All Forum Posts by: Aaron Norris

It isn't just our inventory, most Realtors in our area are having the same issue across the board. There's just noinventory. As far as I know, we have mostly retail sales and occassionally all cash. We've gotten into some higher dollar markets. It will be interesting to see what happens with the house we're building in Riverside right now.

I hope you won't flag this as marketing. We did a Night Line piece in 2009 that ended up being very pro-investor:

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8188741

In the video you'll see us pitching for investor financing as we have for years. We're constantly fighting against this stereotype that investors are sharks or nothing but speculators.

There is a back story: This footage came from an interview for another show actually. We took the day to shoot footage of before and after and talked to the journalist about exactly what investors bring to the table.

Let's just say we were not very happy when the word "shark" ended up being in the headline. What we shot was barely part of the story that turned more into a video on international Chinese and Canadian buyers buying up American properties. The journalist seemed a little surprised as well and this is the story that emerged on Night Line.

She and her team were generally impressed once she saw the messes we were taking and what we were doing with them.

We always have to keep in mind sensationalism sells, especially in media today. Hooray for info-tainment. That's part of their job so sometimes it isn't even the original reporter dictating the headline.

Regardless of what NAR says, CAR has been very supportive. Investors are revitalizing the housing stock and account for a huge portion of all sales the last four years. Without us, it's crazy to imagine how bad it could have been. These were not houses that homebuyers could even qualify for because of condition! Stories like this are coming, obviously, from individuals who don't understand the business.

P.S. Joshua Dorkin, I haven't seen anything on the BP Event yet. Give us a reason to hang out in 2013! :)

Great Shawn Watkins. Bruce Norris also covers some of this in our "I Survived Real Estate 2012" presentation from October. You can listen to the audio via our podcast on itunes right now or watch the video. It's not the two hour presentation Shawn will post. It's a 20 minutes condensed version that opened up the event and it starts on the second video at:

http://www.thenorrisgroup.com/free_resources/i-survived-real-estate/i-survived-real-estate-2012/

If you haven't seen this series before, the panelists are made up of some heavy hitters from different real estate sectors including the Appraisal Institute, National Association of Realtors, Mortgage Bankers Association, Fannie Mae, and Carrington Mortgage (hedge fund). Definitely worth a listen.

It's easy to take one-liners out of context. The amount of research Dad does for anything he says is incredible. I Survived Real Estate alone produced 8 hours of info publicly. Each panelists was interviewed BEFORE the event and each of those interviews were thoroughly researched. Not all of it is in chart form, but for those not familiar with his work, it's not light.

It's all on the podcast on itunes for those really interested into why he's predicting what he is. Well worth the investment in time. The content is free.

I think one of the reasons people like his work is he gives sources to the charts and he's always open to feedback. He doesn't want any one to take him at his word. He'd rather them look at the same data and grouping of charts and find their own conclusions. Having put together his last report which had over 400 charts and 200+ pages of information, I see what DOES NOT make his predictions.

Yep, fair enough.

Sweet, looking forward to reading it.

This is really going to depend on your area. In California, if it was a decent property and you offered that number, you would never win. Investors are running on much smaller margins.

However, if you're in an area where no one is bidding and you can purchase it for that, have at it. How did you come up with that value?

I will respond to Jake. We've been around since 1997 and don't loan hoping the borrower will default. That's just our model that has served us well. I know there are loan-to-own lenders out there but they'll have private money sources interested in dealing with the foreclosure process. Ours want passive and boring.

Top reason we say NO is because of liquidity. We don't care if people or new or if they bring in partners. We just want to make sure they have working capital to get through a transaction successfully. $20,000 in a checking account doesn't count if your house payment is $5,000 per month and you have $10,000 a month in credit card bills. So I will clarify and say liquid, working capital is most important.

Location and inventory is always important and that will vary by lender. I know some lenders who specialize in loaning on churches. We don't have any private money that would want that. They come to us because they like single family properties and they like our clientele.

We might also say no if it appears the person plans to live in the property, if they are rude on the phone to staff, or possibly they have a "situation." We work with professional real estate investors that are buying to fix and flip, buying to hold, or doing construction. "Situations" typically end in other situations.

We used to run into this when people were middle men/women for bulk buys. We started asking them for the list of their last closed tape. Magically, we never heard from ANY of them again.

Sort of off topic but none the less important. For those in California, pieces of the California Homeowner's Bill of Rights is getting closer to votes. Some pieces make a lot of sense, other pieces have clearly not been thought all the way through. The California Association of Realtors recently released a particular piece they are concerned with. I thought I'd post some links and contact info on here in case you are so inclined to make your voice heard. We live in interesting times.

California Association of Realtors Issues Red Alert on Homeowner's Bill of Rights. http://www.car.org/governmentaffairs/getinvolved/redalert4/?src=FB+govaffairs=redalert

This is link to find your senator And assemblyman.Below are to leaders behind the legislation:

http://192.234.213.69/smapsearch/framepage.asp

John Perez-Speaker of assembly-Head guy-for AB 278

Darrell Steinberg-Senator-Head Guy for SB 900