It's September already, what have you done lately?

Question

Last month was busy for me since I'm in school but I did get a few things accomplished.

I wrote about a real estate meeting that was held in Kansas City, Missouri and had a great time making contacts and meeting some great investors such as Linda Pilgas, Kim Tucker and others.

I talked to my mom's accountant about assuming her loan and the deal is in the works.  I'll provide more details when the paperwork is complete.

Lastly I joined author Diane Kennedy with Numis Network to make a little extra money each month.

So what did you do last month?

Tom

Dale Osborn · Answer

We have been working on getting investment properties refinanced at the much lower rates that are currently available. One property has been completed, another should wind up this month. Then need to do one more - am working with individual from this forum to see about getting that one done. The monthly savings from the lower payments are like an additional paycheck allowing for more going to the reserves to look for more investment properties.

Ned Carey · Answer

Congrats to you all. You are inspiring. It makes me realize how little I accomplished in August.

James Vermillion · Answer

The months have really been running together since I have been back in Lexington!  I finally finished rehabbing the house I will be living in (mostly) and closed on a single family property I will be rehabbing soon and have started searching for the next one.

Dennis Tierney · Answer

Finally have a multifamily (26 unit) under contract for a syndicated LLC and next will come the real work getting the inspections, legal, financing and other due diligence going and getting the info to the investors. Expected close is mid Nov.

Jon Klaus · Answer

I had a lot going on in my IT services business in August, but still was busy on the REI side.

I bought another property in Austin that came as a result of a 6 month yellow letter campaign. We plan to tear down the house and build two new ones on the lot.

I also sold a rental to a tenant on Friday afternoon just before the end of the month. That's the third month in a row I've sold a rental.

Shanequa J. · Answer

I sent out letters to code violations and got the owner to sign the purchase agreement yesterday.

J Scott · Answer

Summer is always slow for us in terms of buying (lots of competition and low distressed property inventory), so we have learned to pretty much take the summer off and focus on building the business.

In the past month or two, we have;

- Started our first direct mail campaigns (5000 letters/cards).  Nothing exciting has come from it yet -- we're having trouble balancing good marketing techniques with the requirements our brokers are putting on us, so we'll likely be getting our broker license to give us more control and hopefully improve our direct marketing success.

-  We've built a team to rehab our Milwaukee property and kicked off work.  It's a large project (about $100K in renovations) and we've had a ton to learn (permit process is crazy, pricing is a bit different than we're used to, and renovations are a bit different than in the types of houses we're accustomed to), but we have our team in place and we just kicked off work last week.

-  We got approvals on three short sale purchases that we'll hopefully be closing this month.

-  I finished about 100 pages of the rehab book I'm writing...  :)

The next couple months should be a lot busier now that summer is over.

Ibrahim Hughes · Answer

Got aggressive and revisited my wholesale roots (I'm primarily a rehabber - but my projects are taking a bit longer to close these days). Put 5 properties under contract having closed on wholesaling one of them.

One of the others just went under contract a week ago (I'm actually partnered with someone I met here on BP - Hopefully we'll have a success story to post in a few weeks) and three others have title issues that I'm working through in order to make them legally marketable (2 of them should be doable but the 3rd will take some CREATIVITY and hard work).

I rarely acknowledge 'holidays' so I'm meeting with a buyer and seller (2 separate deals) today on a couple of Realtor deals I've been working (which I do if I can't make a wholesale deal happen cheap enough on the purchase side).  I'm also showing a rehabber a property today I'll be putting under contract soon.  A boarded junker so we can let ourselves in and confirm that there's potential for the seller, myself (as a wholesaler) and the rehabber.

Lastly I met with and am currently merging with a new partner I met from my REIA.  He actually helped me close on the wholesale flip I did last month by bringing in the buyer.  My focus is typically on dealing with owners of distressed properties and I was looking to partner with someone who was both experienced and knowledgeable about the business as well as savvy on the marketing and sales side.  We discussed our visions as well as our ethics in doing business and found that we are on the same page about a lot of things we feel are important in business and life in general.  He speaks Spanish, which is huge here with our large Latino population of buyers, sellers and contractors (for rehabbing) and from a neighboring county that I've been looking to tap into.

So we'll see how it goes but it looks really good. Wow - didn't realize I was so busy this past month. LOL