Jim has written 39 article(s) for the BiggerPockets Blog.
Real Estate Investing by Jim Watkins | December 9, 2008Looking 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 [...]
Real Estate Investing by Jim Watkins | December 1, 2008Real 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 [...]
Commentary by Jim Watkins | September 27, 2008This 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 [...]
Cool Stuff by Jim Watkins | September 20, 2008The 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 [...]
Foreclosures by Jim Watkins | September 13, 2008A 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 [...]
Blogs by Jim Watkins | July 12, 2008Okay 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 a [...]
Foreclosures by Jim Watkins | June 28, 2008In 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 [...]
Real Estate Investing by Jim Watkins | June 12, 2008In 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 [...]
Commentary by Jim Watkins | May 24, 2008Minneapolis 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 [...]
Real Estate Investing 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 [...]
Commentary by Jim Watkins | April 13, 2008Last 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 [...]
Commentary by Jim Watkins | April 4, 2008During 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 pay [...]
Learn Real Estate by Jim Watkins | March 20, 2008How 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 [...]
Foreclosures by Jim Watkins | March 15, 2008Caught 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 [...]
Landlord Tenant by Jim Watkins | March 6, 2008In 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 bags [...]
Copyright © 2004-2012 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
BiggerPockets® is a registered trademark of BiggerPockets, Inc.
Joshua DorkinMarty Boardman
Jeff Brown
Chris Clothier
Ken Corsini
Peter Giardini
Jason HansonKevin Kaczmarek
Douglas Lazovick
Jeff Logue
Sharon Vornholt
Richard WarrenMelissa Zavala
Michael Zuber
A Bad Bank: I Laughed All The Way Home
by Jim Watkins | September 27, 2008This 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 [...]