All Forum Posts by: Jean T.

I agree. The mortgage process is brutal. I feel like I'm faxing my whole financial life to them. Even with the land contract, are you buying "nice" homes that need little rehab and therefore little cash?

One of my goals this year to build a list of private money sources that will allow me to buy all cash with little to no paperwork. My credit is what I'm concerned about. Needing to refi out of the hard-money loan forces me to ensure that my credit isn't taking too many hits. I need to get out of that with private money, if I can.

I have set some ambitious goals for myself. I figure that if I get done half of what I have below, I'll be happy. But I'm going for all of it.

1. Complete at least 30 deals (rehabbing, rentals, lease-option, tax liens, ira investing). I'm going for diversification here

2. Finish building the core of my REI team (attorney, realtor, accountant)

3. Build a network of at least 50+ retail and lease-option buyers

4. Complete my business plan

I started investing in real estate last year. I still have a day job that I like and keeps me pretty busy during the day, and often at night. So I was wondering who on BP is investing part-time like me.

I've bought 3 properties so far in the past 8 months or so. Each property is at a different stage.

- Property 1 was rehabbed with hard-money and sold on a lease-option. I am currently working with a broker to refi out of the hard-money. In this economy, things aren't looking too good. I just found out today that one bank wouldn't underwrite my loan because the existing loan is with a hard-money lender.

- Property 2 rehab has just finished and is currently being marketed to find a retail or lease-option buyer.

- Property 3 was purchased on a land contract, 7-months, no payments. I am on the third month, and nothing has started. The first two properties were financed with the same hard-money lender, and they are not financing any more with me. I am reluctant to find new lenders for fear of how their credit checks would affect my chances to refi out of properties 1 and 2.

When I read some of the posts on BP, I read about people doing a lot during the day. Many phone calls are made. Where are those who are doing this part-time and can only do anything at night and on weekends. How do you cope?

My best method to work around this is to use email. In my current job, I'm on the phone with clients all the time. But I'm also on email all day too, so I can easily and quickly respond to an email on my lunch break or something, which doesn't last very long at times since I can get bogged down with work.

So I'm just curious and hoping to get some ideas from what part-time investors are doing or have done before they went full-time.

Thanks.

Frank: I agree that if the inside is an absolute mess, most buyers will not be able to see past it. Thanks for the insight.

Diane: Your incentives are an interesting idea. If done right, I think they could work. I wonder if anyone else has tried them.

Has anyone ever marketed a rehab for potential buyers before the rehab was even complete?

I'm rehabbing a home now, and it's almost done. However, in an effort to get potential buyers interests, the outside was done first (there was little to do). I'm thinking of having these buyers drive by if they need to, but tell them that the home is almost done.

Has anyone done something like this? If so, what do you think are the potential pitfalls? One I can think of is that buyers will want to see the inside, and not being able to see it will turn them away.

I've heard and read that Google Adwords can get expensive. I'm a new investor. Does it make sense for me, or new investor like myself, to sign up for Adwords?

What about using search-engine optimization? If you design you're site right, you may be able to get your site near the top of Google without Adwords. Has anyone does this with any success?

John,

Is this legal? I was looking into this in MI, where I invest, and from the limited research I've done thus far, it seems that you'd have to get approval from the MI gaming commission. In your explanation, you don't include any information about the need to get approval from your state, so I'm curious as to whether this is legal?

It's funny. Before reading this post, I was just thinking about being able to use a bird dog to do more than just finding a good deal. I'm glad to see someone is already doing something like it, because I wasn't really sure about it. I was actually thinking of using the bird dog not only to find a good contractor, since I may not have much time to search for one, but also for finding a good renter/lessee for my buy-and-hold or buy-and-lease deals. And they will get more for the more they do.

This in my mind, as you put it, is truly a business relationship. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

With this in mind, my questions now are:

What's the best way to go about finding a bird dog, especially when you live out of state?

How do you go about choosing that first bird dog to work with? Is the contract used to help discourage the bird dog from just walking away with the advance money, especially when you probably have never met them in person?

Since you're out of state, I'm guessing you rely heavily on the bird dog to provide you accurate information. Do you buy your homes sight unseen or do you fly in one weekend or something to see the homes and confirm what the bird dog provided and then make your offer?

ShadoCat,

I am assuming you are flipping these homes, so that you can give the birddog a percentage of the profit. What about buy-and-hold or buy-and-lease methods? I'm thinking you'd be approaching the illegal stuff that REI talks about using these methods.