Subject To Existing Financing

We are purchasing a property tomorrow subject to it's existing financing. That means we will own the property and the existing financing that is on the property will remain in place. We will make the payments, thereby improving the seller's credit and we don't have to qualify for a loan. It is a win-win situation. The seller also prevents a foreclosure.
This house is mostly rehabbed already. It just needs to be finished up on the inside and put new siding and paint on the outside. It is in a great little neighborhood that has superb rentals. I've secretly been wanting a rental in this town for over a year! Is that the "power of the secret" working?
I just got my access to market the Fortune Builder education programs today. So, those of you who know who Than Merrill and the Esajian brothers from Flip This House are, they have a mentoring program, education, trainings and boot camps for investors. I can get you special pricing! So if you are interested, let me know and I'll get you to the right person over there.
Also, any REO agents out there who need an affordable on-line program to manage all your REO listings, the accounting, billing, repairs, etc., check out Builidium.com.

A Day without Progress

Here it is, my first day with no business progress. Other than speaking with one client, that was the extent of my work day. With 3 kids home and no nanny due to the flooding, it was my first day "off the wagon."
Tomorrow will be filled with action.

Being an Agent and an Investor - Can you do it?

Does anyone out there have hard facts to prove that people don't want to sell their house to an agent? As an agent, we are held to a higher standard, that is true. We should be, we are considered "experts." Funny how after a few classes, a test, paying some fees, finger printing, background check, and you are right up there with legal binding contracts and representation.

Does that make you an expert? By no means! But people believe you are. Don't lie to them. If you don't know the answer, tell them you will get the answer for them. Then find the answer and get back to them.

Does your liability go up? Yes! You are liable for more things. So disclose everything and have someone help you if you need it.

Higher Expectations? Yes, people expect you to be morally sound, do the right thing and represent them when you have agreed to do so.

Trust? You are to be trusted - DON"T GIVE THEM A REASON NOT TO TRUST YOU! If you are in this short term and to screw people - just get out now, you will get caught!

My recommendation is that if you are going to disclose in your letter that you are an agent, don't do it in a small, fine print way, put it out there and own it. It is nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. I don't know who spread the lie that people are afraid of agents. This is a people business and if they like you, they will do business with you. The regulations that state that you have to have full disclosure is so that Mr. Seller knows that you are "an expert." You need to prove to them why you are buying the house at the price you are buying it at. Disclose it! Don't hide it! It's no secret! We are in the business of buying equity, the sellers know they are walking away from equity.

Today I worked a bit on PB Next. Used our SnowBall microphone to record some greetings. Wow, that is a nice microphone. The sound is beautiful, nothing like the cell phone recordings you get for your messages, or even the greeting you make for your home phone. The room I was in was echoing and the recording sounded great! I'm wondering how I can get a recording from my computer as my cell phone and home phone greetings. Makes me want to do podcasting! If only I were a talker! I need to get Jennifer Hernandez over here to record some podcasts about the mortgage industry and finance, she is great at that!

PBNext offers a nice way to track which marketing campaigns your calls are coming from. It allows you to transfer calls to numerous locations - recordings, live people, different people at different times, different days, choose your on-hold music. If you are working this business with a partner, you owe it to yourself to get PBNext! You can share the leads more easily. The pre-recorded messages make it easy to have lots of information available to your clients without you having to do any of the work. The tracking capabiltiies are incredible - Doug can call me up after his Blackberry wipes out his memory (for the third time) and ask me for the phone number to anyone who has called our PBNext phones. Or, if he is in the office, he can do it himself, even better!

Under Promise and Over Deliver

It's time to get into the details about Realeflow.
Why did we start using Realeflow? We had been using Profit Grabber by Marko Rubel and while using it came across some deficiencies in it. Only one of us could use it. It can only be loaded onto one computer (unless we wanted to pay more). We are one organization and every team member needs to be able to access the information we use for our files. It has a duplication quirk that we found bothersome. The word processing part of the program is a little quirky, but once you get the hang of it, you are good to go. I have my assistant using it now, so undoubtedly if I were the one using it, I would find some features that I find useful. But the truth is, I wanted something different that would combine more of my business into one program, to help streamline it.
What does Realeflow do that the others don't? To start with, it is web based. We can have 5 users. There are 2 versions, so if you don't need al the bells and whistles you don't have to buy them. But the bells and whistles are what make this stand apart and help you streamline your business! I can upload comps, contracts, and any other documents I need for a file so they are all in one place. I can call up my assitant, one of my bird dogs or my partner and they can all access that info when I am not at a computer. I can assign properties to managers. I can de-activate a property - it doesn't go away, it just puts it into another file so I can focus on the active projects. Then, when an agent calls me a month later to ask me if I want to resubmit my offer because they didn't close, I have everything at my fingertips.
Then, there is the Hammerpoint. Need a quick estimate on repairs? This is where you can get it. Put in the square footage, a few other numbers and you have a rough estimate to let you know if you should even make an offer. Then when you have a property, if you want to wholesale it to an investor, or sell it to someone else in your database, or another realeflow database, you hit a button and it tells you who is interested in those areas and numbers.
You can create tasks for your various managers, or make notes to yourself for your To Do List.
1st Cool Feature of Realeflow. Now, one of the really cool features of Realeflow. They have a form generator for you to use. You copy the html code into your webpage and you have a form for your potential clients to fill out. Their information goes directly into Realeflow - you don't have to input. You can ask for a lot or as little information as you want (if you know how to erase a little coding). Realeflow also has premade web pages that you can use. I believe you get about 10 with the Pro version. They are working on adding email campaigns as well.
There are numerous features they list that I haven't even explored yet, so this product meets one criteria that I love in products I buy. Under promise and over deliver.

Education and Networking

Well, Thursdays are the nanny's day off, so it was the usual day of running around and taking care of business outside of the office. Cleaning out the PO Box, it wasn't stuffed full of returned letters this time. Buying stamps for our direct marketing campaign was fun today as I waited in line for an hour with my 3 and 4 year old. God bless them, they are really great kids and they behaved exceptionally well. I believe I will be planning ahead for next month's purchase and buying them through usps.com and have them delivered for $1. My sanity is certainly worth the dollar.

Bought a new fax machine today. We'll see if it does what we need it to. We don't even plug it into the phone jack, we just need it to scan - need a document feeder. We use MyFax for all of our faxing. We have electronic copies of everything that way. We bought the HP 6500. If it is any good, this is where I'll have a link to where you can buy it.

Last night I read 13 pages of our Wholesaling U manual. No revolutionary information yet. The important things that I take from it are:
1. Make time to educate yourself everyday. Harder than you think to do it everyday. But this is my challenge, to stay focused for 120 days and part of that is education everyday.
2. Network every week. Doug and I have talked about that for months. Some weeks we are on track and others we are not. There are numerous ways to do this, via the internet and in person. Internet networking is great, you don't have to leave home. In-person is more effective though - a face to the name, a voice, and personal time counts for a lot.

I have been working on improving our websites. Not our brochure page, as that is a mess. Looking at how it was built really proves to me that knowledge is so important. You don't have to know how to do everything, but you need to know how to explain what you want. It helps when you sound like you know what you are talking about to the people who will do the work. (This also is important when doing rehabs!) Had I known what I do now, I would have given better instructions to the builder. Using a internet marketing specialist would have saved me time and money in the long run. I'm going to be talking to one tomorrow that Doug is impressed with.

1 and 1, my internet hosting company is having great deals right now. 50% off and free stuff. The thing that impressed me with 1 and 1 when I first signed up a couple years ago is that you get more than you expect. Most places you don't get everything that you need without paying more. With 1 and 1 I found tools in their service that I didn't even know I wanted until I saw them as part of my package.

Databases for Marketing

Today was great. I got access to SIMS. SIMS is the "Smart Internet Marketing System" by Greg Clements. Some of you already know who this guy is. If you already have Realeflow, you have seen him on various videos and webinars. If you are in Wholesaling U with Than Merrill, chances are you also know who Greg is. I don't personally know Greg, but I am giving his system a try.

I've been using Realeflow for about 2 months now. It is a hybrid version of the Pro and Standard versions - a special for Wholesaling U students. I have used numerous databases in the past and as I mentioned in my previous posting, thought about creating my own so I would get all the features I need to conduct my business.
SharkBait was one of the first databases I used, and it served it's purpose. For some people, SharkBait works great. For the kind of deal flow we have done in the past and expect to continue to have, we need something that integrates more of our business processes into one program.
Over the years the staff at SharkBait have been helpful and their program is fairly easy to use. It is clean, easy to figure out where you need to go to get what you want. For California investors, it works great for the default and trustee notices. It allows you to pull in comps from the MLS, which is superb for determining whether you want to market to them. I used SharkBait with foreclosures.com, back when I could actually talk to Alexis McGee. She is an icon for foreclosures and expert.

Tools for the Business

1st, this is sales. 2nd, this is marketing. 3rd, it's a people business. There is yet to be a system that addresses all aspects of real estate investing as a business completely. But we may have found one! We shall find out over the next month or two as I try it out and report to you its benefits and limitations.

These are the tools that we are currently using for our business:
1. Realeflow
2. Profit Grabber
3. Buildium
4. PBNext
5. 1 and 1
6. Foreclosehouston.com
7. AT&T wireless and DSL service
8. Ricoh Printer
9. Sony Handycam
10. VistaPrint
11. PS Print - See the right side of the page to link to FREE Shipping!
12. Acrobat.com
13. Blackberry
14. Constant Contact - see my link to the right side...they have a free trial now!
15. AWeber
16. Twitter
17. Facebook
18. Blogger
19. Active Rain
20. Quicken
21. Turbo Tax

You will notice we are using 2 database programs and 2 email marketing programs. The database programs each fulfill different requirements of our business. It is our hope to stop using Profit Grabber, which is a great direct mail marketing tool, and just use one - Realeflow. As in every business, time is money. Streamlining or automating our business is the goal. If we have to manually transfer information or re-input information, it is a waste of our time. Being able to share our information with our numerous partners in an easy manner is important so we can all be productive and work toward the same results. When I buy a program, I want it to do everything I need it to. If I have to pay more upfront, then fine, but I don't want be nickle and dimed to buy features that I feel should be part of the tool. I'm a serious investor doing every part of this business. I need all the bells and whistles.

The 2 email marketing companies are both very good. We have expanded our business and outgrown Constant Contact. To get the service we need, we had to find a company that allows for multiple web forms. Each list we have requires different information and needs to have different forms. If you only need one web form, then Constant Contact is VERY user friendly and has beautiful templates. It is so easy to use I hate to give it up. It also makes it easier to add contacts to your lists. Sometimes I need to get an email out quickly to a new group of people and if they've not opted-in, then I can't use AWeber. AWeber has a cumbersome method for importing contacts and I am hoping the double opt-in will not turn people off.

Here is an update to my progress yesterday.
1. Worked on my Buildium Site...added my properties
2. We have an accepted offer for a client who is very excited
3. Updated my BLOGGER links, still have more work to complete on that, but it's a start
4. Signed 2 short sale offers
5. Sent out an invite using Constant Contact for an RE Investing networking lunch for Friday
6. Designed the new JEM business cards and my ETP cards
7. Compared prices on business cards between PS Print, Vista Print and Bluegrass Printing, a new follower of mine on Twitter.

The Beginning of 120 Days of Focus

This site will document in writing the progress of my 120 days of on-task and focus. The video-taries on YouTube will be a short 1-2 minutes and this will have some more in depth thoughts and topics.

I am starting this journey...a continuation of our re investing journey with the SIMS tool by Greg Clements. I will have access to it tomorrow and be following his plan as quickly as possible.

I came very close to joint venturing with a friend of mine to build the ultimate real estate investment system- EVER. Then I heard about ProfitGrabber, so we bought it. $1,000 later, we can't use it to do everything we want - even if we pay more it still won't have everything we need. So my thoughts again wandered to joint venturing with my friend. We discussed it and were ready to take it to the next step. Then I heard about Realeflow. Could this be the answer? Than Merrill praised it so we figured it was worth a try. By joining Wholesaling U we were given an outstanding offer- nothing to lose to try it. The version we got is a hybrid of the standard and pro versions. The best thing about Realeflow is that it is web bases- that is also one of the downfalls. I'll talk about why later. We have enjoyed some of it's features and been frustrated with some of it's limitations. With the SIMS we are getting the pro version of Realeflow. For a one person business, the standard version seems fine, but there is the Hammerpoint tool that is nice for quickly gathering a repair estimate that you don't get with the standard version.

Everyone who puts one of these database systems together claims to be in the business of reinvesting. I don't doubt them. but I do doubt their level of investing experience and involvement in every aspect of the business. There are many time consuming steps to investing. Why do we get big pay offs? Because we do a lot of work to get the sale, or purchase and sale. So many people have made claims that they can put your investing business on auto-pilot. Well, I'm taking the challenge. Let's see if any of them are right! I expect tremendous work to get it all set up, but when I'm done, you'll know if it's working or not.