratch is just too overwhelming to deal with.

     I ran across this article that I want you to read if I just described YOU...I think if you follow the advice here, you can get over that hump and on to the job of getting successful, one day at a time.

     It's called "How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List, or Why Writing it Down Doesn't Get it Done." http://zenhabits.net/how-to-actually-execute-your-to-do-list-or-why-writing-it-down-doesnt-actually-get-it-done/

     What do you think? How do you motivate yourself to do boring, difficult, overwhelming, unpleasant things?

One of the critical questions that beginning  and intermediate-level real estate entrepreneurs struggle with is, “How do I know when it’s the right time to hire help?”

I’m not talking about VA-type help here; your lowest-level administrative work (sorting lists, looking up names in the public record, etc.) and your high-skill but non-real estate work (designing logos, creating websites) can be quickly, easily, and above all CHEAPLY farmed out to VAs practically as soon as you understand what that “work” is.

I’m talking about “inside team”—people who work with you on a day-to-day basis, who understand your business more deeply than an outside team member like a VA, who may, by necessity, be ACTUAL rather than VIRTUAL employees.

THIS decision—bringing actual “staff aboard” is always challenging. It seems as if the point at which your business grows to where it’s difficult (or impossible) for you to keep up with the day-to-day activities does NOT usually coincide with the availability of a ton of extra income to pay an employee.

So most people (and I’m one of them) wait a lot longer than they should to leap into hiring inside team members to grow the business.

But there’s a relatively objective way to evaluate whether taking that (admittedly scary) step is a good idea, and it has nothing to do with the size of your business or how many years you’ve been at it.

Presented as the most restrictive in the country and as being written 100% by KC Tenants, 231019 was initially a few lines in the Tenant’s Bill of Rights several years ago. Back then, the concept of forcing a US Citizen to take part in a Voluntary Government Subsidy Program like Section 8 was objectionable to the several 100 housing providers in the room, and Mayor Lucas lined it out. Based on his statements in the video above from the 25th, it seems that he has been working since that time with KC Tenants to bring this ordinance to the table.

Since the introduction in December, housing providers have been working hard to defeat the ordinance but learned that we were not going to have much luck defeating it completely. But with all the emails, phone calls, and meetings held, we were able to get a lot of the more objectionable items removed or changed, and now we have a repair fund that they are working on.

There is a lot in this ordinance, and many of the original aspects of the ordinance have changed in almost two months of intense negotiations since it passed the committee in early December. Those changes are reflected in the ordinance that passed today. Councilmembers representing both sides worked very hard to coalesce around common goals shared, with many of us offering support, assistance, and guidance along the way. 

• Created a $1 million Landlord Risk Mitigation Program to provide landlords money offsetting costs associated with accepting voucher tena ... Read More…

Do you ever get confused by how one self-proclaimed expert can swear up and down that the best, or even ONLY, way to do a certain strategy is to [fill in opinion here], while another guru, who seems just as successful and passionate, says that the truth is just the opposite?

I did, too, back when I was just getting started and thought that there must be an exact right way to do any given thing in real estate.

But as it turns out, with wisdom and experience comes the realization that they’re all right and all wrong.

Because the TRUTH is, we often become convinced that certain things work and don’t work because we already believed that it would or wouldn’t work, and that becomes a limiting thought that actually predicts the outcome.

In other words, the guy who swears up and down that his experience is that you MUST tell sellers that you can do ‘X,’ or they won’t accept your offer, is telling the absolute truth. HIS EXPERIENCE is that sellers won’t accept an offer without ‘X’ because he believes that they won’t, and thus they never do.

Now I’m about as far from woo-woo as anyone you’re ever going to meet. I don’t believe that I manifest deals, or partners, or success into my life by vibrating in time with the universe. But I can prove this particular phenomenon with example after example after example.

For instance, back in the days when I was first learning about wholesaling, I was taught some ... Read More…

Hey, folks, data expert Rick Sharga will be live with Vena Jones-Cox on Tuesday on Real Life Real Estate Investing. It’s at 5:00 PM Eastern. Send questions before the show to AskVena@gmail.com now and listen HERE for the answers at 5 pm Eastern.

• Delinquencies on consumer loans show signs of distress even as mortgage delinquency rates decline slightly.
• Early-stage mortgage delinquencies (30 and 60 days) ticked up slightly, as did other consumer loans; student loan repayments are set to resume now.
• As forbearance program nears its end, more exiting loans are delinquent and more need loan mods; fewer are paid off or current.
• Many of these loans were delinquent prior to the pandemic and may be candidates for foreclosures when the forbearance program is over.
• Economic factors could lead to more defaults. The combination of soaring insurance rates, higher property taxes & inflation could be toxic.
• Foreclosure starts now running at about 80% of pre-pandemic levels.
• ATTOM’s Q3 data is the first indication that numbers may be beginning to head back to more normal levels in the months ahead.

Ya'll do realize the irony of asking the question, “I know you’re in a hurry, but is there any quick advice you can give me about how to get started?”, right?

Because I get asked some version of that question at least 100 times a year, always by a newer investor hoping that there's some wisdom I can drop on them in the time it takes to get from the elevator to my car when I'm running from one event to another. Wisdom, preferably, that will make their entry into the business rapid, painless, and above all profitable.

The irony is that there IS no single answer to the question, "How do I get started?".

In order to properly get into that topic, I'd need to know about you: your goals, resources, preferences, exit strategies, needs, wants, and and and...and in no circumstance would that be "quick" advice.

If there were such a thing as "quick" advice, there would be no need for coaching programs like Express Success. Or, for that matter, for workshops, REIA groups, or any of the other support systems to which we are all so devoted.

Without knowing anything else about you other than that, you don't seem like a crazy stalker who's following me out to my car to kill me; I can only tell you, GENERALLY, some of the things successful people do when they get started. I can't tell you what deal to look for (until I know what you plan to do with it), how to get money (until I know your credit score), or what to pay (until you give me the ARV and repair costs), but I ... Read More…

A law taking effect January 1, 2024, has killed any hope of anonymity by using a Wyoming LLC, or an LLC in any state for that matter.  Even if you are not worried about anonymity, you are going to be profoundly affected by this law.

In 2021, Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act. This law creates a new beneficial ownership information reporting requirement as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to make it harder for bad actors to hide or benefit from their ill-gotten gains through shell companies or other opaque ownership structures.

The new program is called the Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting system, and it will be implemented by the FinCEN (Federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), a department within the Treasury Department – the same folks who brought you the IRS.

Never heard of FinCEN?  If you have any type of a business (corporation or LLC), it will become as common in your language as the term “IRS.” 

Under the new laws, “beneficial ownership information refers to identifying information about the individuals who directly or indirectly own or control a company.”

Reporting

As of January 1, 2024, you will have to register the “beneficial ownership” of each LLC, corporation, limited partnership, or any other type of business entity.  These are called “reporting companies.”  There are exceptions for the companies with many owners, banks, insurance compan ... Read More…