All Forum Posts by: Glenn Espinosa

I have worked with severely depressed individuals who are debilitated to the point where they cannot even perform daily personal hygiene, feed themselves, let alone go to school or perform their work duties.

It is an illness and in my opinion would more than qualify for a lease cancellation - if you can prove that you are debilitated to a state similar to what I described above.

From your post, and from you stating yourself that you don't believe your situation "constitutes a severe enough illness," you probably do not have any ground to stand on.

How long is your lease for? Finding a qualified sub-leaser to take over your lease may not be such a bad thing and could become a win-win for all parties involved. Talk to your property manager, let them know your situation, have your therapist support what you are saying - it can only..

I'am glad to hear you are being proactive with your mental health. Let us know how it goes!

Glenn

I think it was Brandon Turner who had a blog before about creating awesome 1 page websites with customized urls as simple as www.123mainst.com I don't remember but I think he used wix.com to make the pages.

Have you looked into youtube videos? A few young, top agents in my area are outpacing the older guys because they are leveraging the sites like youtube and facebook.

Elliot Mendoza - Great question and Will Barnard is very right, you have to be very careful.

I'am actually in your exact situation as I too am currently deployed with the military. I've also bought three properties since being deployed, one of which was a multifamily unit that I plan to rehab and rent out. How did I do it? Well I may be a step ahead of you in that I have a ground team that I manage on a daily basis.

I have two realtors that I trust and have done business with in the past. They bring me deals as well as manage the contracts and deal with the sellers and their agents.

I have my Project Manager who I also trust as he has extensive rehab knowledge. He visits every lead that we find and coordinates with our GC's to estimate rehab costs. One of his most important duties is to take dozens of pictures of potential properties and upload them to our company cloud server - soon we will be implementing a video option that will further improve our acquisition process. This allows me to get a first hand look at every subject property so that I can make the final decision in regards to our max allowable offer.

Lastly, I have my Finance Officer who coordinates with my Realtors, accountant, attorney, and title company to close deals and manage the finances that are needed. Luckily, my Finance Officer is my significant other who I trust :) to sign contracts. If there is anything needing my personal signature we will arrange power of attorneys for whatever reason.

The main thing is to have a strong ground unit that can carry the bulk of your due diligence.

Hope this helps!

Glenn

Awesome to have you in this community Dell. It sounds like you are very hardworking and persistent - both traits a successful real estate investor needs!

Congratulations on the new found success.

One question: With the collapse you experienced in '07 and '08, what did you learn from it and what changes have you made to your new business as a result.

Would love to hear your response!

Glenn

Former avid Redditor here.

I reevaluated my time expenditures a few months ago and found that I was wasting WAY too much time on Reddit. It was hard but I have made it a point not to spend time on Reddit unless it is for focused activities such as checking out their real estate subreddits or for quick news updates.

Haven't logged on in over 3 weeks and my productivity has skyrocketed!

It's a great site but if you're not careful you can quickly lose hours of your day looking at funny pictures and pictures of cats - haha!

I have yet to close a deal from sources other than the MLS but I have had some "success" with the few strategies that my company has been employing.

1) We are marketing on craigslist as cash buyers on a regular basis. We've found one investor friendly realtor via craigslist and she has been REALLY great in terms of finding us prospective houses and putting in our offers for them. In the span of 2 months we've put in over 25 offers on houses through her. I feel we are getting really close to closing a deal.

Other than finding an awesome realtor on craigslist we've also had numerous prospective sellers contact in response to our advertisements on the site. Many are weeded out because they simply aren't motivated enough. We do have two owners that we are checking up on on an almost weekly basis. We have one owner who is down to 55% of ARV but we are holding out for a lower purchase price. In the past two weeks we've gotten him down from $100k initially to $65k verbal and we are confident he will go lower!

2) Signs - from bandit signs, to car decals, to yard signs in front of our current rehabs, we are being contacted by people who want to sell their house. Like the strategy above, many of these sellers are simply not motivated enough. No leads yet but we are getting our name out there and that can be seen as a plus. Also, we are able to fine tune our efforts as we are constantly learning what works and what doesn't.

One of your first steps is to work on your credit and to save money. There is NO way around this step and eventually you will need to address it -- Better to get started on it now. Lower expenses, work extra hours, sell stuff, pay down debt, etc.

Everybody sees the opportunity NOW and wants to jump in. But you have to have the foundation to take the risks in real estate.

Network, find successful investors in your area, offer free hard work and labor to them in exchange for learning their business. This might lead to a deal, you never know.

You have to make moves and take action.

There are SO many streams that you can tap into in order to find deals. The KEY (and I am learning this first hand myself) is to stay consistent with one or two strategies and perfect them before trying others.

A lot of new investors will read about different strategies used to acquire properties and will jump from one to another without fully mastering the previous strategy.

Pick one and learn everything about it. Put the strategy to the test and perform massive action on it. Stay consistent with it and don't jump to the next strategy if things don't work out at as fast as you had hoped. That last part is actually much harder than it seems.

Theres a list I found on a personal site of one of BP's users. It was a very comprehensive list of different strategies people use to acquire properties. I think the list included 50 or so strategies. Message me and I'll find it for you. I'd post it here but it's a personal site.

Glenn

I second the great post by Jon!

Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. I don't think many in the US understand that if they want lower taxes they have to give up some of their public services or vice versa.

I can never understand the people who are dependant on medicare yet are lobbying for the very politicians who are set out on cutting the program.

I have no idea what condition the property is in and what repairs you are planning but from my experience, it is very hard to do 15k worth of rehab and expect the ARV to increase by 55k-65k.

Is there room for mistakes and unplanned repairs in that rehab budget?

I agree with Brian, maybe finding a smaller deal will be a better route.