Watch it! It is really worth it.

Roberto Mazzoni

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Banks today list their properties at prices which are fairly well aligned with the market, so to entice potential home owners who wish to live personally in the house. Gone are the days when they established their selling price based on the remaining loan balance. Today they know how to market competitively and sometimes they even start with a price that is well lower the current market value. If the basic elements are fine: roof in good condition, functional plumbing and electric components and no structural damage, a retail buyer is likely to win against any investor since the home owner is willing to offer much more and he is also ready to put up with the basic repairs that could be needed to make the home fully functional. A broken water heater or A/C unit, new carpet and paint, new windows are usually acceptable for an home owner who can still get the house at a good discount.

The investor has better chances of acquiring a property for a price that is right for him when he deals with homes that require substantial work or that have been on the market for some time. I found that after a couple of months the house has been listed, the bank becomes much more willing to deal with investors. Banks sometimes start a bit too high and don’t accept lower offers for sometime until they discover that nobody is willing to bid anymore. At that time they usually accept a lower offer.

The more rehab work is required on the property, the easier it will be to get a very good price, but this demands closer attention to evaluating the costs and then finding the right contractor that can perform within those costs.

You will find that it is always good to involve two or three contractors as soon as the house is under contract with the bank and before the usual one week inspection period comes to an end. In this way you will be able to walk away from the deal if you discover that you offered too much compared to repairs required and you wil get different ideas and costs for the rehab.

Call the same contractors that you plan to use for the actual rehab and after you chose the one you want for that job, you should do a final walk through of the property detailing what will have to be done and where, putting everything in writing and defining both the scope and the timing of the work as well as the amounts to be paid at the various stages, leaving a substantial quota for the final inspection.

The materials chosen for my rehabs are conceived to make the product interesting for both an American and an European buyer. I therefore try to stay away from carpet whenever I can using laminate or tiles. If the price of the house warrants it, I will put the same type of tiles pretty much every where, making sure I get a very competitive price. The other key aspect to consider is selecting block homes rather than frame homes whenever possible: they are so much easier to sell to an international buyer.

Roberto Mazzoni

Yet, the key components for mold remediation are not so expensive and you can find reliable professionals who can get rid of the problem for a much smaller cost and also prevent it from occurring again.

Here are some tips you might want to use if you run into the same type of problem.

1. There are various types of mold and the most dangerous one is the mold that grows inside wall partitions, between two drywall sheets, where there is little or no air. This mold will be quite black and needs special care in removal (using masks and special filters). Superficial mold, that grows only on the outside surface of drywall, is not really dangerous and can be cleaned fairly easily using chemical products that contain a compound of bleach and other aggressive substances.

2. The mold that grows inside a house has usually one place of original formation and then the spores get spread around by the air conditioning system. So the first step in the remediation would be to get the air conditioning ducts clean first by saturating them with chemicals that then get spread around the house, while also cleaning the walls, the ceilings and all surfaces at the same time.

3. Once the drywall has been cleaned or substituted and the whole house has been treated with chemicals, you usually add some chemical that prevents mold formation in the new paint you put on the walls and the ceiling.

4. Check up you air conditioning system and air circulation. Mold got formed because moisture was present in the premises for some time.

5. Get rid of cheap furniture that can have absorbed mold spores: it is usually cheaper to get a new one rather than trying to clean the existing one. Your cleaning professional will tell you what to do.

Check your mold remediation professional against the points above and you’ll know whether you are dealing with a true expert. Also be wary of very high prices tags, they don’t necessarily mean higher quality and you’ll be able to find more affordable estimates if you just connect with other people in your area that have already solved the same problem.

Roberto Mazzoni

You can deal with buyers, private money lenders or prospective partners that are anywhere in the US or the whole world for that matter and multiply your efficiency many, many times over.

Webinars are not only a selling tool, actually they are one of the most powerful promotional tools that exist. They prepare people for the sale and create the level of understanding and agreement that is paramount for a smooth relationship.

Setting up a webinar (on computer and telephone) or a teleseminar (on the phone only) is very easy: you just need an account with a company that provides a bridge line service or a site like GoToWebinar.

But there are the 17 steps you need to take to make it a success:

1. Select a JV partner that has a product of interest for an hot target market (this can be done through an evaluation of what he has already sold in other teleseminars or keyword Google evaluation on the subject if he has a new product).

2. Find out what your list or prospective new members want or what they are already buying (Google keyword evaluation, surveys on the members and other sources).

3. Evaluate the content of the product offered by the partner (info products are those who sell best).

4. Create a bonus package with the JV partner that is perceived to be far more valuable than the product being sold.

5. Create a time limit or quantity limit or both for the availability of the product promoted.

6. Together with the JV partner, define a script for the teleseminar. Create a system/script that can maximize returns.

7. Practice on the script by delivering the webinar or teleseminar to a friendly audience (for free) until you feel ready. If you have never done Webinars before you should practice at least 5 times before delivering your first “paid for” webinar.

8. Build a turn key system out of the offer so that people can simply pay and get going immediately with the specific product being introduced.

9. Make a payment system available to collect orders from the call (whether through the partner or directly). The best would be a Web page, but that could be complemented with an operator that could collect payments over the phone.

10. Setup an autoresponder for the project, to collect information from the registrants (name, e-mail address and sometimes phone number if we are going to do voice broadcasting to remind people about the call).

11. Setup an opt-in page and a confirmation page (date, time) and invite them to print it and keep it in view.

12. Write a series of e-mails to drive people to a landing page. Create value and the sense of a big event.

13. Get people registered collecting personal information. Possibly collect phone number to reminder them about the call shortly before it happens.

14. Remind people to attend several times (particularly in the morning of the day the call is due and just before the call starts). Give them the connection information again.

15. Do the live call with an operator/organizer who can assist people while they login and can collect questions while the speaker talks and who can contribute to the content by questioning and introducing the speaker (tha would be me). On big teleseminars more people might be needed: the organizer and one or more operators to individually help the people while they connect to solve potential audio issues or taking care of congestion.

16. Record the call with backups so to be sure not to fail and make it available as a replay over the next few days with several e-mails sent to people in the list.

17. If feasible, send a series of e-mails inviting people to participate to an encore presentation in case they missed the original live call or the web replay.

It seems a lot’s of action and it is to some degree, but you will get maximum results when you follow this sequence and you will work much less compared to telling the same things over and over to every single prospect, individually.

Roberto Mazzoni

This bill is creating ripples of alarming comments in all real estate investor associations throughout the nation, particularly because, amongst many things, it limits the ability of an individual owner to owner finance one property only once every 3 years.

There are people who are already talking of possible ways to work around the obstacle and others who are advocating urgent lobby actions with senators so to remove of change the few sentences that effect private owner financing.

These are the types of transaction you would be restricted from doing: sell your own home with a land contract or with a mortgage held by you, doing any kind of installment sale of any kind of residential property. To do more than 1 owner financed deal every 3 years you would have to follow the complex requirements set forth in the proposed law, and maybe get additional licenses.

With this piece of legislation the US gets closer to Europe where NOBODY is allowed to owner finance ANY type of property. Only banks are entitled to issue loans and private individuals can only accept cash payment for their properties. If the bill passes the Senate, the US real estate market is going to change. Many creative exit strategies for sellers and investors will go out of the door and some markets will probably reduce.

In Europe today the real estate market is very slow because it is becoming more and more difficult to sell properties since the banks have tightened their already strict lending policies. The bill seems conceived to protect the weakest buyers and tenants, those who got themselves into dire straights because of poor money management and careless house purchases. You might watch out to the consequences it will have on the free open market.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. My friend Sam Bell made a much more extensive exam of the bill and the possible counter actions on his site http://sambell3rd.com/realestatementor/real_estate_financing/90/us-senate-seizing-control-of-real-estate-investing/

It can happen that on a single property many offers arrive at the same time offering even more than the bank originally asked for. So you need to be flexible and fast in locating your deals and ready also to move outside of your backyard if needed.

You have to weed through many bad deals, that’s true and you need to have a system that allows you not only to find good opportunities but also to fund them and then to market them as fast as you can.

Five ways to find properties and their pros and cons:

1. You can consult the MLS if you are also a Realtor or with the help of a friendly Realtor who can make daily extracts of what comes up in a specific area. This is fairly effective if you are dealing in a limited zone and if you have somebody who can do the work for you. The list tell you the up to date situation of the property (listed, under contract, sold) and you have most of the information you need about the house, including picture. Sometimes the Realtor can use an automatic system to send you daily e-mails so you are kept regularly updated. The problem here is that you are limited to one area and you cannot tell which is a good deal from a bad deal upfront. You need to do research on every property and it can be time consuming.

   

2. You can go on the many free sites maintained by different banks. The advantage here is to span the whole nation, but the disadvantage is that you need to check every single deal (no selection is made upfront) and you need to look up many different sites: both for covering the different banks and for collecting all the information you need about a property, including pictures.

3. You can purchase a “ready made lists” of foreclosure or bank owned properties. Here you often have some kind of value associated to the property so that you can make a general selection upfront and you can operate in many different markets. These sites sometimes also provide basic information about each property. The drawback is that these lists sometimes are not updated and therefore you waste time on properties that are already under contract or have been sold already. And you need to pay for the list.

4. You an use a software that pulls data from the MLS and let’s you make offers in an automatic fashion. MLS Gorilla is one of these software, for example. The drawback is that these software have often an high price tag attached to them, they get locked in specific areas if one of your competitors decides he wants to have exclusive access and you need to take a shotgun approach by making low offers on everything, which can lead in getting acceptances on junk properties that you then need to discard and missing the houses that are in better shape and where you could afford to make higher offers and still get a nice return.

5. You can finally subscribe to a search engine specifically designed to locate bank owned properties. In this can you can access directly the bank database without relying on MLS and any error that could be in it, you can access the private databases of major wholesalers and you can make a search for properties with a defined discount ranges, while also getting all the other properties in the area in a separate list from which you can pick and chose freely. The only system I know that is capable of doing this right now is REO Goldminer (http://budurl.com/reog) which I have been using now for 3 months and that has kept improving the quality of their leads.
   

   You can still get properties that are already under contract sometimes because it takes a while for the bank to update its own database, but you can span the whole US and pick and choose only those area where REO’s ARE available. Additionally they are providing an outstanding training support for using the system and marketing deals and they have also developed a community for wholesale exchanges. The main drwaback is that the system is not available to everybody: you have a limited number of subscribers that are allowed on it.

Pick and choose the system that fits you best and have success with it.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. REO Goldminer is reopening its gates for a few days starting today at noon. Last time they sold 500 memberships in 2 days or so. This second and last offer will stay open until Friday June 5^th and then it’s gone! http://budurl.com/reog.

]]> http://landwriting.com/international-real-estate/five-ways-to-find-bank-deals/feed/ 1 http://landwriting.com/international-real-estate/a-flood-of-people/ http://landwriting.com/international-real-estate/a-flood-of-people/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 11:48:29 +0000 Roberto Mazzoni http://www.landwriting.com/blog/?p=424 Did you know that the US population grows at the rate of 3 million a year. It is just a whole city as big as Rome was coming out of nowhere every single year and spring in full growth just right before our eyes, with it’s fresh new population needing food, work, entertainment and sheltering. Look around, do you still see families of 5 or 8 people living all in the same home? No, everybody wants his own place to live, his own area of freedom and privacy, a place that he or she can tailor to her life and needs and that can call home.

Nowhere in Europe we same a comparable growth and how comes therefore that the real estate market in the US is suffering while European houses still maintain pretty much their value? In areas that have been hit hard by the downfall, like California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, prices have come down as much as 50% and keep drifting down. Is there going to be an end?

When we look at the real market we see that transactions are still occurring, spurred by the incredible prices available for bank owned properties. Investors are still doing business, maybe using foreign money to fund the deals, but they are more selective and professional.

Those who know how to go about it get rewarded the opportunities that this market also offers. They estimate that in the US alone there is $ 9 trillion on the side line ready to surface in the form of pent up housing demand. You need to be able to stay in the market and profit from it while the new uptrend will spring. How do you do it? Well, by knowing your staff and learning it from people who have been successful in real life and still are doing what they teach (which is unfortunately not so common).

You need fresh ideas and fresh way to approach old issues. I found some very good ones in the book : “Be a real estate heavyweight” by Dan Auito, a friend of mine who has a passion for teaching and has been investing in real estate himself for over three decades. Dan has now put together an impressive volume of 1479 pages! You find it on a CD and it contains the tips and strategies of the most successful real estate investors in the US. Each one has written his section of the book so it is like having many volumes condensed into a single huge reference guide.

You have everything you might ever need for the next 12 months of adventure in the real estate field. There is no better time than today to master these skills and test your abilities in a field that has never presented so many problems and opportunities combined together in a single time.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. I strongly advise that you get a copy of this book and ready it. It is very affordable and if you are at all serious about dealing in real estate you cannot skimp on your education. This is the opportunity of being taught directly, in their own words, by 96 experts! http://budurl.com/auit

And I have found out that there are only few emerging markets that are giving very good returns right now and that are worth checking in: Nevada (Las Vegas specifically), California, Arizona and Florida, with the latter being still a bit behind in the recovery curve. California is on the strong way up now and the state economy is picking up along with the real estate market. Banks have still a fair inventory in the area and you can make very good deals in the coming few months.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. There is a tool that I use to stay ahead of the market: http://budurl.com/reog

I have been using webinars with great success in my international real estate activities: I had no choice since most of my customers are on the other side of the ocean or scattered in various parts of the United States. I started using them with little or not training and I found out that they are pretty easy to use.

It is better to have someone assist you during the call, not only for handling the technical issues that you might be uneasy to tackle, but also to help assist the people on the call with their questions or with support relevant to audio quality or connection needs.

The beauty of the webinar is that one can participate both via the Web, following visually the presentation on a computer screen and listening to you on the computer audio, or he can also participate through a common telephone, wherever he is and whatever he is doing.

The place to go in order to setup your Webinars is www.gotowebinar.com or www.gotomeeting.com. These two sites belong to the same company and they simply offer two different services. GoToMeeting allows the creation of meetings of up to 15 attendees (unlimited in number) for a monthly fee of $49 per month (or $468 per year), I strongly suggest you to start with this. GoToWebinar allows the creation of webinars with up to 1000 attendees for a monthly fee of $99 (which becomnes $948 per year).

GoToMeeting starts the meeting allowing everybody to talk and listen at the same time. The organizer can mute selectively some or all of the attendees. GoToWebinar offers more tools to control the interest of the attendees and startups up having everybody muted.

In future blogs, I will give some examples of how to use them, but my advice is don’t wait. Get the free 30 days trial and try it yourself, you won’t regret it. And if you already know it, make it point to use it more.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. Community sites is the next big thing for Internet Marketing in 2009. The REO Gold Miner project that I keep ranting about is the first real estate project that contains a true community site for wholesalers and investors, check it out! http://budurl.com/reog

The search page of REO Goldminer where you select the areas of interest and the discount threshold.

In those cases where they are much higher we simply see that the house remains unsold for one, two, three months until the bank decides to drop the price to the right level and then it gets sold usually in a matter of a few days. Speed is of the essence and the successful investor needs to be able to make many offers in the shortest period of time trying to find those properties which are already priced well below the current market value (let’s call it ARV – After Repair Value). These properties often have repairs to be done and that’s why they are priced low, but again it is out job as investors to evaluate the repair costs and to conduct them balancing speed, price and quality.

The results are immediate and you get a list of the properties you can immediately use.

There are a number of resources that you can use in to keep informed of the new listings from banks. The easiest one is to get in touch with some local Realtor as get an automatic copy of the new MLS listings mailed to you daily. But in the last couple of months I have been experimenting a system that allows me to have an advantage over my competition: REO Goldminer (http://www.reogoldminer.com).

This system allows me to search in any area or multiples areas of the United States for bank owned properties that are being sold at my threshold discount. It also shows me the properties that area above that threshold so that I have a complete picture of the market. I can also get instant information about the properties and who is listing them. The system is growing as I write and they are adding new features right these days, one of them will be a marketing cross-promotion platform that will allow you to market you wholeasing properties as soon as you have them under contract. Check it out.

Roberto Mazzoni