Posts by author:

Jim Watkins

Real Estate Investing

Starting Out in Real Estate Investing: Who Can You Trust?

by Jim Watkins | December 9, 2008

Looking back on when I started out in this business, I admit that I got lucky. Too many times I have heard about someone new who got involved with someone who used them or worse, stole from them. Sadly, it happens. Someone see’s an infomercial and decides to get into real estate investing. Then they [...]

0 comments Read the full article →
Real Estate Investing

Looking for Abandoned Houses? Ask for Steve Johnson

by Jim Watkins | December 1, 2008

Real estate investors who have driven around looking for abandoned houses, know that identifying them is not always as easy as it seems.
One of my students (Suki) had asked if we could go to a few parts of town to see if we could locate some abandoned houses in hopes of getting to the homeowners [...]

2 comments Read the full article →
Commentary

A Bad Bank: I Laughed All The Way Home

by Jim Watkins | September 27, 2008

This article is a stretch when it comes to being about real estate but, what happened to me yesterday at the bank was so dumb that it all makes sense.
I had hired three day laborers to help me with a small house project I have been working on and as I was driving them back [...]

5 comments Read the full article →
Cool Stuff

Dogs & Cats: The Silent Victims of Foreclosure – Introducing Help Foreclosure Pets

by Jim Watkins | September 20, 2008

The BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing for Real News Blog is officially the first media outlet to announce the arrival of a new website dedicated to helping dogs and cats victimized by foreclosure.
Abandoned Animals of Foreclosure: Help Is On The Way
I have been working in the foreclosure market since I began investing in 1999 and [...]

23 comments Read the full article →
Foreclosures

Gambling at the Foreclosure Auction: High Stakes

by Jim Watkins | September 13, 2008

A few years ago I was in the office, when the receptionist said a gentleman was on the phone and had a question about the house he bought at the auction that day, and asked if I would talk to him.
I picked up the phone and asked what I could help him with.
Finding Great [...]

9 comments Read the full article →
Blogs

Online Chat Room Helps Save Foreclosure Homeowner

by Jim Watkins | July 12, 2008

Okay I admit it… I used to be an active “chatter” in a local chat room on Yahoo. It was a room where many people from the Dallas area met up to…Chat. Many of us had met outside of the cyber room at local restaurants, clubs and the like.
Yahoo had recently shut down [...]

4 comments Read the full article →
Foreclosures

Foreclosure Eviction: Tricked as Tenant “Fleas”

by Jim Watkins | June 28, 2008

In 2005, I bought a house at the Dallas County auction for a California investor friend who asked me to bid in his place. With the help of a Mentoring student, Gloria Stephens, I was given valuable information about the current owner. What type of person she was and whether or not she would willingly [...]

9 comments Read the full article →
Real Estate Investing

Bullets in the Stucco: An Investor’s Tale

by Jim Watkins | June 12, 2008

In August of 2003, I was painting the exterior of a house in north Minneapolis. That area in general is considered to be the most dangerous part of Minnesota and it usually leads the way in crime statistics. It was a two-story, stucco house on Oliver Ave N. I remember that it was a nice [...]

9 comments Read the full article →
Commentary

Cities Working Against Themselves in the Battle Against Foreclosures

by Jim Watkins | May 24, 2008

Minneapolis on the Decline: A Case Study
I have been following a fraud case that the city of Minneapolis has played a major role in. To be more exact, the Minneapolis City Council has been a driving force behind it. North Minneapolis has long been considered a high crime area and that part of Minneapolis [...]

8 comments Read the full article →
Real Estate Investing

A Real Estate Investor’s Nightmare: Meet The “Rat House”

by Jim Watkins | April 25, 2008

(Note from the editor: The following tale shows what kinds of properties you can end up running into when investing in real estate. I’ve seen some pretty nasty homes as well, and you never forget them! – Josh)
The “Rat House”
It seems that every house deal I have done ends up with a title rather [...]

19 comments Read the full article →
Commentary

Three Factors that Limit Real Estate Appreciation

by Jim Watkins | April 13, 2008

Last week, someone posted a question about whether or not geography was a factor to Texas not appreciating like the rest of the country in recent years.
It got me to thinking and I recalled a local presentation (Dallas) I had done in 2006 where I addressed that very question.
In Texas, there are three main reasons [...]

8 comments Read the full article →
Commentary

Texas: The Next Real Estate Boom?

by Jim Watkins | April 4, 2008

During a class I was teaching in 2005, one of the students asked why all the “idiot” California investors were flocking into town and buying newly constructed houses for as much as $0.90 cents on the dollar? His question drew some laughs from others in the room and they also wondered why they would [...]

16 comments Read the full article →
Learn Real Estate

How to Be a Successful Real Estate Investor. The Story of One Valuable Pre-Foreclosure Lead.

by Jim Watkins | March 20, 2008

How Valuable is One Lead?

People often ask me what the average response rate is when mail marketing to homeowners in pre-foreclosure. There are two answers depending on what the content of the letter is. If the purpose of the letter is to see if the homeowner is willing to sell, then the average response [...]

4 comments Read the full article →
Foreclosures

Fighting Foreclosure: How One Homeowner Fought the Trustee For Time and Won!

by Jim Watkins | March 15, 2008

Caught up in Foreclosure and In Need of Help
A homeowner in Dallas contacted me in December and told me their lender had just filed to foreclose on their house and wanted to know if I could help them.
I met with them soon after and read the notice to foreclose. It was scheduled to go to [...]

8 comments Read the full article →
Landlord Tenant

Landlords: What to do When Your Rental Property is Used as a Meth Lab

by Jim Watkins | March 6, 2008

In the winter of 2003, I was out driving by properties that I was managing in Minnesota, checking to make sure the tenants were maintaining the exteriors. One of the properties was a four-plex building and the day I drove by was the trash pick up day. Ordinarily, there is nothing noteworthy about trash [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
BiggerPockets® is a registered trademark of BiggerPockets, Inc.