All Forum Posts by: Jeff NA

I think you can probably lose a few billion dollars, or make a few billion. Or fall somewhere in between.

I heard that the first thing lawyers were taught in law school was how to say "It depends."

Why would you even say that you're not an agent? There is only so much room in print advertising, and it can get costly. Why would it be illegal? You're an investor trying to buy a house. Period. Is buying a house at a discount illegal? Of course not.

GoDaddy.com is probably the cheapest you are going to find for registering a domain name. As far as hosting, you may want to look into Blue Host or Host Gator. I have read great reviews of both and they both seem to have terrific prices, but I haven't personally used either. I have used Yahoo's hosting service, and the price is good, the service is very reliable, but I don't like some of the technical aspects, specifically the inability to use permalinks.

As far as websites go, you can get a free blog at wordpress.com, or you can host your own blog using wordpress.org. You say you are interested in hosting before and after pictures and that's a great idea. There is a poster here that I think has an absolutely terrific site that does this. Take a look at his site at http://tomtarrant.com

I wish you the best of luck.

I'd like to add a few comments and questions to this subject, if I may. . .

My local REIA's general meeting in March spotlighted a speaker named Jason Aro. I believe he is new on the scene, but he is apparently a lawyer in LA and part of his pitch was that people should be looking into loan mods and doing referrals. He noted that his office paid $800 per referral, and it certainly seemed like it was worth looking into.

I did some research online and found a blog somewhere questioning the ethics of the business and the fiduciary duty involved. Around the same time I had sent my resume out to about 200 jobs on Craigslist, and one of about three people to call me back was a place doing loan mods. I'd essentially be finding all the people, charging them for the service, and sending their paperwork off. But the calls, emails, and general feel of the guy I spoke with was incredibly shady and just didn't feel right at all. So I passed on that.

With all of that being said, my question is this: I am getting ready to send out my first marketing piece, and if I get a call from someone that is a perfect candidate for a loan mod, where is the best place to send them? I am absolutely fine with talking to someone for ten minutes and sending them along to where their best deal is. Hopefully that involves me, but if not, it is what it is. Jon, you allude to the fact that you do this? Any light you can shed on that? Are you saying that you are government approved, and if so, is that by the state of CO?

the Search function is awful.

Let me again say that I really do love the site. It's great.

But, also again, searching is much too difficult. We don't have the option to search by title only, nor can we sort forum topics by number of replies. So when I search for "motivated sellers," I get 17 PAGES of results, 95% of which have NOTHING to do with motivated sellers but just happen to contain the words "motivated," and "seller" in the same thread.

The same issue applies to blogs. How do I find a blog dealing with short sales without spending an hour flipping through pages? There is no way to do this without having to swim through a bunch of completely irrelevant information.

I know I can be a bit brash, but I am going to say it again. Really love the site. But at some point, the time is going to come to rise to the next level, and it just can't be done by ignoring the importance of the search function and how difficult it is here.

I think it would be horrible practice to back out of deals consistently. There seems to be a faction of investors that really don't care about the other party in the deal, so long as the investor has the chance at profit. If you sign a PSA, what about the other party that thinks they are selling their house in 30 days (or however long)? What happens to them when you aren't experienced or competent enough to make the deal work? Would you even care?

I would. I think the people that back out "consistently" are unprofessional. If you can't find an end investor, who is at fault for that? Most likely you are if you didn't get a good enough deal. Obviously if you have a legitimate reason to use a contingency clause, that is perfectly within your right. But if you're not sure you can assign the deal, why not just put an option on the property?

Although it should be said that my experience = zero. Just my thoughts on common courtesy and professionalism, or the lack thereof.

Jeff

I'd love to hear more about this. And I have a few questions:

How did you arrive at an ARV of $37k when a 2008 assessment came in at $29600? Where is the extra $8k coming from?

Like someone else asked, how did you estimate $4k for the demo of a garage, the construction of a carport, and siding on the house? Are you doing the work yourself? That does seem low to me.

Jeff

And go to what? Commercial?

Either way, thanks to Tim, Mike, and ANTI for the constructive advice.

Tim, I understand what you're saying. But I love my hip rented apartment close to downtown Portland. I can give up the Cheesecake Factory in a second, but not so quick to give up all the small shops, restaurants, and bars in my neighborhood. I'd have a hard time cutting that out of my life, and if REI can't provide that for me, I'd understand. . . Also, love the comment about education vs. innovation. I'd love to speed up my career investing, but I have an incredibly strong aversion to "coaches" and programs that want to charge me hundreds or thousands of dollars for info that seems to be available for free here on BP. All in all, great post. I appreciate it.

Jeff

I was just curious, if the experienced investors here had to start all over again, right now, and were able to know everything they've learned along the way, how would you go about beginning?

A few questions regarding 30/60/90 day late lists:

I've heard that I can get these from the credit reporting agencies. Has anyone done this? Are there any other ways of getting this list? Any ballpark figure on what the cost is for a list? And if you've done it, have you found it beneficial?

Many thanks in advance.

Jeff