Monday Night October 29, 2007  By Alex O'Neal 

Power searching the MLS

The formidable MLS.

The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) (also Multiple Listing System or Multiple Listings Service) is a database which allows real estate brokers representing sellers under a listing contract to widely share information about properties with real estate brokers who may represent potential buyers or wish to cooperate with a seller's broker in finding a buyer for the property.

Seen most widely in the US and Canada but spreading to other countries in a variety of forms, the MLS combines the listings of all available properties that are represented by brokers who are both members of that MLS system and of  NAR, the National Association of Realtors.

The purpose of the MLS is to enable the efficient distribution of information so that, when a real estate agent is introduced to a potential home buyer, s/he may search the MLS system and retrieve information about all homes for sale in a given area or price range, whether under a listing contract by that agent's brokerage or by all participating brokers.

For an investment property search on the new MLX-change have your realtor create a “special template” for your and your particular search criteria.

This gives you a search form that removes all the stuff you don’t want or need like:

·        Blocks to the University Shuttle.

·        Whether or not horses are allowed.

·         Description of the dining room

·        Listing agent’s fax number

·        Lockbox location

Now these are all great things to know, and maybe your investment criteria hinges on whether or not horses are allowed or if your niche is specializing in houses that don’t have central air and heat, then these things just get in the way.  For most of us we can wait for the full agent report where all these things are listed anyway.

Instead have the template customized for things that you need to know and need to know at a quick glance like:

·        Days on the market.

·        Price per square foot.

·        Terms of the sale.

·        Label

·        Agent and internet remarks

·        Miscellaneous business relationships.

·        Construction and of course area and price.

Let’s start with area first. 

Here’s what Rick Villani and Clay Davis say about area in their book “Flip” How to find, fix and sell houses for profit:

It’s important to keep in mind that during the weeks or months that you are working on an investment property, you’d probably need to be there on a regular basis.  Choosing a house a long way away from where you live, work, or travel to on a regular basis will take a toll on your ability to monitor or participate in the rehab. If you have the free time to travel across town or even across the country—by all means go for it.  But if you don’t, you absolutely should consider keeping your projects close to home. 

This is especially important for those of us who are investing part-time.

What I did was get a map of the city and drew a 30 minute circumference around my home.  I figured if I had to go over to the rehab project just to open the door that 30 minutes each way was an hour round trip at the minimum. 

There is a place in the search criteria that let’s you draw a polygon around, at least for me, that 30 minute drive time window, then it was saved as my default search area. 

A 30 minute radius gives me the gamut of different neighborhood choices, from one that the average selling price is 1.7 million dollars to another that sells 1100 square foot houses under $70 a square foot.  I know a bunch of these areas really well, having taken my 2 year-old and 4 year-old for walks up and down their streets just to get a feel.  I know what a bargain is and I know what I can realistically hope to sell one.

I look next to set my upper end limit on price.  If I’ve done my math and I know that I can’t spend more than $150,000 for the house, holding and resell then I put that as my filter. But also know that this is one place I change my criteria often.  $150,000 maybe the limit for a rehab, but what if I found a great deal and wanted to move into the home with my family, rehab it while living there and sell it two years later and get the tax free money?  Or if you found a honey of a deal, one almost too good to pass by, don’t you know anyone that might partner with you?  If you’ve joined your local REI club and have been doing any kind of networking, I bet you do.  A great deal doesn’t necessarily mean a cheap house. 

I pay close attention to days on the market and whether to home is occupied.  If a house has been on the market 100, 150 days or more and the average days on the market for that area is 30 or 40 then I know that something is wrong.  Most of the time it’s too high of an asking price, but sometimes it’s because it’s an ugly house like the Homevestor folks say—an ugly house or an ugly situation, either way, it’s worth looking into.

Terms of the sale—is the title holder willing to do owner financing, and right up front, again, it’s probably a problem house, but one worth a closer look.

Price per square foot—find out what your neighborhoods, or your “farm area” is selling for per square foot.  I would check often, because 6 month old data these days is way too long—how about the last 60 instead.  Selling price per square foot gives you a level playing field.  If one house sells in your watch area for $100 and all the others for $250, it’s worth looking into.

 Label.  Label is a choice the agent has that one of the choices is HUD, VA, REO, this is one of the areas you can search to find foreclosed, repossessed property, another place is Miscellaneous Business Relationship, that’s where it will say Real Estate Owned – Lender.  For whatever reason, the REO’s almost always only show up under the miscellaneous relationship heading and the HUD and VA’s only under label.

I’ve saved one of my favorite search items for last and it’s the Internet and Agent remarks section.  Often they are the same but not always.  This is where you put in the key word searches like:

·        Handyman

·        Must sell

·        Motivated seller

·        Lost job or laid off

·        Needs work

·        Divorce

·        And one that gets my attention every time, “short sale”.

The MLS is just one of the areas that real estate investors use to find homes to fix or hold, a lot of investors think what kind of bargain are you going to find, if everyone else has the same access?  The truth is, every metro area has great buys going up all the time, the issue is finding them.  This is why a great agent can be worth their weight in gold. 

An investor friendly agent knows that an investor could potentially buy several properties a year.  An investor usually knows, or should know exactly what they want.  Financing is usually in place, the quicker the closing the better, and while the agent might not make as much on each deal, the volume should help make up the difference.

Even though my wife is a broker, we have a couple of agents constantly on the lookout and bringing us deals.  Its business we might not find otherwise.  I know one agent that will get on the phone with the listing agent and ask straight-out why the house has been listed for 200 days, or will go as far as instigating a short sale.  These guys will make you some money!

Coming up in our next segment we’ll actually get into the search process and walk through a deal, we’ll then go and evaluate the property and finally get back and run the numbers together.  Heck, if we find a good one I might even ask you to partner with me—.

Sunday Morning October 7, 2007  By Alex O'Neal 

Real estate is in the news again and again, plus a different kind of equity sharing, a way to get into a house for people that might not otherwise have a chance to own a home.  Real estate investors just call this yet another exit strategy. We’ll learn the definition of a “short sale”, we’ll get tips on choosing and dealing with contractors and finally a guy beating the streets in Bastrop named Rick Buckner that is bringing us deals with lots of meat on the bone.

 just think how much easier your life would be if you didn’t have to worry about your next house payment or getting money to send your kids off to college.  Got a boss that’s a jerk or work for a company that the threat of downsizing is always looming over your head and keeping you up and night?  What about the freedom to do the things you always wanted to do, like retire young enough and wealthy enough to be able to really enjoy it?  Or what about a new car, a great vacation?  We all have things that we hope for and yearn for and hopefully this show can help—help perhaps to steer you into a path that will help you get closer to your dreams. And I believe that the quickest way to quitting your J-O-B is with real estate.

Man, this all sounds like a late night infomercial doesn’t it? In a way it kind of is, well with a couple of exceptions.  The people that I see that are making the big money in real estate are all either still working real hard or have worked real hard to get where they are today.  They have all put in the hours and they have made the sacrifices—now, I don’t know about you, but I have never been afraid of working hard and giving up a few things as long as I knew there was a payoff at the end.  We either all know or have heard of the guy that put in 20 years at a company just to get replaced by someone right out of college with half the brains, none of the experience and at a fraction of the salary. There is almost no such thing as corporate loyalty.

Then what about retirement?  You and I both know we can’t depend on social security.  Does your company have a pension fund?  Mine doesn’t.  Now there are such things as 401k’s and IRA’s, but is it going to be enough?  Does it scare you?  It does me.

That’s why my research has brought me to real estate.  It’s the place where real wealth in America comes from—and stays.  There are active real estate investors out there in their 80’s and 90’s.  Oh, they’ve made their money, but they love what they’re doing.  How long would you stay in your current job if you didn’t need the money? 

But is this a scary time to get into real estate investing? News, news, news, every day every newscast, real estate is in one of the top stories.  We’ve hit the point that the government is stepping in to try and help homeowners. 

They say the truth is, despite the way the treasury secretary made it sound, this new program will actually help less than 100,000 people.

And what about equity sharing?  Real estate Investors call it partnering with the in trouble homeowner, one that has some equity in their home, it needs some repair in order to be sold.  The investor put in the money, the work, sells it and then spits the profits with the homeowner.  MSNBC the other day called it the same name, but instead of being used to sell a home, this strategy was being used to buy it….

Still to come short sales, not getting ripped off by a contractor, we’ll learn about subject to’s and we even have a featured property of the week

SEGMENT 2

Want to learn about “Short Sales”?  You hear the term tossed around all over the place, from real estate agents to late night gurus.  Short sales are real, and in today’s real estate world you need to know what they are all about.  Just know that that are not this pie in the sky answer to all your real estate problems.  Short sales are another tool investors use to get the job done.  Here is real estate expert Ken Cook from cook property ventures dot com. 

But what about once you have your investment property and like the tv shows you want to Flip that House?  How do you keep from getting ripped off?  Certain investors are turning to an online resource called Angie’s List.

Angie’s List is where thousands of consumers share their ratings and reviews on local contractors and companies in more than 280 different categories. Currently, more than 600,000 consumers across the U.S. rely on Angie’s List to help them find the right contractor or company for the job they need done.  I had a chance to speak  to Angie the other day..

Once again, that’s Angie’s List dot com.

Coming up next, he’s out there in the trenches, and he’s finding deal after deal after deal and he’s doing it with very little of his own money, he’s even going to offer up a juicy deal for us to buy with the featured property of the week.  His home base is Bastrop Texas, his name is Rick Buckner.

SEGMENT 3

Coming up in the next few weeks on the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour we’ll feature a real estate attorney talking about forming a LLC and asset protection.  And as long as we are on the topic of LLC’s we’ll also have a CPA that specializes in real estate to talk about corporate entities and which one for tax reasons might be best for you and the type of investing you’re into.  I’ve got a couple of people lined up to talk about helping you market your real estate investment plan. By the way, if you know of someone who would make a great guest for the show or there is some trade you’d like me to feature or you would just like to make a comment about the show feel free to write me anytime at alex@amfmrei.com.

I alluded earlier in the show that this is a little like an infomercial, with a few exceptions.  The biggest exception is is that I’m not trying to sell you anything, I don’t even get paid for doing the show, like many investors or investor wanna be’s I have a regular job during the week that pays the bills, mine just happens to be working for Entercom Radio doing mornings on our sister station Majic 95.5.  Another exception between this and a late night infomercial about real estate investing is that I’m here to tell you that real estate investing is hard work and from what I can see, it’s not a get rich quick venture everyone in it it’s more like a get rich slow strategy.  But like the late night ads I’m here to say you can start investing with very little cash of your own and our next guest will let you in on a few secrets how to get started, it’s real estate investor Rick Buckner.  Rick, how did you get started?

(Rick)

And don’t forget to check out Rick’s website good deal homes direct dot com and of course we have that link and all the links from today’s show, along with email addresses, telephone numbers, heck even the audio files from today’s show on our website, AmFmREI.com.  So until next week remember to keep investing in yourself and thanks for listening to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour.

Sunday Morning October 7, 2007  (Transcript from intro) By Alex O'Neal 

Welcome to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour, I’m Alex O’Neal and for the next hour consider this your college for real estate knowledge.  By no stretch of the imagination am I your professor, no way, I went straight to the horse’s mouths, the experts, the people who have been out there, day-in and day-out rolling around in the trenches.

On today’s show we’ll talk with an old buddy of mine, an old tv radio guy who has been doing real estate for the past 25 years and lately has become one of the best local agents in attracting out of state investors.  We’ll talk to a real estate inspector and we’ll do a virtual house walkthrough and he’ll tell us what to be on the look-out for every step of the way.  He shares his expertise so that we can save time and perhaps thousands of dollars in real estate mistakes.  And then later we’ll talk to a lawyer that founded one of the hottest real estate auction companies around.  Real estate auctions, isn’t that something you want to know more about—I know I do.  Plus we’ll have another property for buy today with our featured property of the week.

I want to thank the ton of people that have stopped over to our website at AmFmREI.com, quite a few people have subscribed to the audio downloads, utilized all the links and I have been getting great feedback on the news and views section.  For instance, we have the latest Zillow real estate blog, up to the minute real estate news from the Real Estate Journal, the Washington Post and Forbes, The Austin American Statesman and Austin Chronicle, plus great home repair money savers from About.com.  That’s AmFmREI.com.

This first guest gets clients from all over the country, he’s a face and a voice that many people recognize and I caught up with him the other day....

 (Cliff)

It’s good hearing from my ol’ buddy Cliff and you can find all his links and info on the AmFmREI.com Website.

On the way we will learn why we might want to buy or sell or next property at an auction with the founder of Auction First, but coming up next it’s a Home Inspector that will tell us what to be on the look-out for when looking at investment property and our featured property of the week here on the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour.

SEGMENT 2

Welcome back to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour, I’m Alex O’Neal and you can find all the info from today’s and past shows up on the AmFmREI.com Website.

One of the biggest reasons new investors are afraid to pull the trigger and buy their first investment property is that they are afraid of what they are going to find once they start rehabbing the house.  All lot of new investors over pay for the property to start out with and then they underestimate the repair costs and finally they overestimate the price they think they can get for the house when it’s time to sell.  When they cut the margins so close one bad foundation or roof or AC unit can make the difference between making money and losing it.  How does a new investor protect himself?  One way is the same way a seasoned investor does, it’s by getting the home inspected by a qualified home inspector.

(Steve)

That’s Steve Medina from Savvy Inspections, and of course, all his contact info is up at AmFmREI.com.

It’s time now for our featured property of the week.

(Renata)

You can see the property and find the links and see how pretty my wife is on the AmFmREI.com Website.

By the way, I found a pretty cool real estate website the other day, it may be a tad bit on the geeky side but with a name like geekestateblog.com you can probably understand why. It has extensive information on new technology for the real estate industry from the latest and greatest for your website to the latest on smartphones, you know the ones that have access, if you are a real estate agent that is, to MLS listings and can even open lockboxes.

Up next, she is Co-Founder and President of AuctionFirst Inc. and President of AuctionFirst Central Texas, Inc. She is a licensed attorney, auctioneer and Realtor. She has extensive business development experience and has been involved in four successful start-ups including two national companies. Her corporate experience includes over 15 years as chief negotiator of global technology acquisitions and licensing for several Fortune 100 companies. She holds a Juris Doctor Degree along with B.A. and M.A. degrees.  It’s Linda Mardi on the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour.

SEGMENT 3

It’s the 3^rd segment of today’s AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour, I’m your host Alex O’Neal and you can follow along with us on AmFmREI.com.

 Forget the old stereotype of auctions only being for distressed properties.  More and more sellers are discovering the benefits of an auction sale.  In fact, the National Association of Realtors has predicted that within 7 years, one of every three homes sold in the USA will be sold by auction.  Auctions are a very seller-friendly way to "get the job done."  

I have Linda Mardi on the phone today—

(Linda)

And all those details along with the full audio of today’s show, links, real estate news, the latest happenings in Austin and more are on the AmFmREI.com Website.

See you next week and remember the best investment you can make is the investment in yourself and thanks for listening to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour!   

Welcome to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour , I’m your host Alex O’Neal and this is an hour dedicated to your real estate education.  Along with the help of real estate professionals, I try to bring you at least an item or two a week where you say, “Wow, I didn’t know that.”  I know I say it in the research of the show many times more than that.  And the good news is if you miss anything, or would like details on anything we talk about we have it all for you, including the MP3’s of the entire show, on the AmFmREI.com Website.

By having experts tell us how their specialty can aid in our real estate knowledge arsenal, it    increases our confidence level, especially for you out there that still haven’t taken that first terrifying step.

On today’s show we’ll find out the kind of money an average person can expect to make the first couple of years in the business from Real Estate guru Steve Cook.  We’ll talk to the highly accredited Electrician Todd Ebenhoh on things to look out for and approximate prices of repair of various electrical issues, especially those of concern to real estate investors.  And Mark Wolf, a guy that every investor out there would like to know.  Most investors will tell you the hardest thing in real estate is finding a great deal, well Mark, is a guy that will go out there and find them for you, he’s a Wholesaler and he’ll even feature a property that you could buy today with thousands of dollars of built-in equity.

I have talked to a couple of people that said that they appreciate the variety of topics we discuss here on the show and that’s what I’m trying to provide, the full gamut of real estate investing.  While a person that only buys and sells raw land doesn’t need to know how to estimate repair costs on a rehab project or a person that only purchases with cash doesn’t need to know about subprime lending—but wait a minute, both of them kind of do, don’t they?  And that’s just it, just like life, everything seems sort of interconnected. 

To the outsider looking in now seems like a highly unstable, extremely risky time to get involved with real estate, while some of the experts are telling me that this is exactly the time they have been waiting for—

From an article from the Wharton Business School of Real Estate and posted on Knowledge at Wharton .edu  they say:

During the boom times, you need a lot of construction. People were moving into new households, or so people believed, and the construction increased in order to meet that supposed demand. And, when that demand dries up, for whatever reason -- and at this point it seems to be drying up for credit companies -- then there is no one to build for.

These are companies that have two sources of value: One is the flow of new construction delivering housing to the market, and the other is speculating on land in the future. And, in an era where there is less demand and declining values of housing and land, those two assets are going down. 

In other words, in theory, they would time the building homes while the market is warming  and then when the prices fall they would begin to acquire the raw land needed for future building sites.   

This works with purchasing houses too.  It seems the people who make it big, are the people that are doing the opposite of the masses.  When everyone is selling, they are buying, they might then hold while the market warms back up, then once everyone is buying then they start selling. So no wonder the big shots are saying this is the time they have been waiting for, because the stories are all around us, as a matter of fact from this past week it was the only thing Matt Lauer and Catie Couric were working together on, first from the Today Show—

(NBC)

Then later that very same night Catie, on the CBS Evening News featured this story—

(CBS)

So with these and dozens of other real estate scare stories coming our way everyday, from so many directions of course the general public is getting skittish.   You might have or will experience this in your own life when you tell your neighbor that you or thinking about investing in real estate, or your know-it-all brother-in-law, or your spouse.   Naturally they are going to echo back to you what they are seeing and hearing in the Media.  But these stories are for the general public, you are in on the ground floor, you  have studied your markets, developed your farm neighborhoods and intrinsically know the best time to buy is when the prices are low and sell when they are high.  If you buy at the bottom of the cycle, force equity into the property with the right enhancements, perhaps put a renter in place and let them pay your mortgage while the prices come back up, and then sell it right as or just before the prices are peaking.  You know what this is?  It’s your own 401(k) plan.

I hope we have established that investing in real estate is a good idea, and when you would purchase you would do your due diligence, well you have to do your due diligence when it comes to singling-out the way to invest your real estate dollars.  Even good plans have bad people working them.  Things are not always what they appear, for instance, most of us have seen a certain tv show on Saturday Night, well this came in as an investigative report from Fox 5 in Atlanta . . ..

(Fox)

Just remember, the most successful people are not only the trendsetters, but they are discovering a need and filling them.  They are providing real service to their clients and they sleep like babies at night.

Coming up, what exactly is a real estate wholesaler and why you want to know one with our interview with Mark Wolf, but coming up next, when you first look at a house to flip, what are some electrical issues you should be on the lookout for?  We’ve got a guy that’s going to try to save you from a costly mistake, it’s master electrician Todd Ebenhoh on the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour and AmFmREI.com.

Segment 2

Welcome back to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour, I’m Alex O’Neal and my wife feels like I should call this your non-profit real estate show, because it’s something I do for free.  The only thing I get out of it is meeting and knowing the cool people I get to interview, and, of course, the things I learn to help my own real estate career.

Now notice I did say “career”?  Have you ever considered quitting the 9 to5?  Leaving the rat race?  Telling that wet behind the ears boss of yours to do to himself  I can’t say on the radio?  How about getting a new car?  A big fancy house?  Put your kids through college or how about retire comfortably?  The advice I always hear is that you should start your real estate investing career part-time while you still have your regular job as a way to pay the bills.  Then once you become more familiar and savvy and start to make real money go full-time.  They say once it starts costing you more to keep your old job than you are bringing in, then it’s time to consider becoming a full-time investor.

But what kind of money can you realistically make when you first start out?  Here’s one opinion from real estate guru Steve Cook from the website flippinghomes.com . ...

(Cook)

And of course you make more money by buying your properties right, and if it’s a home, by properly estimating your repair costs.  One way the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour will try to help you with this is by bring you qualified tradesman who can tell us what to watch out for and what the actual repair costs might be. 

Here’s just such a guy, he’s Master Electrician Todd Ebenhoh—

(Todd)

And we have the full interview with Todd up on the AmFmREI Website at AmFmREI.com , along with the links to all the people and things we’ve talked about, plus current news and how-to articles, transcripts from this and past shows and even the MP3s so you can catch a past episode or feature that you may have missed so you can listen to it right on your computer, burn it to a disc or load it on an IPOD and listen to it back and forth on your way to your J-O-B.

Coming up next, it’s a guy who we would all like to know, he goes out and finds great real estate deals and brings them to us; he’s a real estate wholesaler.  Mark Wolf is up next on the Am/Fm Real Estate Investment Hour!

Segment 3

This is the final segment of today’s show, I’m your host Alex O’Neal and our Website is AmFmREI.com. 

And if you are even thinking about becoming a real estate investor, one thing I would suggest without reservation is joining your local real estate investment club.   A Real Estate investment club is a good way for people to get information and find contacts. As with any business, be diligent and see what is opinion versus fact. Use the investment club as a stepping stone to your business.   Real Estate Investor Clubs are very useful tool for a beginner and expert investor. I see Real Estate Investor Club as an association where like minded people come and get motivated, get knowledge, build relationships and make deals happen!  If you are new investor there is no better way to join local real estate investor club and get in the game! New investors can easily understand who are the real players in the market. 

I am a member of the Real Estate Investor Club of Austin better known as REICA.  In the central Texas area there are several others like the Cedar Park club and the Austin Real Estate Networking Club.  Almost all the clubs will let you sit-in on one of their meetings as a guest to see if it’s right for you.  It’s been my experience that the people are extremely friendly and helpful.  While there are plenty of experienced folks, there are a lot of beginners too.  Next week we will feature the new owner of the Real Estate Investor Club of Austin and her exciting new plans to make it even better.

It was at the local REI club I first met our next guest.  At the beginning of every meeting people get up in front of the group and offer their latest deals, everything from apartment complexes to commercial property to single family homes.  He had a great deal, but then again, he always has great deals, it’s his job—

(Wolf)

That’ll do it for today, thank you for joining us and thanks to all our experts that shared their knowledge with us.  Find all the details including all the podcasts, links, blog, news and more at www.AmFmREI.com, write me anytime, it’s Alex at AmFmREI.com.  Until next Sunday, remember never stop investing in yourself and thanks for listening to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour!

Sunday Morning September 23, 2007  (Transcript from intro) By Alex O'Neal 

Welcome to the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour, I’m Alex O’Neal and on this week’s show we will talk to a colorful, energetic, successful Real Estate Investor named Artie Berne and he’ll tell us one of his strategies for making a real estate deal happen, we’ll talk to a guy about a truly self directed IRA, that you can use to invest in Real Estate and we’ll talk to a couple of people from the most prolific house buying company in the world.

 My wife Renata is the Broker for our company AmFm Properties and we have done some very successful rehab projects and we are looking to do even more.  I have always believed in education, and I wanted to learn as much about real estate investing as I possibly could.  I don’t get paid in anyway for doing this show, more sole purpose is to open a window to learning for you, as I open it for myself on a way to a better quality of life.

Part of my self appointed duties as host is to sift through the miasma of information out there about real estate investing and bring the tips and tricks that seem to make some sense in the real world, here to you.

For instance, here are some great tips from Flip that house guru, Armando Montelongo, and found on armandomontelongo.com

It’s about identifying property repairs properly and saving you thousands if you know what to fix and what not to fix.

DO-- Do check for leaks around the base of showers including the adjacent walls of bedrooms that may share a common wall with the shower.  If any of these walls have water damage, the shower pan is in need of repair and you will need to replace the shower.

Here’s a DON’T--Don’t Move Plumbing. Moving sinks, showers, toilets etc… is expensive and time consuming.  Simply spruce up these areas with new fixtures (toilets, sinks, faucets) to get that “new home” effect. Keeping bathroom fixtures where they are can SAVE YOU between $1,000 - $3,500.

DO --Do check for leaks underneath the kitchen and bathroom cabinets. This will help you budget for plumbing repairs and possible cabinet replacement.

DON’T--Don’t make replacing cabinets a priority. If cabinets are not water damaged, look to prime and paint or stain instead. This can save you THOUSANDS of dollars and up to 4 weeks in time. 

DO --Do accessorize. Install new towel racks, toilet paper holders, mirrors and light fixtures. This gives the “I care” approach and makes a house feel like home to your buyers.

DON’T--Don’t look to re-tile first. Look at cleaning, then re-grouting. These two steps can save you thousands. Next, look at refinishing tile, and if none of these plans work, then and only then re-tile.

It’s been my experience the hardest things about investing in real estate is finding a good property, that’s why certain investors out there base their whole investing careers on buying repossessed property from lenders.  The trip a house makes to get back to the lien holder is that it is first offered up for auction on the courthouse steps.  When the investors that are there choose not to meet the opening bid the property becomes what’s known as a REO, or real estate owned by the bank or lending institution.  Simple enough right?  I wish.

Here’s some great advice about Locating Bank Foreclosure Lists By Mike Collins the Founder of RehabList.com

Bank foreclosure lists are great tools if you are in the market for a new property.

Many people use bank foreclosure lists as a way of finding homes in their area without having to put in too much time and effort. But even if you know that these lists offer great advantages, you still need to know where to find them.

This does not have to be a difficult task, and there are three places that you can start your search today:

~  The first place that many people look for bank foreclosure lists is with the lender.

Lenders will send you a list so that you can find everything you need.  The only problem that comes up when trying to find bank foreclosure lists this way is that it can sometimes be difficult to get a hold of the right person.  Not everybody at the bank will have this list; you will need to find the person that does. Start in the REO department (real estate owned). It is better to work with small local banks in your area as the larger banks lists will already be worked hard by investors in your area.

~ Bank foreclosure lists can also be found online for free. 

There are many sites that offer this service to its visitors.  Even though this may sound like a great deal, you will want to be very careful before you trust them completely.  A lot of these free sites do not update their information regularly which means that you will end up chasing homes that are no longer for sale.  In addition, sometimes free does not mean free.  These services will try to tack on additional fees a long the way.

~There are also online services that you can become members of for a small monthly fee. 

The main advantage of using these services is that you will be able to find everything that you need in one place.  Paid services update their listings on a daily basis, and also include pictures when they can.  Even though you will have to pay a monthly fee, it is well worth it for many people.  Overall, this can be the easiest way to find bank foreclosure lists.

Trying to find foreclosed homes without bank foreclosure lists can be a difficult task.  By using these, you will no longer have to search for hours or take the chance of missing out on a great property.  Bank foreclosure lists are easy to find, so why not get yours today?

Yeah, good luck with this, probably googoling “bank foreclosure lists” is a great start .

A real estate investor from Dallas says on his blog on jeremybrandt.com that “now is a great time for residential real estate investors.  It is separating the serious business-minded investors from the "seminar junkies" who have been following a formula to buy (flip) houses, and don't know what to do as the market shifts.

For the serious business person, you must change with the times, constantly re-evaluate your strategy, and not get complacent with what works today - because it likely won't work tomorrow.

With the glut of inexperienced investors being churned out by afternoon TV shows, late night infomercials, and "real estate gurus" - I believe the market shift is a welcome sight for most experienced investors.”

But how do you get the experience?  You might have to do a seminar or two or three, you have to read everything you can get your hands on, join a local real estate investment club, listen to a radio show like this where I have experts giving their insights and tips, but more than all the above, you might have to do some networking.  Talking to people that have done some successful investments, talk to people in the trades like a roofer or carpenter, to realtors and loan officers.  It won’t be long before you naturally start to understand more and more.

I always find it interesting to hear how successful real estate investors started out their real estate career, and when you hear their beginnings, you hear their day to days, some patterns start to emerge.  All the great ones have serious drive and even better follow-through.  There is a sense I honesty I get from these people, and while the money is good, there is something else motivating them too, it’s an air of doing the right thing.  If they are out grocery shopping with their family and they see someone they bought or sold a house from, if they run into one of their contractors, or their banker, they want to be able to look them straight in the eye with no guilt or remorse.  The people I’ve met would probably walk right up to them and ask them about THEIR family, because they would have cared enough to have known in the first place.

The great ones that I’ve talked to have a sense of pride in the work they do and the services they provide.  They do quality work and sell it at a FAIR price.

There is also a thirst for knowledge.  They are constantly learning—trying to improve themselves.  I met a successful local investor the other day.  His name is Artie Berne, an intelligent, good-looking, Jersey boy.  It seemed that every time the market would zig, so would Artie would too, but he would also anticipate the coming zag.  When I asked him about getting started in real estate in Austin, he had already been a successful at owning small multiunit apartment complexes in California, but when he hit Texas he moved to a different approach—he started doing lease options.  Now since then Texas and Oregon have passed laws against lease options as an exit strategy, but almost the same concept could be used for owner financing. 

I caught-up with Artie the other day in a crowed, noisy, Mexican Restaurant and he told me how he’s done everything from flipping houses to building million dollar-plus spec homes, to what he’s doing today as vice president of business development at Performance Capital. When I said he told me, I really meant he told the tables around us, because if you listen closely, people stopped talking and not a glass was clinking, all of us were listening closely and willing students at Artie Berne Real Estate

As I mentioned before Artie was talking about lease options, and while HE no longer uses that option, people still read or hear about the tactic. From what heard from a real estate attorney there have been a lot of people requesting more information on the lease option law that was passed recently here in Texas. 

Here is the net effect of the attorney’s advice to me: 

Do Not Do Lease Options in Texas. 

That is it.  There are a lot of other options available to you to sell property, but if you decide to do a lease with an option on a property and have a disagreement with the tenant - you will likely lose the home and maybe more.  If you lease-option the house with any financing tied to it - you are breaking the law.

One solution is to sell the properties with owner financing and wrap the mortgage.  There are downsides to this, for instance, you have to foreclose on the property if you stop getting paid.  The upside is that it’s legal and the foreclosure process in Texas is at least fairly quick.

 Coming up, learn how you can invest in real estate using your IRA or 401 K with guest David Doscher and later, they are the number home buyer in America, I think something like 6000 homes last year alone, it’ll be Mark and Samantha Crosby from Homevestors, you know the we buy ugly houses people---all here on the AmFm Real Estate Investment Hour! 

Sunday Morning September 16, 2007  (Transcript from intro) By Alex O'Neal

Welcome to the AmFm Real Estate Investing Hour, AmFmREI for short, I’m your host Alex O’Neal, Morning Man on our sister station Majic 95.5. The AmFm Real Estate Investing Hour is all about taking the plunge and becoming a Real Estate investor and making some of those millions of dollars we have been hearing so much about.  Coming up on today’s show will talk to Rick Vallini, Rick is founder of HomeFixers Corporation and co-author of the New York Times best selling book FLIP: How To Find, Fix And Sell Houses For Profit, and Michael Everist, Principal and founder of Everist Mortgage—and we’ll get the impressions of a guy on the inside of the current, ever-changing, ever tightening, hard as heck to qualify for, lending market.

The whole idea of the AmFm Real Estate Investing Hour is to take you by the hand through the world of real estate investing—and man, what a big world it is!  It’s seems like the more you learn the more you need to learn.  From buying and flipping to buying and holding.   Yep, there are plenty of people out there making plenty of money that will tell you that being a landlord is not such a bad thing. 

We’ll feature lots of people pulling in the big bucks with systems tried and true, to the little guy with so-so credit that’s just trying to get started.  Will the AmFm Real Estate Investing Hour is focused toward people that are thinking about getting into the business, most of the stuff could apply just as well to a first time homebuyer or a regular homeowner.  For instance we’ll talk to an electrician that will explain to you how to tell if you have aluminum wiring and if it is a bad thing, and if it’s a bad thing, how much it will be to replace it and even if you have to replace it.  We’ll have plumbers, painters and foundation guys, plus experts on credit repair, appraisers and home loans all sharing their knowledge and insider tips.

Coming soon to the AmFm Real Estate Investing Hour and AmFmREI.com will be home inspectors, hard money lenders, real estate agents and CPAs.  We’ll talk to a Real Estate Attorney about the best kind of entity to form, whether it’s a LLC, C Corp or S Corp  and which best protects your assets and gives you the biggest bang for your buck at tax time depending upon the kind of investing you decide to do.  

And there are a lot of different kinds of investing to consider.   We talked about buying and fixing and buying and renting single family homes, but what about multifamily units like duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes?  How about apartment buildings or condos or townhouses?  There are lots of folks making money with commercial real estate and what about raw land?  You will learn about buying foreclosed property on the courthouse steps, negotiating with banks on their REO holdings, HUD properties and how you can buy a tax lien certificate for as little as $100.00.

The myriad of choices is really overwhelming and it would be hard for one person to understand it all that is why we’ll feature experts in their given fields to help you take that all important first step into investing in real estate.

And why would you want to take the plunge into real estate investing? 

Investing in real estate gives an investor one tool that is not available to stock market investors:  leverage. If you want to buy a stock, you have to pay the full value of the stock at the time you place the buy order. Most "conventional" mortgages require 25% down. However, depending on where you live, there are many types of mortgages that require as little as 5%. This means that you can control the asset and eventually the equity it holds, by only paying a fraction of the total price. Of course, over time you might pay off the entire note for the value of the property, but you control it the minute you sign the papers at the title company.

One thing I’ve noticed about the guys that have 30 or 40 properties under their belts is they don’t buy and sell emotionally.  It’s mostly a numbers game.  That’s not saying they don’t get fired-up when they score a great house 40 or 50 percent below market value or they don’t celebrate when they make 30, 40 or 50,000 dollars on a single sale.  It means they are not going to fall in love with the granite countertops the master bathroom that has a bidet, it means they are going to run the numbers on the purchase price, the repair costs and the after repair value and if they don’t add up, they move on to the next opportunity.  And, oh yeah, usually when they do fall in love with the house or the neighborhood a lot of them will move in with their families and owner occupy the house for two years and take the $250,000 tax break from Uncle Sam.  That’s a half a million by the way if they are married.

Speaking of marriage, can a real estate investor stay married or are they headed down the road of divorce because this REI game is going to become their new mistress?  The answer is yes—and no.  There are many successful couples making lots of money in real estate.  Real estate investing is hard work, but you get the luxury of deciding how much time you want to invest.  You can make a nice part-time income or quit the rat race altogether depending how much time and effort you are willing to put forth. 

But watch out man, real estate investing is like a fever, it can be a blast and its easy to start obsessing.   Most millionaires have a significant portion—if not the majority—of their wealth in real estate. And for most of them, that’s how they made it in the first place.  It almost goes without saying that anything with such outstanding opportunities comes with great risks, and the best way to protect yourself is with knowledge and I hope that’s where the AmFm Real Estate Investing Hour can help out.

My wife asked me when I told her I wanted to do this show if I was going to get paid for doing it and I said I wasn’t.  They why are you doing it she asked and I said that this is all the stuff and all the people I would want to talk to anyway, the only difference is that I will have a microphone in my hands.  I have been in radio for almost 30 years and I know the power of the mic, it can open doors, but it can also inform too.  The networking aspect,  the people I’ve met thus far have already made my real estate investment tool box much more valuable and complete.  

I added it all up and I’ve probably spent a couple of thousand hours listening to seminars, podcasts and CDs about real estate investing on my way to and from work and to the grocery store and Home Depot; at last count I have read 37 books cover to cover on real estate and yet I feel like I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of this multi-dimensional topic.  I wanted to do this show to learn, and to build my own confidence level.  When you are buying and selling things that cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, you better have all the knowledge you can gather.  I got into real estate so I can make a bunch of money, maybe not as fast as those late night infomercials or Flip shows would have you believe, but more slow and steady. Oh yeah, one other reason, it’s a blast.  So if one day you tune in and I’m not here, you’ll know that I quit having fun.