Realty Flipping Guide

It’s cliche time. “If you want to get rich, pick a niche.” Yes, this is said all of the time, but few real estate investors truly know how to niche down their marketing.
First of all, the more specific your marketing, the better your results will be. For example, if I send you a letter that says I’m looking to buy houses in Virginia, that’s not too specific because I’m talking about an entire state.
What about if I send you a letter that says I’m looking to buy houses in Stafford, VA? That’s better, but we can even go more specific than that. How about a letter that says I’m looking to buy houses in the Black Hills subdivision. And what’s the most specific way of all? Sending a letter that says I would like to buy your house at 123 Main Street, Stafford, VA 22222.
Now before you start mailing highly […]

Original post by Jason Hanson and software by Elliott Back

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It’s hard to argue the real estate market hasn’t stabilized significantly from April 2009 (bottom of the first dip).  It is difficult, however, to agree on what direction the market is heading over the course of the next year.   But looking forward to the next 120 days, I think there’s a small window for some creative investment property structuring of limited investment (less than 20%), and in some markets, zero-down real estate deals.
A quick check on what’s happing in the marketplace shows pending home sales are surging with people entering into contracts to receive the tax credit.  The result of the tax credit will definitely be a shot in the arm to appraised values as these deals start closing.  In doing so, comparable sales will be substantially higher over the next 120 days or so as many normal sales will take the place of distressed on appraisals. This jump in […]

Original post by Ryan Hinricher and software by Elliott Back

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At the height of the Las Vegas real estate bubble there were well over one hundred high-rise condominium projects in some stage of development.  Most of them never went beyond the planning stage.  When the bubble burst those developers that didn’t get past the drawing board seemed to be the lucky ones in that they hadn’t committed vast sums of money to build units that couldn’t be sold.
The projects that did actually get to the sales stage were often pricing their units at more than $1,000 per square foot.  My have things changed. The median price for resale units on the MLS is $259 per square foot.  While there are only a little more than 800 units available for resale, there are more than 5,500 completed units that have yet to be sold. Average closings per month?  Twenty-two! Many real estate professionals call a 3-6 month supply of homes to […]

Original post by Richard Warren and software by Elliott Back

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Quite a few clients and/or customers have asked me if now is the time to start investing in real estate or if it would be best to wait until the market hits bottom.  My answer has been a thought-provoking:  If not now, when?
There are many signs that although we may not be out of the woods, we could at the beginning of the economic recovery which will result in stabilization of the real estate market.  For example, according to a New York Times article, consumer confidence continued to rise in May for the third consecutive month.   Will this confidence translate to your local real estate market?  It has in mine where we (the real estate community as a whole) have been having a banner month, including a record high sales price for a condo (at a cool $12M).  Of the mainland areas that I track on a regular basis, I […]

Original post by Alex Cortez and software by Elliott Back

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In this post, I’m going to show you two reasons why having a Gravatar can be really good for marketing, and can play an interesting role in helping you grow your business through social media. I’m also going to walk you through the steps of setting up a free Gravatar account, should you decide to get one. Finally, I’ll wrap this up with visual PROOF.
Before I talk to you about how a Gravatar can help you grow your business, let’s talk about what in the world it is.
What the heck is a Gravatar?
Gravatar.com’s definition: A Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?
The first time I heard about avatars was when it was pretty popular on […]

Original post by J. Lamar Ferren and software by Elliott Back

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Working for the Agency made me ultra-paranoid. Almost nobody knows where I live. Except my closest friends. My dad and brother don’t even know where I live and every time they need to mail me something they send it to my P.O. Box just like everyone else.
I have a ton of “dummy addresses” set up so even if you wanted to find me it would require one heck of an effort. So why do I do all this?
Well… today CBS news reported a story about a 43-old-man who was murdered after he put an ad on Craigslist to sell a diamond ring his wife owned. People came to his house, stole the ring, and he was murdered trying to protect his family. A horrible, horrible tragedy.
What does this have to do with you as a real estate investor?
Think about how many people you deal with as part of your business. […]

Original post by Jason Hanson and software by Elliott Back

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This week was the NAR midyear conference so today we will be taking a look at some of the top news that came out of there.
1 ) Coming to Your MLS: More Pictures – One of the biggest pet-peeves of real estate agents is the use or, or lack of use of pictures in a MLS. The MLS Committee at mid-year has said that a required photo is coming; now if we could just up that to 6 photos. Here was another good one on photos this week.
2 ) Stevens: “Incredible” Market Ahead – According to FHA Commissioner David Stevens, the future is going to get better; I would warn that that all real estate is local and the time of a market shift is going to vary greatly.
3 ) Raising the Bar With Real Estate Degrees – A real estate University? This […]

Original post by Dean Ouellette and software by Elliott Back

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In this blog post we’ll talk about what ubiquity is and how you can use it to grow your business. If you want more exposure for your deals or more sellers and buyers in your pipeline, then you need to adopt the ubiquity concept.
If you want to have an established and recognizable brand, then the concept of ubiquity is the way to go.
If becoming a respected expert and authority in your marketplace is an important goal of yours, then again…it’s all about ubiquity!
What is Ubiquity?
I first heard about the word “ubiquity” when I attended a Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle (GKIC) marketing workshop in Alexandria, VA. The speaker, Frazier O’Leary, talked about what we needed to do in order to grow our business at a level where we could reach more clients than we could handle. Out of all the different strategies that he gave us, ubiquity stuck out to me the […]

Original post by J. Lamar Ferren and software by Elliott Back

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Ever feel like you’re shouting into the wind?
When I first started talking to people several years ago about green real estate investing, I felt that way a lot.  They didn’t bother asking me questions-they just looked at me quizzically as though I had three heads (which I don’t). Luckily times have changed and I get asked questions all the time now.  So I thought I’d put together a list of the common questions I hear that you might have as well.  In no particular order, here they are:
“Tell me again why green will make me more money”
Simple:
- You’ll sell your properties faster and for more money.
- If you own rental properties, you’ll rent them faster to better tenants for more money, have less churn and lower vacancies.
- You’ll have less than 1% competition in any market in the US.
“Isn’t […]

Original post by Jim Simcoe and software by Elliott Back

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Military families might have to pay a steep price for the mortgage lending sins of the recent past.
The Senate this week tacked on a new amendment to the massive Financial Services bill it’s considering. Introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), the amendment bans the flimsy “liar loans” that required no real documentation and eliminates bonuses for mortgage brokers who needlessly steer borrowers into higher-cost loans.
That one-two punch helped create the subprime mortgage collapse. But the Merkley amendment appears tailor-made for a classic overreach — the bill would now introduce new, needless layers of underwriting and verification to already proven lending programs, particularly the VA Loan Guaranty program.
These new layers would likely end up breaking a program that doesn’t need fixing. They would also make it more difficult and more expensive for veterans and their families to take advantage of the benefits earned by their service.
VA loans have helped more than […]

Original post by Chris Birk and software by Elliott Back

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