All Forum Posts by: Lori Greene

No I've never heard of them Donna, but I looked them up. I can see how that offer would look enticing to a new investor since they provide the funding. But if they are charging you for mentoring AND partnering with you at the same time, taking some of your profits, that is generally frowned upon and could land them in trouble.

But since there are so many creative ways to fund a deal as mentioned in this thread, you don't need something like that just for the funding.

A great mentor, on the other hand, who can show you step by step how to fund your own deals, yet will never ask for a penny of your profits, can be invaluable to a new investor because you can learn so much faster from their mistakes.

Great Andrey. Also, here are more tips for finding pre-foreclosures, motivated sellers and distressed properties that may not be on a list that everyone else has:

* Create a Huge Birddog Team: Train everyone you know and meet how to spot a distressed or vacant property (ask me if you need tips on how to spot a distressed or vacant property). Tell them all that you'll give them $100 if you buy a property that they referred. Tell them to tell their friends too. Delivery workers, property workers, landscapers, contractors, your mailman, your garbage man, your meter readers, etc., are great for this because they are driving neighborhoods everyday anyway. Also drive around yourself looking for distressed, vacant, for-sale-by-owner and for rent.

* Put out ads, signs and mailers to attract motivated sellers and pre-foreclosures (get Notice of Default list at county, A.K.A. Lis Pendens or Sheriff's Sale, Tax Sale, etc.).

* Call, text or email for-sale-by-owners and rental properties on Craigslist and Zillow (this sometimes works better than a phone call).

* Get a realtor to put you on daily auto-emails of properties listed at Price/sq ft 70% or less than area average price/sq ft and/or with motivated sellers keywords like motivated, TLC, invest, potential, opportunity, bring all offers, short sale, as-is, seller financing, owner carry, desperate, must sell, fixer upper, handyman, rehab, repairs, problems, issues, foreclosure, REO, bank owned, distressed, probate, death, estate, etc.

* REO lists (BP has one, HUD has one). Bank-owned properties can be wholesaled using disposable LLC's where you create LLC's for the purpose of making offers, when offer is accepted, you sell the LLC to another investor so they now own the contract. Banks often demand proof of funds. Transactional Funding letter can be used for proof-of-funds. Ask me if you need more details about these strategies.

* Narrow down these many potential deals with a quick elimination process: Find the initial estimated ARV online by averaging all of the instant home value estimators like Zillow (confirm this later with the actual ARV from realtor comps). Find mortgage balance by asking the seller if possible (usually they will tell you if they are highly motivated). This tells you how much bargaining room they have. Confirm later with county records (deeds/liens) or do this now if you can't talk to the seller yet. Figure $20/sq ft for typical cosmetic rehab (confirm later with homeadvisor.com estimates). Now use the 70% rule: If the asking price and/or balance owed plus the renovation costs is 70% or less than the ARV, add this deal to your favorites list.

* Narrow your favorites with further due diligence: Get comps from a realtor, interview the seller to find motivations and needs, go see the property, get repair estimates from homeadvisor.com, look up liens/deeds, title issues, code violations, zoning issues, etc. at the county.

* Continue to narrow your favorites by the info you find. The best deals will reveal themselves with this process.

* Choose your most favorite.

* Get an inspection done to reveal all repairs.

* If you are flipping or buying yourself to hold and rent, present your deal and all of your fabulous homework to your lender. For funding you can try Private Money Partners (people with money who don't lend as a profession, our favorite, ask if you want to know how), Hard Money, Seller Financing, HELOC, Cash-Out Refi, 401K/IRA, Conventional Loan, Multiple High Limit Credit Cards.

* If bird-dogging, present it to another wholesaler or investor (give them all details except the address and seller name and contact info until you have a signed agreement with them).

* If wholesaling, make your offer. Once offer is accepted, present the deal to other investors in BP Market Place, at local REIA meet-ups, at local auctions and on your lists of Cash Buyers. For a great presentation, create a PDF with property details, photos, comps used to support your ARV, description of what needs to be done on rehab/repairs, numbers breakdown showing how you arrived at the profit number for the investor, etc. Then send the PDF to all of your investor contacts by email, BP direct message, in person or tell them about it by text or phone call if necessary.

@Nate Fanara Some county sites have this info downloadable from their site. Others you can call and ask how to get the info. Some title companies in the area might run these reports for you but may charge you. The other option is to build a power team in the areas where you are investing and partner up with someone asking them to go to the county offices to get it. Again you can get these lists from list sources online but getting it straight from the county can be more up to date. You can find a list of county websites at naco.org or just by googling it.

Edward, as far as boots on the ground for long distance investing, family can be a good option. Where do you have relatives you can trust?

And I don't think James is saying you won't gain any appreciation. He's just saying that counting on appreciation and cash flow doesn't always work out like you'd hoped but that principal pay down always results in equity except on the short-term in a depressed market where property values are dropping.

And this is why Alina asked you what your goals are. If you need to make fast money, then maybe buy/hold isn't the right strategy for you. Buy/hold/rent is best used as a long term investment. 20 years can go by faster than you think. But what if you bought only 1 property per year as buy/hold/rent, only putting up the down payment each time and each of those are making the monthly payments on their own. Do you think that in 20 years you won't have a boat load of equity and net worth? You will. And that's why buy/hold/rent is so popular among REI's. It's the ultimate wealth builder next to business start-ups.

If you need fast cash, start out with a little bird-dogging or wholesaling and save your way up to your first flip. Then use that profit for a down payment on a buy/hold/rent. Then repeat or start trying the BRRRR method to fund your next rental.

And for flips in CA, I hear that adding sq ft to a property (maybe converting attic or garage to living space) is a good way for CA investors to create some quick equity.

HELOC, Cash-Out Refi, Seller Financing and so many other creative ways. Private money partners as you mentioned is our favorite way.

Although I agree that REI is one of the most stable ways to invest, there's no arguing that diversity is great. Never have all of your eggs in one basket. Diversity just makes good sense.

You can buy a list because it's more time effective to get more addresses quicker. But sometimes those lists are outdated. Plus everyone is buying them. We find it more up to date and a little less competitive to spend a little time getting pre-foreclosures from the county by searching or asking for the most recent Notice of Default records (that what it's called here in UT, in other places it maybe called that or Lis Pendens or Sheriff's Sale). You can also get the Tax Sale list and possibly buy a property before the sale happens (in deed states a tax sale is similar to a foreclosure auction, in lien states they're only auctioning a lien to pay off the taxes).

Matthew, Jan is a property management specialist and she's given you some great advice.

Congrats Tony. That's awesome! 

@Adrian C.

You can try our favorite funding strategy which doesn't require a great credit score: Private money partners, not hard money lenders who call themselves private money lenders, not anyone who lends as a profession, but regular people like you and me who have some money to invest and are looking for a higher return than they are currently getting with money markets, CD's, IRA's etc.

You can start building a list of them with one simple strategy: Get in the habit of starting conversations with people, always asking them what they do for a living or how their job is going. People love to talk about themselves and they appreciate your interest in them. Once they start talking about their livelihood, that opens the door for you to talk about yours. Often, they will say, what do you do?

Now you can say, I'm a real estate investor. People who are not real estate investors often perk up and say, really? Often they are impressed and interested in the field. So tell them all about the strategies you've learned and then say, "If you know anyone who’d like a guaranteed high return return on their money, secured by real estate on a short-term note, let me know. I’ll hook them up!”

Often they will say, I'm interested or they will know someone else who is. If they're interested, ask how much they have to invest. Sometimes you'll find someone who had $50k or more to invest, which could help you fund a rehab on a seller finance deal. Ask what they consider to be a high return. They might say 5%.

The beauty of this funding strategy is that since they don't lend money for a living, you will usually be setting the terms. This is how we fund most of our deals. We've found people with $400k to invest using this strategy.

Also, @Account Closed is right, there are lots of ways to invest without using your money or your credit.

You can also start out with wholesaling which also doesn't require borrowing money.

If you have more questions about creative financing let me know. Happy to help.