All Forum Posts by: Kevin Kaczmarek

Public records are the single best source for finding active SDIRA investors as Chris mentioned. We tend to search for several keywords such as: Equity Trust, ETC, Entrust, udirectira, pensco, FBO+IRA, and a few others. This is a great way to find those that are active IRA investors in real estate. How to find those that open accounts that are just sitting there to do a deal are going to be harder to find.

I will join in saying the ETC conference is a great networking resource. Between BP and the ETC conference 80% of my business is now done from contacts I have made between the two. If you go, let me know. I am hoping to get a biggerpockets dinner together one night.

Hi George,

Hopefully I can help answer a few of these.
If your IRA purchases a tax lien you don't actually own the lien, your IRA does, therefore your IRA would make the purchase of the tax lien. Your IRA custodian will require you to fill out a direction of investment form to purchase the tax lien. The lien paperwork that the tax department produces will have to be sent back to the custodian for record keeping. Often times originals can go back to the IRA holder and then they send those onto the custodian after they have made copies.
As far as UBIT, you would not be subject to UBIT as this is a passive investing strategy and you are not using leverage ie borrowing money in your IRA. I hope this helps.

I did an interview with Eddie today for my weekly biggerpockets seller financing column. Look for it coming soon. It was a really fun interview.

Mike,
First off welcome to BP.

You bring up one of the most important aspects of this business, your personal safety. I will say this, based on your experience and all the hard work you have put into the business to make good purchase decisions it is important to avoid situations where your personal safety is felt in jeopardy.

When I was involved in some Mi properties I would tell everyone, a deal is not worth your life. Keep your personal safety in mind always.

If you are given this time to reflect on your business, and your gut is telling you to take this in a different direction, then the solution will come to you. Only you will know what makes you happy in the end. In that quiet moment, the solution will come to you.

When you buy on land contract, a memorandum of land contract is entered with the county. This in turn protects your ownership interest in the property. As long as you are performing on your end of the contract the seller cannot sell the property out from underneath you. When you say the seller refi's, are you saying there is an underlying mortgage the seller has on the property?

Steve, buying in Detroit on price alone is a fast way to lose your investing capital. I was part of a company for three years that did quite a few Detroit deals. We made sure we only bought in certain zip codes with a close attention to taxes and either buying on a warranty deed or knowing the full picture of our purchase. If Detroit is your first entry into real estate, please do your due diligence. There are plenty of fantastic opportunities in Detroit but you generally find those closer to $25K in very specific neighborhoods.

You mentioned $600 a month in rent. Make sure you know your carrying costs of a rental in Detroit. After taxes, insurance, property management and repair escrow, you generally are looking at $500 a month carrying costs. At that point is it really worth paying $10K for $100 a month?

Chris any update on this? This is a great question.

Guys I appreciate the feedback. While I agree with what everyone has said thus far, I am interested in knowing if there is a good course out there just to sort of "dissect" it.
I prefer BP, books and networking to any guru stuff but wanted to see what a "good" program actually looked like.

If anyone does have that I would appreciate the feedback.

This forum is a great vetting process to help everyone weed out the good courses, guru's and schools from the bad ones. What I am interested in knowing is what is the best real estate investing course/seminar that you have attended and why?
Was it great content?
Great presentations?
Great price?
Great networking?

Please share your thoughts on why the course/seminar you attended was the best and please do not use this thread to promote a course you are trying to sell

I have to chime in here on this topic because I remember when I first heard about BP. A local agent was using the site and had endorsed it to the point where I knew I needed to become a part of the site. Since I have joined BP so many wonderful things in RE investing have happened to me. I have made some wonderful friends on here, I have learned so much more than I could have outside of BP, and have made several business partnerships and relationships. When I look at the scope of my business today some of my strongest business relationships were formed on this site.

As mentioned several times over above, do your due diligence before you do anything with anyone, but know that this site can be a great launching pad for your RE investing career.

One good tip that I recommend is after you colleague request someone on here, and they have accepted, give them a call. Learn more about what they are doing, tell them about what you are doing. While I haven't done this for 100% of my colleagues, I can tell you the ones I have are in many cases doing business with me, or there are some future plans to figure out how to do business together.

This site allows you to build your business faster and better working with the right people.

Good Luck!