All Forum Posts by: William Alston

Y'all,
I am glad to have stumbled into this place when I did.

There is a fascinating group of people here that I find to be honest and ethical. A couple of qualities that are admirable at least and that will define the leadership of the commerce that is to come.

The real estate and mortgage industries have just burnt to the ground and have thereby released their strangle hold on our economy. Ok so they brought it down with them but there is no place for them to hide their misdeeds anymore.and what we build from the ashes will not be controlled by them ever again as long as we continue to meet here and share the knowledge of how to prosper in spite of them.

Great analysis here!
But I would admonish everyone to wait and see and remain fluid and flexible about the future.
The downfall of all futures analysis and risk assessment is that by definition it can not account for the unknown.

Anybody read the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb?
He was a risk analysis type with Wall Street before he came up with the theory that the unknown will always be the downfall of such projections.
His stock investment strategy was exactly what you stated Jeff in you post, 80% safe (so you can't lose it)and the rest in highly speculative things because if even one of them hits you are rich beyond your dreams.
Each crisis including the one we're in was caused by events that were
"large- impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events beyond the realm of normal experience". That is a great definition of the unknown we are facing now.

I am holding on and waiting.
I am making friends around the world. We are communicating regularly and sharing reliable on the ground intel just like we are doing here.
I am staying flexible and staying ready to pounce on the wonderful opportunities that are going to open up when things begin to fragment.
...as they are fragmenting around us now.
No government, no Wall Street wizards, not the even the combination of all the worlds financial centers with one single united plan of action can stop the forces of change that have been unleashed on us in this meltdown.

The one thing we all know in our hearts as well as our minds is that we are uncertain like we have never been uncertain before.

I am going to go out and smile at this THING like the first person ever to surf a 30 foot wave... I hope I don't die.. but what a rush when you realize that you are not dead and you can do it again.

There are going to be new billionaires made in the upcoming cycle and they will be people not corporations.

People that care about what they leave behind rather than care about what they can take.

Remember how Apple and Microsoft started?

We are in the world of the internet where everything is connected and anything is possible. Find your niche and grow it.
The possibilities are more numerous and more rewarding than when Microsft and Apple were created.
Some things won't change, family, honesty, integrity, the need for food shleler and clothing....everything else is a wild card.

What could we do with a billion dollars each and the same willingness to share that we are displaying here, now?

Y'all
Here's my 2 pennies from the Golden State.

A flip ain't really a flip without that thing at the end that goes FLIP.

If you are starting to build up inventory when you have been trying to move them you might need better intel or a better team.

Have you tried another realtor with better loan contacts? Are you using a direct lender or merely a loan broker with no juice in the market?
Sometimes its the lender not the borrower that is the problem. And lenders are notorious for saying everything is fine right up until the moment you find out that it isn't fine at all.

Were you given assurances the buyers were good by someone on your team? Who?

When did the buyers' status change to UNgood and what were the stated reasons for the change in status.

I could run the list of excuses through the lenders list if lies for you if I knew some more circumstances.
I am seeing plenty of credit crunch going on but the real players in the loan business either get them done or tell you up front that they are shaky.
Sometimes things go wrong for them too but how often has it happened for you?

R Deschain,
You are not wrong to assume that they occur but you may be waiting a long time for it to happen.

I think somehow there is a misconception that the only good deals out there are REO's and Short Sales.
Anyone who needs to sell in a down market has their value driven down by the sales around them.
If in fact what you are looking for is a nice piece to hold onto I would suggest a different strategy.

Find someone who needs or wants to sell but isn't in trouble with their mortgage.
This type of person very often has a strong emotional attachment to their property and might be hoping to find someone who would care for it as they do.

The fact that you want to keep it and hold it rather than make a quick return might be the thing to get them on your side.
This is probably statistically more probable than finding the perfect property in your mind's eye but that is also a foreclosure.
See my point? Path of least resistance type of thing eh?

Bi Stevens,
I think you misapprehend the use of the words that Mr Holdman used above when he said "if you have assets, the lender would come after you for the shortage."

Your description of the process is precisely what the lender would do to "come after" your assets.

Find an agent or broker and makes friends. In my area as a member of the mls I have on line access to almost the whole state.
Find someone you like and make an arrangement that is mutually beneficial.
Some of us will actually share and be helpful. As long as you are not overworking someone there are those of us that help just because we can.

All good advice... I'm following much the same thing here.
I have an office in my home (still a separate space though so I am not in the kitchen)
I drive my KIA with the cracked windshield (paid for and ugly but cheaper than new)
We grow vegetables I raise bees. (Try this its easy and you get food, wax and medicine for free)
Every phone, land line or cell, I ever use is a flat rate unlimited plan.
I stopped printing and save everything digitally, you can even get digital signatures on your documents though I haven't started using it yet I have been researching it.
AND when ever anybody wants me to do something that cost money,seminars,MLMs new gadgets, telemarketing stuff of any kind,
I just say no.

Armando should let it go.
The best revenge is success and just let her name never be mentioned again

Nc Mark,
I checked out the table of contents on line for the Age of Spiritual Machines and it sounds interesting.

I noticed a chapter about giving bodies to machines. It reminded me of the following.....

I do work with schools teaching their teachers about brain development and showing them simple exercises kids can do that are only games but they actually increase IQ.

This is all supported by brain research using real time MRI's to actually watch stuff thought occurs in the brain.

Anybody old enough to remember those creepy films we saw in school about psychologists putting wires in monkeys' brains and then doing things like blowing smoke in their faces?

Well now with real time MRI's we can see thoughts as they occur and nobody has to get chopped up not even those poor monkeys.

One thing that has come out of this research is that the bulk of the human brain is devoted to spatial awareness or locating your various body parts in relationship to each other and the force/direction of gravity.

The one sense that is required to keep us from going insane is body awarenss.

You can lose any sense, sight, hearing, speech, and still compensate in some way but without a knowledge of your location/orientation in space you may or may not exist,, your mind just can't tell.

This also tells us why AI is so hard to attain because until you build a robot with spatial awareness it will be insane.

Oh yeah I liked science when I was a kid, still do...

I have been doing some research and here is what I found.
Most web sites suck.
In fact I discovered that around the globe with a gazillion different sites that Google only indexes less than 1% of the sites in the whole freaking world.
If you check out this techie guy

Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5000 days of the web on the youtube he explains it pretty well.
Here is what I have discovered..
1.sites like these acknowledge the fact that WE ARE THE INTERNET. Its just people connected to people.
2. We can all smell BS even across cyberspace.
If it don't do what it says its gonna do.....then it ain't what it says it is either.
3.All of this data like access to the research capabilities hidden in the various MLS databases (which is where appraisals come from) is available to you now.
Anybody interested in helping build the link list so we can peruse every MLS in the country?
I have started it but its a hell of a lot of work and it will go faster with more bodies.
Here's my rules of engagement for my business ventures whether for profit or for public service and this one will be for both.
Rules
(Obtained from Dr. Clinton Walker of the Foundation for Advanced Research- an old Howard Hughes employee. He is president of the board for a 501 (c)3 (FAR) that holds 3/4 of a billion dollars (more or less) of debt free assets and he looks for things of value in the world to help promote.

I can't build the graphic in this box because I don't have drawing tools but think of a golden triangle ( no jokes you hippies and other Thailand tourists)
The base is ETHICS one side is $$ and the other side is LAW.
Test any act before performing the act and save yourself much grief by adhering to these rules of engagement
First if the deed ain't ethical, don't do it.
Second if the deed is ethical but doesn't make fiscal sense,(sn't sustainable) then don't do it.
Third if it is ETHICAL makes $$ sense but isn't legal don't do it.
If you have all three sides of the triangle complete the dynamic of the deed is virtually unstoppable unless you fail in one of the three areas first.
I think this site has one of the most diverse sets of free thinking Americans I have come across in some time. The economic power we can wield by sharing information in this way is vast.
It feels good to be here