All Forum Posts by: Michael Haynes

Bobby Gillespie. There is the a time when you want to do something like trade stocks or futures or houses, that you need to go to the library and get all the books you can on that subject. On the weekend I read a lot of negative comments and experiences online concerning R.E. gurus, in particular Carleton Sheets. He started on Davis Island here in Tampa and I have his course if you want to look on craigslist for the book. We have a double lot on the Hillsborough River across from the Lowry Park Zoo with a 2000 sq. foot Jim Walters home that I fixed and rented for ten years to move back in and sell it after the two year Sale of your Resident Rule for tax free profits. The mortgage is $132,000 and the Zestimate is way high at $326,000.  

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7320-N-Ola-Ave-T...

This is really a nice place to live with a beautiful view across the river, with neighbors that have torn down and built three story homes with docks worth up to a million. When you think of buying a house and I would not think Condo...can you make the rents pay you anything like this as a ten year return on your investment and then live in it for two years to sell it tax-free?

Here is a link to his Top Ten Creative Financing Methods 

https://www.carletonsheets.com/resources/articles/...

I did most of my deals over 30 years with a small down payment and financing by the owner. There are lots of distressed properties in good areas if you can do the fixups or get a handyman for a good price who does it all. I am thinking of a start up Real Estate portfolio for someone who has some time to hold on, but, you have to buy low, low, and sell high and try to make it a 1031 Exchange or use the Residential Sale Rule to work less and use your smarts. Here is another link to financing

http://www.************.com/real-estate-forums/fin...

Did you see the movie "Gambler?" John ... the big fat guy in the steam room gives the kid a simple lesson. He asks him if he knows the "PH...U factor?" He tells this young teacher that you take the hard working guy who finds a way to buy a house and he pays it off and keeps working to save something on the side that gets him out of the need to only have a paycheck on Friday. That's when you create the one thing that we fought for in all our wars...Freedom to tell the boss PH...U and walk away without worry. YOU HAVE DONE THAT! Now, your JOB is to nurture what you have and make your money make money with the least amount of Risk as possible and that may not include taking on debt to buy a rental property with the type of property you are thinking of buying and the people that have to rent those kinds of houses. Do you have a JOB? A profession? A degree? Would you ever think of starting a small business? Buy a small shop which has a long term, Commercial Lease for more hands off management and maintenance? More taxes, no chance to sell tax-free, but, less headaches. Or buy a shop and start your own business with the thought that ten or twenty years from now you get to sell that shop for a million and you lived out of it all that time like a convenience store. Lots of things you can do in Real Estate besides Flips and pay all the carrying costs and taxes. I hate working for the government. You could sell your paid off home and buy up or buy one that needs some TLC and fix it up to live in for two years, with zero mortgage payments, not near a Flood Zone and then sell that when the time is right, for tax-free profits and move onto the next one. Do that repeatedly for the rest of your life and study until you get some more ideas. When you have some money, you have to learn how to make the money make money and use Compounding in your sleep to Create Wealth.

Its always been know that there are more ways to party in Tampa even though the beach is in St. Pete. Tampa is the growing business town with the port finally getting new cranes to handle the new Panamax ships that are heading for here from the enlargement of the Panama Canal. I think they voted that we have the best airport in the world which is currently in a billion dollar expansion on the West side. St. Pete is half trailer parks for the retired. Half of Florida is built for the retired. If we get any weather, it hits the beaches first. Tampa is ten miles up the Tampa Bay from the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Tampa almost never has a tornado and only once had a hurricane in 1926. It is greener in Tampa with endless trees and some hilly areas compared to St. Pete which is a flat peninsula. Your question is whether you can make more money in Tampa or St. Pete? Are you looking for a JOB or do you have the means to move here and just start a Real Estate Investment business. Are you going to be a hands on landlord or buy enough apartments or a trailer park that someone else will manage for you? Doctors and lawyers find themselves looking to "invest" for the long term in Real Estate, but, they cannot manage or repair or even take care of the bookkeeping and taxes. So, they think to buy blocks of 100 or more apartments or commercial buildings and pay for others to do all the work. Then, they are taken advantage of by their management and handymen etc. and end up selling at losses because they don't have time to keep track of their properties. You know that most single family homes are not able to cover their costs. There are ways to find Foreclosure properties, or even pre-foreclosure properties and distressed properties that you can fix up and try to make them cash flow positive. But, you still have to landlord them with the class of people we have in Florida. Remember, this is a Right to Work State. Lots of renters make ten dollars an hour or less. The good ones work two jobs or both couples work or the husband has a small business or profession. The good neighborhoods and better classes of earners or business people are the ones that buy houses and carry mortgages and try to make bigger businesses. The break off point in rents is around a thousand dollars a month. If you can pay that or a little more you can Buy instead of Rent. I planned 30 years ago to build my portfolio in Tampa because I had a Union Hall here and it was safer. You have other considerations besides the opportunities available to get good buys on properties to rent, flip or hold. Tampa as compared to St. Pete has areas in the South of downtown and around the airport and on the outlaying areas that are all tear down and build out with two and three story homes, mini mansions and townhomes. The one thing that makes instant cash flow are trailer parks. We don't allow trailer parks in the City of Tampa. St. Pete does and there are hundreds of them. If you are going to live here, then, you will be able to do your due diligence and get the mornings listings for deals and make contacts with agents who will specialize in deals for you, with different finance people to have ready access to cash when you find an auction property or the like. Do you know how to us 3D Google Mapping? You can use the mouse on the computer and literally descend from outer space to the street level or slightly above tree top level and fly around anywhere you want to see before you get there and have an idea of the lay of the land. It's good to know the bad sides of town to avoid when looking for deals. In Tampa that is the East side of I275 for the most part and the South side of Central Ave. downtown St. Pete. I see a the members of BP talking about how the numbers work out with a property and that is important, but, what about location, location. I have a property on a mountain in Rio de Janeiro that looks down on a valley that looks like Swiss Alps without the snow. I have a house on a hill across from the beach with a million dollar view that gives me a feeling and vista that I don't get from my houses that are next to houses, looking at a house or empty lot across the street. You have to become familiar with any business that you are planning and this one involves Location. The last thing is the question for what happens after this Election? What happens next year if China cannot keep up the Kabuki Theater and their Real Estate Bubble explodes like none other in the history of the world and the banking system worldwide collapses? Are you ready to jump in and buy the distressed properties then and hold on for a recovery to sell in better times. I trade Futures online in the mornings for Daily Cash Flow, tax-free, in my Roth IRA and the whole idea is to able to see the price movement and the Waves when they are low and Buy or high and Sell in the short term. The problem with Real Estate is that you cannot cash out quick enough during down times. We all need a place to live. I am selling my rentals because I think we are at the top and I will maybe build new townhomes to live in on my commercial lots and use the Residential Sale Rule to live in one for two years and then sell tax-free to move into my next townhome etc. for my retirement. That way I avoid having lots of tenant problems with older houses that need constant repairs. If we do crash again, I could look for a trailer park in a better area that is big enough to have someone that I know, live there in one trailer and take care of the whole mess for me because I don't have to wait for the cash to start rolling in with trailers. Lots of things to consider, but, you should fly out and drive around and see the areas first. You have a lot of different memebers in Tampa and agents who can help to orient you to the different opportunities. Just look on Zillow.com for all the Foreclosure properties in the best areas and see if the numbers work for you and if you can afford to pay cash.

Hello Christopher Jones. You live in St. Pete. The best way to make Daily Cash Flow with Real Estate is to buy a Trailer Park. You have a lot of them over there. Try this like for some ideas 

http://www.mobilehomeuniversity.com/articles/how-t...

One of the others is 

http://nreionline.com/finance-amp-investment/why-i...

And that lends itself to buying and selling paper which is Jimmy Napier's specialty 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/70/topics/774...

Pete Fortunato used to give talks at the property swap  group in St. Pete 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLDVsgB-q_o

Be sure to do the Google Searches for all the different things you can do in your area with

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=501+Knights+R...

Zillow.com says you are in the ball park with your figures, but, why would you buy a Condo. To me that is a dirty word. Condo fees and Absentee Owner spell trouble. All the buyers here in Tampa want to buy new if the older property is a similar price. During the real estate boom that ended in 2008 we built 5000 Condos in Tampa and they keep building them downtown. They are all empty with investors buying them for speculation and they keep on building...In Miami they built 50,000 Condos and they were all empty during the collapse of the Market. Here in Tampa there is a building and only one of the apartments was being lived in. The Condo fees have to be paid and he was the only one paying...that means that every month he was going to be responsible for all the fees or be Foreclosed on. The agents here are hot to sell you a new Condo downtown or on the Island. We have a horrible traffic problem downtown that they cannot solve and they keep on building high rises. One doctor told me that it took him twenty minutes to drive over one of the two bridges from Harbour Island to get ten blocks away to go to the Publix Market. The reason people wanted to buy in the new developments outside of Tampa, was because they could buy a lot more for cheaper. Then, they found out they had a horrible commute! On a good day it was 20 to 30 minutes to get downtown to go to work. On a normal day now it can be two hours. So, they decided to move to S. Tampa and we have had a boom in building on everything south of Kennedy Blvd. and downtown. But, that fifteen minute commute now can be an hour with all the traffic trying to go North to downtown on four main roads. The lines are endless to get through all the hundred lights downtown and crossing the main roads. And it just gets worse and there is no solution at all. Another thing about Condos. The Condo Association is a hostile entity. The Condo Administrator is always a thief who does not live in the Condo and usually not even in the State. The normal things are usually done around the buildings, but, major repairs are left behind and the Administrator steals money from the Condo fees to live a better life somewhere else. Ten years later the tenants get a letter with a Special Assessment for a new roof or fencing or pool upgrades or painting the building etc. That can be thousands of dollars for each tenant and some cannot pay and they start selling out. So, how old the building is can be a concern. You don't want to buy into the Special Assessment cycle. Harbour Island and Davis Island are ground zero for any hurricane that comes up Tampa Bay. The high of the water level downtown could be twenty feet. Look at the flood maps downtown that no one pays attention to. Its all go go, buy buy downtown and all empty and abandoned at night. We just moved back to our property on the Hillsborough River across from the Lowry Park Zoo. Our flood policy was a thousand dollars and just went up to over three thousand. The governments plan is to raise the Flood Insurance ten percent a year until you are paying tens of thousands a year, just like Obama Care. There is no way we can sustain these costs. The Utility bills for light and water are projected by the County to go up at least ten percent a year. My girlfriend is an Accountant at the County. Our tenants are all struggling, ordinary people. I don't have any lawyers or doctors or suit and tie guys as renters. They get in trouble every day and all I hear are excuses. The wave these days is to pay the light and water and not the rent and ask to pay partial payments and on and on with the negatives. I have had rentals here for thirty years and I am selling out while I still can before the next downturn which we believe will last for twenty or more years. That Condo today, could be worth half that amount next year. You would do better to wait to see what happens after the Election and how they are going to solve all the problems that drag down our economy. Be like Warren Buffett and Donald Trump and look for the next downtrend to pick up real estate near you for pennies on the dollar. Fix it up and then rent it if you can stand being a landlord.

Nice work is right, Samantha. I'm in Tampa, Fl. and I can't imagine having to do all the work that I had to do to keep my rentals going for thirty years in the kind of weather that you have up there. My girlfriend is from Milwaukee and everyone we know from there is trying to escape the cold. The basic thing that I see is that you are putting down a lot of down payment money, which does eliminate the mortgage insurance and using 30 year loans which gives you a way to pay less per month and pay down the mortgage on the backside. You must have a good job and an education at an early age, so you got that part done right. But, the reason to buy real estate and keep it as rentals is to Create Wealth and not give yourself another JOB managing your rentals. No one seems to say whether they are doing all the work of managing and repairing etc. their rentals. I used to have a handyman that I could afford. Can you pay $15 to $50 or more an hour for guys to do the repairs for you? 10% of your gross rents for the rental manager who charges for each letter, telephone call and any visit they have to make out to the property? The basic idea for me was to buy five, financed by the owner or creatively as possible. The rents have to be positive enough to help buy five more. You get ten and keep them going for ten years. Then, at the right time, which is the height of the R.E. Market, you sell the five worst properties to fix up and pay off the best five and retire with a million. I did that twice, but, got caught in the 2008 economic collapse and lost 60% of my property values. So, I almost got ruined on the way to where I am now on my second try for the million. I am now selling to get completely out of debt and end up using the Residential Sale Rule to live for two years in one house and sell it tax free to move into another for the rest of my life. I will be building new ones to live in and moving onto another one if I can free up my commercial half acre before we have any more problems as I run out of rentals to live in and sell. The point is that you start a business, any kind of business, to have the business make money for you. If you have to micro-manage the business, then you are just creating a JOB for yourself and you may be better off just keeping your job. Managing rentals is a really exhausting JOB and when I could not afford to pay handymen and managers I ended up with a 24 hour a day headache. So, the rental business has to be big enough, have enough positive cash flow from the rentals to be able to pay other people to do all the work for you. That includes your Accountant and Lawyer and Eviction specialist etc. Then, you turn into a Robert Kiyosaki, or Carleton Sheets who can afford to be an absentee owner who buys and sells properties all over the country. I never wanted to be that big. I don't want to be a Donald Trump. It was just a basic plan where I would have a Real Estate Portfolio and learn how to make money with money by learning how to Trade and Invest in the Markets. Now, I want to get out of the rentals and rid myself of the tenants and just use the Residential Tax Rule to live in a new home to sell in two years and trade Futures on the computer each morning session. I worked on oil tankers and taught myself to invest in Mutual Funds and in ten years I made $100,000 out of that to buy, financed by the owner, all my rentals for my retirement in Tampa. So, now, I can stay home and type on the computer in the mornings and make a few hundred each day for my Daily Cash Flow and get away from the rentals. The real estate has to Create Wealth for you and later you can learn ways to make money with the money. That's the goal. 

I am selling in Tampa and people go to the seminars that tell them they can buy with other peoples money and make it low and no money down deals. They call me a few times a week. The agents too. I won't consider it at this point in the real estate cycle. We are at a top, not a bottom and playing the bank is out. You on the other hand want to buy for less than half the value and use owner financing. You have to known how much you have to put down. What interest rate. For how long. The longer the better. A hard money loan in Tampa, Fl. can be had for 8 to 12%. But, you have the commission charge up front and months to pay, not 30 years. You cannot guarantee that you will sell in 18 months. Remember, we are all waiting to see what will happen after this election. How will they change Obama Care to make it work as it has about a year to go to completely collapse under its own weight. You don't know the seller and he is not a friend who will understand if you have problems. Renting for more than double the money to buy and fix up is ideal. 30 years ago I started buying duplexes with $10,000 down, at 9% for 30 years and they were worth $125 more or less with minimal fixups. I am trying to salvage a deal with the same guy for two houses on one lot with more down and less interest and that is worth $170,000 with the current loan to pay at $130,000. But, I would live in the big house in front and rent the back house for the monthly payment. BP may be a help. If not enough then everything is on the internet if you just do a Google Search and put in youtube to see all the short videos that explain just about everything you can want to know. Up near Tallahassee we used to have Jimmie Napier to ask question about any kind of financing you could imagine. See if he has info online or even youtube video lessons on how to make a deal. A short term loan for this house deal does not sound good for me to get interested because I do not trust that we will be able to sell anything at present value next year. You can also subscribe to Harry Dent's advisory letters and books about the economy to get a very different perspective about our economic situation. And if you really have an interest to see how the polititians have messed everything up, take a look at Martin Armstrong's youtube videos or go to their websites. Nothing good is going to happen for the next twenty years. Going into debt right now is not my idea of a happy retirement.

Doesn't everyone have to start at the beginning? I am an extremely slow learner and the Carleton Sheets course was the guide book to getting my start in buying rental properties for my retirement here in Tampa, Florida. On my first trip around the world I wanted to see how other people survive in their old age and one old couple in Spain told me that you need to work to have one house that is paid off and one rental property. I started with reading every investment and get rich quick book at the library. Twenty years later, I worked on oil tankers with the same Union where Robert Kiyosaki was a Chief Mate. One of the Mates on the ships told me about a Chief Engineer in Seatle, who would give his real estate agent $5000 every time he got off a ship and when he retired with a huge pension, he had a million dollars worth of rentals. Every time I would get off the ships I would attend every home based business seminar that came to town. I must have been to hundred different seminars for individuals looking for a way to make money on their own. Wade Cook gave me his whole course for free and I was a member of an investing group here for ten years. While I was on the ships I studied Mutual Fund investing and made the $100,000 that I used to buy my rentals. The reality of Low and No Money Down in Tampa, without connections to the bankers and pre-foreclosure properties, was that you had to do a lot of searching, without the computer and make a lot of offers or attempt a Lease Option etc. and I didn't have the time. So, I used cash to do one of the things that Carleton taught. You could finance by the owner with $10,000 down, at 9%, and try to buy multi-family duplexes or houses that produced enough rents to pay for PITI and unforeseeable repairs and disasters. You maintain ten properties for ten years and then sell five worst ones at a profit to fix up and keep the five best that would be worth a million dollars. I did that and got creamed with the 2008 collapse in the economy. You couldn't lower the price fast enough to sell what you could and save some of the rentals. Carleton Sheets started in Tampa, Florida. My broker knew him from Davis Island. I wonder how he made out with his portfolio losing 50% or more in value by 2009. Just like with everything else, real estate values run in cycles. We used to think that they were 7 to 9 year cycles from the lows to the highs in value. Right now, we may be in a 20 year stagnating downtrend. No one pays attention to that. As a stock and options trader I had to think about that in the Daily term and right now I am a Futures trader using the shortest term trading method. The reason why is just what Robert Kiyosaki taught as his principal lesson. You pay your bills on a 30 day schedule and you have to have Daily Cash Flow. Nothing else he teaches impressed me as much. Even as a Flipper, you have to have deep pockets to cover the carrying charges and repairs. I met an old Italian this week who said he bought a big property with a huge house in a really good location for $120,000 when the Market crashed in 2008 and he would not sell it today for less than $230,000. Great deal! How many years did it take to make it work. Right now I am selling. I need for my IRS designation as a Real Estate Professional, to have at least one rental with my Futures trading so that I can use all may deductions in the current year. In Florida they cannot take your residence for any debt you may incur. So, I need a paid off residence. I need to continue to work with my little knowledge base and for me the Sale of Residential Property Tax free up to $250,000 every two years is the trick. I met one lady who had done ten of these as her only real estate deals. I met another older couple who would buy the first new home in a housing project and put up with all the trucks and dust, because they would get really good financing with the builder. Then, they would use the Residential Sale rule to sell and move onto the next new home when the project was done and property values had increased. No miserable tenants, full of excuses, leaking sinks and blocked up toilets and oh! they lost their key and had to break in the window in the back to get in... The expansion on that will be that I own a commercial half acre in a good location that I can divide up into four lots and build two townhomes on each one. Move into one and rent the other. Two years later I sell the residence, tax free and move into the next one. I can build out the property slowly for the rest of my life and live in a new townhome each time. This is also where Creative Financing makes sense. I needed something for Daily Cash Flow so I learned how to micro-scalp trade with Futures. I can sit at the computer each morning and make a few hundred dollars and go to lunch. If you do that in your Roth IRA it is tax free in and out after you hold it for five years and you are 65 years old. In real estate you can also sell a rental/Flip and do the 1031 Exchange for another like property and avoid the taxes until you get to one that you want to live in and then use the Residential tax break to free up the profits for that one. We have to think smarter and try to not end up as burned out landlords. If you don't want to do the Carleton Sheets thing, then, learn how to invest in REITs. Just make sure you can go Long and Short them if this really is the start of our 20 year decline like Japan. Some guys can figure out how to do one or two good deals and some guys and gals were just born to horse trade.